The Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian Institution鈥檚 two Asian art museums based in Washington, D.C., have released their complete digitized collection as part of their new . The collection can be searched online and includes hi-resolution images of over 40,000 objects from the galleries.
The photographed objects include ceramics, paintings and prints, sculptures, books, tools, and much more. Users can search for a specific piece or by artist, topic, object type, place or culture of origin, or time period.
All of the images can be used free of charge for non-commercial purposes, which means that they鈥檙e available for all art history, research project, lesson-illustration, or classroom-decoration needs.
The Freer and Sackler Galleries aren鈥檛 the only museums to digitize their collection for public use in recent years. The New York Metropolitan Museum of Art of its collection last May, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles started digitizing their collection in 2013 through their . Dozens of museums, libraries, and other institutions worldwide also take part in , a Flickr project that aims to make public-domain photos more readily available.
Photo: At 13' x 20' x 33', The Freer Gallery鈥檚 Peacock Room is the largest item in the digitzed collection. Smithsonian Freer and Sackler Galleries/Flickr Creative Commons