Good news, art history fans! The Musée du Louvre has successfully launched an English version of its online "Atlas" database. What does that mean for us? We now have access to scholarly text--in English--associated with some 22,000 works on permanent display at the world's most famous visual art museum.
I won't lie to you on two points. First, English is easier for me. A LOT easier ... as in: watching me struggle to translate French to English is akin to watching video of a horse that's fallen into a swimming pool. You've got your elements of panic and tons of floundering around until there's some semblance of a conclusion, usually involving skilled rescue personnel and/or tranquilizing dart guns. It ain't, as they say, pretty. So any time a non-English art-historic website has a magic ENG button, I am beside myself with joy.
Second, I'm not finding the English Atlas navigation intuitive (yet). My basic searches aren't quite taking me where I mean to go, which is either a bug or, much more likely, what is kindly referred to as "operator error." But, here. You try it:
Chime in with your experience if you're so inclined. Meanwhile, I'm still just happy to bring word of another free online art-historic research tool. We can never have too many.
I won't lie to you on two points. First, English is easier for me. A LOT easier ... as in: watching me struggle to translate French to English is akin to watching video of a horse that's fallen into a swimming pool. You've got your elements of panic and tons of floundering around until there's some semblance of a conclusion, usually involving skilled rescue personnel and/or tranquilizing dart guns. It ain't, as they say, pretty. So any time a non-English art-historic website has a magic ENG button, I am beside myself with joy.
Second, I'm not finding the English Atlas navigation intuitive (yet). My basic searches aren't quite taking me where I mean to go, which is either a bug or, much more likely, what is kindly referred to as "operator error." But, here. You try it:
- This is the Louvre's home page.
- You should see a box (4 of 6, at lower right) that says, "The Louvre website is also available in English!"
- At the top navigation on the page that comes up, hover over "Collection," and then click "Databases" in the drop-down menu.
- The first offering on this new page reads "Atlas: database of exhibits." These links have an uncanny way of going bad quickly, but "Atlas" (in English) is what we're shooting for here.
Chime in with your experience if you're so inclined. Meanwhile, I'm still just happy to bring word of another free online art-historic research tool. We can never have too many.
Comments
I just went to check it out – I never thought of going to the Louvre site before! Thanks for the tip. Anyway, the English button is now on the right on the ribbon across the upper portion. All the links worked, but I haven’t done an actual search because I’m at my job and supposed to be working (sadly, not on art history)!