British Museum's Art Work Free Online

British Museum in London is famous for withholding their valuables, many of which the empire robbed with them from ancient civilizations, such as Egypt and Greece during their time of imperialism.

The museum has the largest collection of art work, more than 13 million objects, and still today they refuse to give back treasures from for instance Acropolis.

Now however, they have made a tremendous change, making these valued treasures available for free for anyone online, whether it's for private use or for use in a class room you can go to their online site and download a print of the painting, poster, or drawing that you want. If it's for a book or other commercial businesses there will soon be an option to download it for this as well.

The enormous database was started in 1979, and there is still over one and a half million artwork to be digitalized, so it can be made available online. Eight workers and volunteers work their hardest to get these artworks out there, and the progress is astonishing. Every week they are able to 2000 works online, and you get a good deal of information also.

If you search for a piece you're interested in, you not only have the opportunity to print it out, but you can also find information on who donated the piece (some of this goes back to the 1800's), what quality it's in, when the museum got it, literature about the piece, dimensions, theme, and of course who made it.

At first British Museum was quiet about their internet releases, as they wanted only a small segment of people to test it and check for errors, so improvement could be done. But right now there are 263 565 pieces of art in the collection available online. 98745 of these have one or more pictures attached.

To test the website, I put in "Michelangelo". There was 41 results available for print out. To prove exactly how great this database is, I went ahead and clicked on the first drawing: "Michelangelo and pupil." The following information came up:

Michelangelo and pupil, Girl with a spindle, a black chalk drawing

Florence, Italy
About 1525

Height: 28.800 cm
Width: 18.200 cm

Michelangelo (1475-1564) was not known as a great teacher. He preferred to be viewed as a solitary self-taught genius who had neither the time nor the inclination to run a workshop. In this sense he was very different from his rival, the artist Raphael (1483-1520), who set up perhaps the most creative and productive studio in sixteenth-century Rome.

However, Michelangelo did attempt to pass on his skills as a draughtsman to a group of pupils and assistants. Most of his pupils were mediocre and this drawing seems to demonstrate that. Michelangelo began the sheet by drawing a profile head. One of his pupils then made a partial copy of such ineptitude that Michelangelo was moved to cover it up. This masking operation inspired Michelangelo to sketch a fancifully dressed woman seated in a high-backed chair. The poor sketch was incorporated into the left sleeve of the now seated figure and the nose, eye and chin of the earlier study can still be seen faintly.

H. Chapman, Michelangelo drawings: closer (London, British Museum Press, 2005)

This picture can be viewed in very close detail, and I can also choose to print it out.

As previously mentioned, the amount available online from their web site is enormous, and can be of great research value to students, teachers and private art lovers! The plan is that by 2009 the remaining 1.4 million pieces will be online as well. This also includes coins, which so far is not categorized.

So pay close attention to the British Museum's web pages in the coming months and years, and give yourself a tour of the museum without having to go all the way to London.