“A Starling” by Isaac Spackman (1700–1771), undated watercolor and gouache on vellum, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund.
NEW HAVEN, CONN. — The Yale Center for British Art has released more than 22,000 additional high-resolution images through its online collection, which now includes more than 69,000 images that are available free of charge.
The center and Yale University have an ongoing commitment to provide open access to images of works of art in the public domain. As a museum and research institution, the center has led such efforts since May 2011, when it first made images of works in its collection available online for the public to download. These images are available through the website as well as from the center’s associated services, from display-sized jpegs to full-page TIFF downloads and JPEG2000, a file format that allows images to be studied in high resolution and minute detail.
The files are also compatible with the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF), a project that aims to make the world’s image repositories interoperable and accessible. Yale is a founding member of the IIIF consortium (http://iiif.io).
Although most of the artworks themselves are not new entries to the public domain, in most cases this will be the first time that digital images of these works are easily and openly accessible to the world. These newly released images contain a treasure trove of more than 1,700 prints after works by J.M.W. Turner, as well as masterpieces by William Blake, Thomas Rowlandson and others.
“The center is extremely proud to continue in its role as a leader in the field of online accessibility. We are confident that our founder Paul Mellon [Yale College, Class of 1929] would wholeheartedly support this development to further free and open access to our collections, virtually, and to advance public education in the history of British art,” said Amy Meyers, Yale Center for British Art director. “This additional selection of images provides a wonderful opportunity for an advance view of our collections before our public reopening later this spring.”
The Yale Center for British Art is at 1080 Chapel Street. For additional information, www.britishart.yale.edu or 877-BRIT-ART.
