Soleil couchant sur la Seine à Lavacourt, effet d'hiver. Image: Monet painting.
Paris is home to hundreds of thousands of works of art. I’s various museums hold paintings from Francisco Goya, Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, and countless others. Paris Musées, a public institution incorporating the city’s 14 museums, has just made it easier to see those masterworks. Paris Musées has uploaded 321,178 works of art—including paintings, photographs, and coins—to its website. More than 150,000 of those images are in the public domain and users can download them in glorious 300 DPI high definition. The other artworks can be viewed, but aren’t available in high definition.
“Making this data available guarantees that our digital files can be freely accessed and reused by anyone or everyone, without any technical, legal or financial restraints, whether for commercial use or not,” Paris Musées said in a press release.
Users can browse the museum’s catalog or view specially curated virtual exhibitions. “We are ensuring they can easily, enduringly, freely and instantly use High Definition images to support their research, their teaching and their publications, thereby improving their physical and digital cultural mediation tools,” Paris Musées said in its press release.
ONE EMAIL. ONE STORY. EVERY WEEK. SIGN UP FOR THE VICE NEWSLETTER.
By signing up, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy & to receive electronic communications from Vice Media Group, which may include marketing promotions, advertisements and sponsored content.
