ARTISTE Project

ARTISTE is a European Commission supported project that has developed integrated content and metadata-based image retrieval across several major art galleries in 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. However, cross-collection access is recognised as important, for example to compare the treatments and conditions of Europe’s paintings, which form a core part of our cultural heritage. Over the last two and a half years, ARTISTE has developed an image search and retrieval system that integrates distributed, heterogeneous image collections.

NOTE: This project ended in 2002.