Nuked The Smithsonian institution is releasing 2.8 million high-res images into the public domain. The open-access online platform will include 2D and 3D images from its 19 museums, nine research centers, archives, libraries, and the National Zoo.
Effie kapsalis is the Smithsonian’s senior digital program officer.’we ca n’t imagine what people are going to do with the collections,’ she says.
A quick scan of the Smithsonian’s access platform gives a small taste of what’s included in the enormous collection of some of the world’s most significant works. The collection includes a Degas portrait of Mary Cassatt, an image of a Roman glass bottle dating to 200 BC. Muhammad Ali’s boxing gear and Amelia Earhart’s flight suit also included.
Over the next few months, the Smithsonian will add another 200,000 images to the access platform. It will continue digitizing its massive database of more than 155 million items.
The Smithsonian is the latest organization to bring its image collection into the public domain. The Art Institute of Chicago, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Metropolitan Museum of art in New York, and the New York Public Library have made thousands of images publicly available.
The Smithsonian’s release of its image collection is’unprecedented,’ says Simon Tanner, an expert in digital cultural heritage at King’s College London.’it opens up a much wider scope of content that crosses science and culture, space and time, in a way that no other collection out there has done, or could possibly even do,’ he adds.
