The Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute

March 8, 2012 7:13 PM

The web site of The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has more than 30,000 images searchable by who, what, where, and when.
posted by Trurl (11 comments total)

Unendingly fascinating. Thank you for sharing.
posted by koucha at 8:06 PM on March 8, 2012

Costume databases shouldn't have any results at all for "nude". But I did a search and I found this. The Met doesn't do internet porn the way it's supposed to be done.
posted by twoleftfeet at 9:09 PM on March 8, 2012

Stop kink-shaming, twoleftfeet!
posted by Mizu at 9:20 PM on March 8, 2012

Why?


Kidding -- this is great! The Met has really come a long way in the last several years in getting their collection online -- although nothing can quite compete with the actual experience of walking through the egyptian rooms with ancient mummies wrapped in linens and then descending that long staircase to see modern mannequins wrapped in linens.
posted by This_Will_Be_Good at 9:26 PM on March 8, 2012 [1 favorite]

How do I look?
posted by The Whelk at 9:42 PM on March 8, 2012

Dear Everyone Who Designed Neckties Before or After the 1940's:

You all suck at your job.
posted by ShutterBun at 10:07 PM on March 8, 2012

Oh I HATE that store. They never let you try anything on.
posted by sexyrobot at 10:52 PM on March 8, 2012 [3 favorites]

Weird, when I searched, my results were from the Met's full collection. On the upside, I got to see a bunch of paintings I haven't seen since the nice lady who married in to the family bequested them to the museum, so that's nice.
posted by dejah420 at 8:12 AM on March 9, 2012

Part of the richness of the Met's costume collection now is that they acquired the entire costume collection of the Brooklyn Museum in 2008. Many of these photographs are the result of a project shortly before that to digitize the Brooklyn collection:

In 2005 the Brooklyn Museum received a grant of nearly $4 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to catalog and photograph the collection. Mr. Lehman said that 12 to 15 people worked full time on the project.

posted by Jahaza at 8:13 AM on March 9, 2012 [2 favorites]

OK, can someone explain how to use this:

Search Tips
Fine-tune the results of your search by entering more terms into the field above to get broader results, or putting phrases in quotes to require exact phrases. Alternately, pick terms from the tabs to find works in specific categories.
...
When: Date ranges

My attempt:
No results were found for When:1300-1500

I doubt that. In fact, a search for "14th" turns up quite a few results from 1301-1400.
posted by IAmBroom at 8:49 AM on March 9, 2012

I had a bug when I searched for a term, clicked to the end (i.e. results 900-940) and then limited it to results with pictures and that dropped the number of results below 900 and it showed me e.g. results 900-140... and got all messed up.
posted by Jahaza at 8:52 AM on March 9, 2012