About
Contents of the database
The NCMA is home to more than 4,000 works of art and material culture, classified into eight major collections: African; American; Ancient American; Ancient Greek, Italian, and Roman; Ancient Egyptian; European; Judaic; and 20th and 21st Century. Ninety-nine percent of the collection is accessible in the online database.
Collection research is a core mission of the NCMA and is always ongoing. We strive to improve object descriptions and update provenance, object histories, bibliographic references, and other data on a regular basis. In some cases our online records are incomplete or in the process of being revised. Occasionally non-NCMA researchers discover new information related to Museum objects. If you have information that seems to be missing from our records, we welcome feedback.
Individual records indicate whether a particular work is on view. If a work is not on view, it is in storage, undergoing study, or on loan to another institution or State government agency.
Search features
The predetermined curatorial and thematic groupings provide quick access to users who wish to browse the collections. For more targeted queries, use the Search the collections bar to input criteria such as keyword, maker name, culture, date, or subject matter. Results can be refined according to maker/culture, classification (materials or media), or date.
Click the Advanced Search link to access a page with multiple searchable fields and scroll-down menus. The tabs “Object” and “Maker/Culture” provide different sets of search criteria. In neither case is it necessary to fill in all of the fields.
There are a few ways to browse the Online Collection:
On the homepage, you can browse curated selections from our collection.
On the people page, you can browse individuals and/or institutions related to objects in the collection, along with relevant biographies and objects.
Enter keywords or names in the search box (Quick Search) to find objects or other records in our collection. To search on specific criteria, you can use the advanced search to search within certain data fields. You can search using multiple criteria, such as the term "portrait" in the title + a date range of "1800-1900". If you are not getting any results with advanced search, try broadening your search by removing criteria.
- You can use an * (asterisk) as a wildcard in searches, to match partial terms (e.g. draw* will return results for draw, drawn, drawings, etc.)
- Use quotation marks to get more exact results - e.g. John Doe will return any results with John or Doe, but "John Doe" will return results with this exact phrase.
There are different types of search results, such as object records and people records. When there is more than one type of result, you can choose different types of records to view.
You can refine a result set by using filters to narrow down results. For example, you can filter to see only works that have images within any result set. You can also clear each filter to revert to a larger result set, or clear all filters to get to your original result set.
An image may be shown as not available if it is not yet available in our database, or if it cannot be displayed for copyright reasons.