ARTISTE image retrieval system puts European galleries in the picture

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Description/Abstract

ARTISTE is a European Commission-funded collaboration, investigating the use of integrated content and metadata-based image retrieval across disparate databases in several major art galleries across Europe. Collaborating galleries include the Louvre in Paris, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and the National Gallery in London. Museums and galleries often have several digital collections ranging from public access images to specialised scientific images used for conservation purposes. Direct access from one gallery to another is currently uncommon for textual data and almost unheard of in terms of image-based search and retrieval. Cross-collection access is recognised as important, however, for example to compare the treatments and conditions of Europe's paintings, which form a core part of our cultural heritage. A key aim of ARTISTE is to provide an image retrieval system that can provide integrated cross-collection searching. Whilst ARTISTE is primarily designed for inter-museum searching and as a building block for public access systems, it could equally be applied to museum intranets. An article on ARTISTE in the first issue of Cultivate presented the project objectives and technical approach. Now that ARTISTE is nearing completion, this article looks at how those objectives have been fulfilled and discusses future work to continue and build upon the achievements of the project.