With approximately 500,000 objects from 4,000 years of human history, the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MKG) is one of Europe’s most important museums of art and design.
The digitised and published parts of the collection are accessible online via MKG Collection Online. The website features more than 10,000 artworks and artifacts. The LIDO-XML dataset that is provided via GitHub contains metadata of all the published records including links to the connected images, if available. More than 7800 images are reusable without any restrictions and can also be downloaded directly via the website. Please note our usage guidelines, if reusing images that are marked CC0 or CC BY 3.0. The collection can also be accessed via the websites and APIs of Europeana or Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek but the data updated most recently is the LIDO-XML on GitHub.
A tool that has been developed during the hackathon “Coding da Vinci Nord” as part of the “Zeitblick” project and that can be useful is the MKG Downloader. This tool lets you filter items from the LIDO-XML and download them.
The metadata includes information about artist/actor, actor role, object type, title, eventtype, date and place, material, technique, dimensions, marks and inscription, classification, iconography/subject, depicted persons, depicted place, description and rights metadata. The vocabulary used for cataloguing is in large parts linked to the Integrated Authority File (GND), to Wikipedia and Geonames, as well as to thesauri like Iconclass and the Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT). All persons and corporate bodies are linked to their respective GND record, if available.
The datasets are placed in the public domain using a CC0 License.
If you find any errors or want to provide additional information, please let us know.
Contact: Antje Schmidt, Head of Digital Cataloguing and MKG Collection Online
#mkghamburg
