Get into the Metropolitan from anywhere in the world: the museum opened online access to collections

Amsterdam “Rijksmuseum” first introduced open content in 2011, when its curators discovered over the Internet more than 10 thousands of low-quality scanned copies of one of Vermeer's paintings belonging to the museum. In response, Rijksmuseum made available for free download the first of its 300 Thousands of High Resolution Images.

Several American museums followed the example of the Dutch:

• Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
• National Art Gallery in Washington.
• Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut.
• Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.
• Museum of Archeology and Anthropology of the University of Pennsylvania in philadelphia.
• Getty Museum in los angeles.

“As a teacher of medieval Latin, I discovered that the [Walters Museum] online collection of manuscripts is a valuable tool in teaching students medieval writing and embellishing manuscripts in miniatures,” said Sarah Bond, a professor of classical languages ​​and literature at the University of Iowa, in an interview with Forbes.

The Metro provides access to its works of art, which are in the public domain, according to the designation of the category “Creative works in public access - zero”, or СС0. (CC0 indicates that no organization claims copyright in this work.) The museum collaborates with resources Wikimedia and Pinterest in order to expand the digital reach of the museum.

The educational benefits are obvious. You can easily decorate a T-shirt with the image of a favorite picture of one of the artists. The Metropolitan and many other museums will help you to do this.