AMSTERDAM.- The Rijksmuseum is launching the new Collection Online platform. It makes the Rijksmuseum collection more accessible than ever before, with 800,000 high-resolution art works, 500,000 books, and 800 linear metres of documentation – all in one place. The combination of Linked Open Data and AI technology means visitors to this attractive online environment can now easily search the collection to gather, download and share images and information. Collection Online sees the Rijksmuseum setting a new standard for sharing heritage data.

"The Rijksmuseum collection belongs to us all, and everyone has the right to the most up-to-date information, whether they’re an academic, an art lover or simply curious. That’s why we decided to share as much knowledge and visual material as possible with the whole world. Art and history are now closer than ever before." --Taco Dibbits, Director of the Rijksmuseum

All the knowledge in one place

The Rijksmuseum has built a dedicated infrastructure that connects multiple data systems to interlink all the information about our collection. We did this using Linked Open Data, a universal method for releasing structured data in the public domain. In line with our Information and Data Policy, we will continue to add new data to Collection Online, such as archival material and the research results yielded by Operation Night Watch. With time Collection Online may also incorporate links to data from other museums. In this way, we will ensure that digital knowledge on art and history becomes increasingly findable and usable around the globe.

You are the curator: create your own Gallery of Honour

Unlock and endlessly explore our treasure trove of art, history and knowledge using the Collection Online search bar and the hundreds of automatically generated thematic pages. Create personal collections from 800,000 online images, compare objects, and even make your own interactive video clip. Use the 360 virtual Gallery of Honour to curate your own personal exhibition of masterpieces. Getting to know the collection is even easier now with the Art Explorer. Use this AI-supported tool to answer all your probing questions and get inspiring and unexpected suggestions from the collection.

Online innovations

This is the first time in the museum world that AI-driven search capabilities have been combined with an attractive visual user interface to unlock integrated data on such a massive scale. In 2012 the Rijksmuseum launched its online platform Rijksstudio, making it the first museum in the world to offer a record 125,000 images in high resolution, free of charge. In 2022 we released a photograph of The Night Watch at the highest conceivable resolution (717 gigapixels), and 2023 saw the online publication of ultra-high resolution images of all Vermeer’s paintings. The Rijksmuseum has won multiple international awards for these projects.