April 11 ------ The Louvre, the world’s biggest museum, announced that it has placed its entire art collection online for the first time ever. More than 482,000 pieces have been digitized in its collections database and are now available for the public to view at any time for free. “Today, the Louvre is dusting off its treasures, even the least-known,” Jean-Luc Martinez, the president and director of the Louvre, said in a statement obtained by CNN. “For the first time, anyone can access the entire collection of works from a computer or smartphone for free, whether they are on display in the museum, on loan, even long-term, or in storage.”
The new database contains work from the museum’s eight departments — from Islamic art and Renaissance sculptures to Egyptian antiquities — and Paris’s Musée National Eugène-Delacroix. “The Louvre’s stunning cultural heritage is all now just a click away!” he added. “I am sure that this digital content is going to further inspire people to come to the Louvre to discover the collections in person.”
Visitors can delve into the collections through simple or advanced searches, entries by curatorial department, or themed albums, the press release said. An interactive map will also be available to allow visitors to explore the museum room by room. Updated regularly by museum experts, the database will continue to grow and reflect advances in research, it added. The Louvre, which closed for six months during the French coronavirus lockdowns, suffered a drop in visitor numbers of over 70 percent last year.
The French museum is still undergoing renovations.
Source: mb.com.ph