About
Dartabase
Dartabase is a free reference tool for art students, historians, and academics. It aggregates artwork metadata, artist records, and exhibition history from open-access museum collections into one searchable, citable source.
The problem it solves is simple: research data about modern and contemporary art is scattered across dozens of institutional sites, each with different search, different citation formats, and no shared index. Dartabase brings that data together without replacing the institutions it sources from. Every record links back to its origin. Every institution page links prominently to the institution itself.
Citation is treated as a first-class feature. Chicago, MLA, and APA styles are available on every artwork page, one-click copyable, and the stable cite URL at /cite/[source]/[id] is designed to survive database migrations and domain changes.
Data sources
Collection data is sourced from open-access museum APIs and CC0 datasets. Exhibition listings are scraped from Arts publication sites that have already published the information publicly. The database is refreshed by scripts that upsert on stable identifiers, so re-runs are idempotent and provenance is always traceable.
- Art Institute of Chicago ↗
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art ↗
- National Gallery of Art, Washington ↗
- Museum of Modern Art ↗
- Tate ↗
- Whitney Museum of American Art ↗
- Harvard Art Museums ↗
- Statens Museum for Kunst (National Gallery of Denmark) ↗
- Minneapolis Institute of Art ↗
- Walters Art Museum ↗
- Cleveland Museum of Art ↗
- QAGOMA (Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art) ↗
- Smithsonian Institution (SAAM, NPG, Hirshhorn, NMAA, NMAAHC, NMAfA, Cooper Hewitt) ↗
- Städel Museum ↗
- Wikidata (Australian institutions) ↗
Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property
Dartabase holds a large amount of First Nations and Indigenous Australian art, primarily from QAGOMA. This material is governed by community law and protocol, not only copyright.
The standing rule is: mirror, do not exceed. We ingest and display only what the source institution has itself chosen to publish. Records flagged with a cultural advisory show a per-record notice advising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples that the record may include the names or works of people who have died. Cultural rights may rest with a community; records always link to the holding institution.
If you believe a record requires attention, use the correction pathway on GitHub ↗.
Privacy
No accounts. No cookies. No tracking beyond Vercel's standard request logs, which are retained according to Vercel's privacy policy ↗. Lightbox selections are stored in your browser's local storage and never leave your device unless you share the URL.
Contact
For data corrections and questions, open an issue on GitHub ↗.
For institution partnership, data licensing questions, or press enquiries, reach the project at github.com/Maltysnack/Dartabase ↗.