Am I the only one who hasn’t noticed that the Kyoto Costume Institute has FINALLY revamped their digital gallery? Now there are nice, clear, high resolution photos (some with Flash zoom), where before there were tiny, dingy, meh photos. Yay!
High Res Photos from LACMA Collection
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has added a new “Image Library,” which allows you to view and download super high resolution images of items from their collection — including many costume items!
There is some serious costume porn going on in there!
For example, check out this c. 1765 robe a la francaise. Whoa!
New Digital Collections of Extant Costume
Some fabulous new resources for tracking down extant costume info/pictures online have been added to the Digital Collections of Extant Costume directory:
Europeana — cross-museum search; art from various European museums. I recommend searching both in English and in other European languages. So far, not too impressed by their “narrow by date” options — I recommend instead searching by century, and then again do it in various languages (example: 18th; 18e; settecento; XVIII; etc.).
Esbirky — Czech cross-museum search. Click here to specifically to see the historical costume items in the database. Thanks so much to Hana Marmota for not only finding this, but figuring out how to use it!
Museo San Telmo Museoa in Spain — a few costumes in their collection highlights.
Texmedin — Spanish cross-museum textiles & apparel database. New items still being added, so check back on this one periodically.
Indiana State Museum — thanks very much to The Dreamstress for finding this one!
Digital Collections of Extant Costumes: New Additions
I’ve been adding new resources as I find them to the Digital Collections of Extant Costumes directory (ah! it’s so easy! it’s just one link! yay!)… unfortunately I’m not sure if I remember all of the new ones, but here’s an attempt!
- Göteborgs Museum’s collection database
- Brighton Museum & Art Gallery’s collection database
- Leeds Museums & Galleries’s collection database
- National Museums of Scotland’s collection database
- Historic New England’s collection highlights
- Museovirasto – thanks to Hana, more collection higlights in two exhibitions
- Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa – thanks to the Dreamstress, here’s their collection database
There might be others in there that I added relatively recently but have forgotten about, so it might be worth skimming through to see if anything catches your eye. As always, let me know if you find anything new out there!
New Digital Collections Added
I re-found some collections that needed linking on the the Digital Collections of Extant Costumes directory:
- Abiti Antichi (thanks Camilla!)
- Canadian Museum of Civilization & Canadian War Museum
- Corinium Museum
- Kansas State Historical Society
- Musee des Tissus (click on “Collections”)
- Phoenix Art Museum