The Louvre museum in Paris announced on Friday that it has made nearly half a million pieces from its collection available for free online viewing.
As part of a major revamp of its online presence, the world’s most-visited museum has created a new catalog of 482,000 items at collections.louvre.fr, with more than three-quarters already labeled with details and pictures.
It comes after a year of pandemic-related shutdowns that has seen an explosion in visits to its main website, louvre.fr, which has also been given a major makeover.
“It’s a step that has been in preparation for several years with the aim of serving the general public as well as researchers. Accessibility is at the heart of our mission,” said president-director Jean-Luc Martinez.
The updated database contains objects on public display as well as those in storage, including those at the museum’s new state-of-the-art facility in Lievin, northern France.
#ArtExplora supports @MuseeLouvre. The even more visual, user-friendly, and immersive website will allow you to appreciate the museum’s collections as if you where physically amongst them.
Thanks to https://t.co/P4yZypRvof, art will come to you. #cultureforall #art pic.twitter.com/nOHWOzF9aU— Art Explora (@explora_art) March 26, 2021
The museum announced earlier this month that it would intensify its efforts to restore items looted from Jewish families by the Nazi regime.
It is working to check all 13,943 objects acquired between 1933 and 1945, a task it hopes to complete in five years, with inquiries into works acquired in subsequent decades to follow.
Martinez estimated that around one percent of portraits in the collections were looted.
“The Louvre has nothing to hide,” he said, “and the reputational risk is huge.” “How will we react when future generations want to know where these collections come from? By conducting historical research and defining evidence.”
