Museum of Fine Arts in Boston

http://www.mfa.org/ Museum of Fine Arts in Boston

The Art of the Ancient World Collection.

The MFA houses one of the world’s finest collections of mummies, sculpture, ceramics, and dazzling gold from ancient Egypt, Greece, and the Roman Empire. With over 70,000 works of art, you can immerse yourself in the world of pharaohs and emperors. In addition to architectural elements, sculpture, painting, vases, jewelry, and decorative arts, the department houses a numismatic collection of approximately 8,000 coins.

There is a recent acquisitions link that allows you to view each of the newest acquisitions that are now on display in there Gallery. You can view, zoom in and out, pan up, down, left, and right. The sub-collections include Ancient Near Easter Art, Egyptian Art, Etruscan Art, Greek Art and Nubian Art, and Roman Art. Each image has a full range of detailed meta-data and even shares with you what tours to go on to see the object.

The site shares the agreement made with the Italian Ministry of Culture in 2006, where thirteen antiquities were transferred to Italy to begin of a new era of cultural exchange. The agreement includes the creation of a partnership in which the Italian government will loan significant works from Italy to the MFA’s displays and special exhibitions program, and it establishes a process by which the MFA and Italy will exchange information with respect to the Museum’s future acquisitions of Italian antiquities. The partnership also envisages collaboration in the areas of scholarship, conservation, archaeological investigation and exhibition planning. You can view high resolution images of the pieces that were loaned and shared with the press. This would be great to have simply for insurance purposes.

The advanced search allows you to search by accession number, name artist, medium, culture, classification, provenance, or keyword.