On the Digital Collection

What can I find?

The Digital Collection contains information about and images of selected works from the Museum Angewandte Kunst. Around 200 objects from all areas of the collection, epochs, locations, and contexts can currently be researched, providing a representative cross-section of the museum’s collection. The Museum Angewandte Kunst has set itself the task of digitizing its entire collection and putting it online in the coming years. The Digital Collection will be continuously expanded and updated as part of this process.

Each work will be photographed for publication in the Digital Collection and linked to descriptive metadata, which will enable a variety of search options and categorizations. Furthermore, new and surprising connections and constellations of objects can result from tagging by theme and motif. In this respect, the digital presentation of the collection is an ideal complement to the Museum Angewandte Kunst’s self-image as a space of opportunity and a lively place of discovery. Explanatory texts about the objects as well as other audiovisual media soon to come offer the opportunity to deepen knowledge about the objects.

The museum publishes diverse metadata on the objects—in addition to technical information about the works (material, technique, dimensions, object type, collection area, inventory number) and their production (people/organizations involved, dating, place of production), what they depict presentation and broader discourses are also included. Cataloging and indexing is carried out using controlled vocabularies/standard data (e.g., AAT). All persons and organizations are linked to the Integrated Authority File (Gemeinsame Normdatei, GND) if an entry exists.

We present a selection of objects in German sign language as well as in German plain language.

How can I search?

The Digital Collection offers the opportunity to research specific objects or for an intuitive discovery of the museum’s holdings: enter your search term in the full-text search or simply select one of our keywords to get started and let the results surprise you.

In the "Topics" section, you will find a curated selection in which several objects from the collection are arranged according to a specific theme.

In the "Research" section you can carry out a detailed search of the online catalog. Various categories can be specified here for a precise search result.

You can narrow down each search result further by selecting search filters.

How can I use the data?

Object pages that you would like to view again at a later date can be saved in the bookmarks list. PDF-printing or saving a permalink is also possible.

The Museum Angewandte Kunst makes the metadata published in the Digital Collection available for subsequent use under the Creative Commons license CC BY-SA 4.0. They may be used for all purposes without request, provided the author (Museum Angewandte Kunst) is acknowledged.

The Museum Angewandte Kunst offers images of works whose authors died at least 70 years ago for download free of charge under the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. With the exception of commercial use, you may use them and distribute them under the same conditions, provided you cite the copyright information shown next to the image. If you use the illustrations in a scholarly publication, we would be pleased to receive a copy for our library.

Works that are not in the public domain, that is, whose authors are still alive or have not yet been deceased for 70 years, are only available for viewing. The copyright notice can be found in the respective illustration information.

We have researched the information on the copyright holders and obtained the rights for online use in the Digital Collection. It was not possible to identify the authors in all cases. Please contact us if you can add any missing information.

If you would like to receive an image file of a work that is not in the public domain, please send a request to our image archive. This also applies to requests for higher-resolution image data (such as tiff files for publications) or other views.

How can I participate?

The Digital Collection is a living and constantly growing database. It contains information that has been compiled over the course of the objects’ history in the collection. This information may be incomplete or in need of updating.

Send us a message if you would like to know more about certain objects, have questions, or would like to give us feedback on this website and its content. We look forward to exchanging ideas with you.

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