Thanks to an online platform overhauled and reopened last month, visitors can now view hundreds of thousands of images in the George Eastman Museum collection. Works include vintage materials like Eadweard J. Muybridge's famous photographic studies of animal movement and 450 works by Andy Warhol, including this self-portrait.
Director Bruce Barnes said:
Previous iterations of the museum's online collections were incomplete and fragmented, had limited search capabilities, and became outdated because they were not connected to our internal database. Now, the publicly accessible collection database is fully searchable and is updated weekly from our internal collections database, enabling new acquisitions and improved cataloging to be accessible automatically. Online access to our collection database will transform the public's understanding of our collection and facilitate new forms of collaboration with creators, curators, scholars, and collectors. Whether you are conducting research on a particular subject or simply interested in seeing what works we have by your favorite photographer, you can now do so much more easily. When we collaborate with other museums or independent curators to organize exhibitions—as we did with the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City for Sight Reading: Photography and the Legible World—the outside curators will greatly benefit from being able to review information on and images of our holdings before traveling to Rochester.
Warning: I just spent an hour browsing. So much to see!
