A growing collection / coverage & selection
The edges of
this atlas.
1,553 represented objects do not amount to a history of world art.
Our six holding institutions are in the United States. The recorded contexts of their objects extend much further. Institution location, object context, medium, period and maker attribution are separate dimensions; no single count stands for cultural representation.
Inside the current selection.
The Met
49 works · New York
Our selection moves between prints, vessels, textiles and other objects. It began with eight close-looking works and now includes a wider group of reusable museum records. It is a partial editorial selection, not a survey of the museum’s departments.
Cleveland
804 works · Cleveland
The largest of our current museum selections spans paintings, prints, sculpture, textiles and designed objects. Its size reflects the records admitted by our sourcing process; it does not measure the museum’s importance or the breadth of its full collection.
Art Institute of Chicago
400 works · Chicago
Our current selection includes paintings, prints and three-dimensional works. These three stops offer a looking exercise across distinct contexts, not a shared lineage. The museum’s location identifies the holding collection, not where every work was made.
National Gallery of Art
100 works · Washington, D.C.
Our 100-work selection spans panel paintings, Renaissance sculpture, decorative vessels, drawings, prints and carved printing blocks. Each image is verified under the Gallery’s open-access policy; counts reflect only our reviewed selection.
National Museum of Asian Art
100 works · Washington, D.C.
Selected from Smithsonian open-access records, these 100 works include East Asian, South Asian and Near Eastern art alongside James McNeill Whistler’s prints, paintings and copper plates. Attributions and uncertainties remain as recorded by the museum.
Cooper Hewitt
100 works · New York
Our 100-work selection draws on Cooper Hewitt’s open-access holdings across drawings, prints, textiles, ceramics and decorative arts. Catalogue terms distinguish the material of an object from the technique used to mark it.
Expand around a question.
Priority goes to collections that let us investigate making, printing, ornament and material exchange with reliable object records. A museum’s open-data programme is a starting point, not blanket permission to reproduce every image.
Prints and their surviving matrices
Compare editions, impressions and tools without collapsing them into one image. Keep distinct accession numbers and attribution wording.
Pattern beyond European design histories
Seek detailed local cataloguing and scholarship for Asian textile and stencil traditions. Similar-looking forms alone do not establish transmission.
More holding institutions outside the US
Evaluate a small, question-led batch before committing to a large import. Directory inclusion, metadata ingestion and permission to display an image remain separate decisions.
What earns an image a place here?
An identifiable object, an institutional source, item-level rights evidence, a recorded image identity and a reproducible acceptance decision. Uncertain or restricted files stay out of the reusable catalogue. Publication restrictions on separately discussed editorial references remain in force.
Read our sources and rights approach →