“Zebra,” a painting in oil on canvas by artist George Stubbs dated 1763, is one of the many images that will be accessible to the public through the Yale Center for British Art’s new online catalog.
Beginning May 20, the Yale Center for British Art, which houses the largest and most comprehensive collection of British art outside of the United Kingdom, is sharing its extraordinary holdings with the world through a new online catalog.
For the first time, visitors to the museum’s redesigned and expanded website—britishart.yale.edu—will have the ability to search across the Center’s entire collection of paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, rare books, manuscripts, and works in the Reference Library.
In addition, they will be able to download high-resolution images of objects in the public domain, free of charge. This new policy should transform scholarship in the field of British art by allowing universal access to the center’s unparalleled collection.
The launch of the center’s online catalogue dovetails with Yale University’s recently announced “Open Access” policy, which will make high-quality digital images of Yale’s vast cultural heritage collections in the public domain openly and freely available.
“The new site provides the foundation for the center’s ongoing commitment to the development of an online research environment for the history of British art, and offers broad, international public access to our magnificent collections for study and pleasure in the most open of ways,” says Amy Meyers, director of the Yale Center for British Art.
The Yale Center for British Art will celebrate the launch of the online catalog with Connections, a companion exhibition that will replicate the experience of searching across the collections. The exhibit will be on view from May 20 through September 11, 2011, with an opening reception on Wednesday, May 25 from 5 to 7 pm, with remarks at 6 pm in the Library Court. Visit britishart.yale.edu for more information about Connections.