The Vincent van Gogh Gallery

Everything about Vincent van Gogh

This digital repository has digitized works of art by Gogh and is still in process of digitizing any critical information pertaining to the artist: "100% of Vincent van Gogh's works and letters ...criticism and analysis, historical commentary as well as a vastly expanded web of cross-referential hyperlinks." According to this site's designer & digital archivist's (?) site inventory, it has a vast number of collections on the digital repository: 864 paintings/1037 drawings/150 watercolors/10 graphic works/133 letter sketches/874 letters.

1) Selection Decision:

Gogh's authentic works of art including paintings, drawings, and letters that the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam endorses. Looking at the site inventory, it seems that any artifacts that represent Van Gogh, that is, ditigizable items such as paintings, letters, drawings, etc, are the primary factors for selection for the digitization.

2) Object of Characteristics:

I find this Gogh collection website exciting in that normal users, who are not able to visit Amsterdam, can access to the digitized objects easily. Each object has been listed in an alphabetical order, categorical, & chronological order as well; the images are presented in thumbnails and in standard version both. Each object recorded in useful metadata such as timeline, theme, current places that house the original works of art, and origins. The object's details contain information about what tools and materials were used and the size of each piece of art.

3) Metadata in this repository include painting names/origins/painter's name/place/time/etc

4) Target Audience:

• Art historians/scholars/students, in particular, interested in van Gogh collections
• Biographers interested in Gogh's life
• General public
  

"Within each of the alphabetic categories below you'll find information and graphics for all of Vincent van Gogh's 864 paintings (as well as an additional 1,340 graphics on the Drawings, Letter Sketches and Watercolours pages). This represents 100% of Van Gogh's paintings that I've made available within this Gallery. Of course, there will be ongoing efforts to improve the quality of the graphics offered. With few exceptions (the works destroyed in World War II, for example) I'll strive to have the best quality colour graphics available. At the moment, more than 95% of the graphics are in colour, but I promise to do my best to ensure that those last 5% are available in colour as well. Although all of Van Gogh's works are interesting--even if in poor quality and in black and white--nothing compares to the colours that Vincent himself intended."