In May 2011, the Yale Center for British Art launched an online catalogue that gives “visitors to the museum’s redesigned and expanded website … the ability to search across the center’s entire collection of paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, rare books, manuscripts, and works in the reference library,” as Christine Saari reported for the New Haven Independent.
The initiative, Saari explained, enables visitors to the Yale Center for British Art website “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.”
Michael Marsland Photo
Amy Meyers
Earlier this month, the Yale Center for British Art announced a partnership with Google to “share the museum’s extraordinary collections with viewers around the world.”
“The collaboration,” according to a Yale Center for British Art press release, “is part of a major global expansion of the pioneering (Google) Art Project, which now counts 151 partners in 40 countries. The Center, which houses the largest collection of British art outside the United Kingdom, is one of only six university museums in the world to partner with Google. It is among 29 institutions in the U.S. and the only museum in Connecticut to participate.”
Language on the Google Art Project website explains that “users can explore a wide range of artworks at brushstroke level detail, take a virtual tour of a museum and even build their own collections to share. … Few people will ever be lucky enough to be able to visit every museum or see every work of art they’re interested in but now many more can enjoy over 30,000 works of art … all in one place.”
“The Yale Center for British Art,” according to its press release, “contributed 5,414 works to Google’s online collections … The Art Project broadens the Center’s online catalog initiative, launched in 2011, to make its collection freely available for searching and download to all audiences.”
“Through an exciting synthesis of art and technology, the Google Art Project offers new channels for study, research, and pleasure to viewers around the globe,” said Yale Center for British Art Director Amy Meyers.
To view the Yale Center for British Art collection on the Google Art Project website, click here. Visit the Google Art Project home page here and visit the Google Art Project YouTube channel here. The Yale Center for British Art website is located here.