Notes on Art

Using flickr to browse Art museum collections

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“Mourning Victory from the Melvin Memorial” – by Daniel Chester French. photo credit: “lgwright” on Flickr – Creative Commons image

Most art museum websites are disappointing. The pictures they display are invariably too small. And what is even a greater disincentive, is that the images are poorly chosen. Much of the time the really fine pieces in the collection are ignored while the turds of modernism are proudly displayed on the front page.

Using Flickr
What’s a good alternative to the museum sites is to use flickr to find your favorite pieces of art. There are a few tricks to doing this:

Don’t use the plain “Search” box located on Flickr’s front page go to their dedicated search page at flickr.com/search
Use the full name of the museum, and don’t use quotes. Oddly enough, using quotes around the museum name cuts the search results down to almost nothing.
Select “Full text” on the radio buttons

Display your search results by thumbnails — otherwise it can be too time consuming to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Some ready-made Flickr search pages for notable museums

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Chicago Art Institute

Some neat finds on Flickr

These are shown thumbnail size to stay safely within the bounds of “fair use.” However, each thumbnail links to its flickr page where you can see the full sized version.

Jungle Tales — James Jebusa Shannon