Recent launch of Eastern Art Online: The Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art
http://jameelcentre.ashmolean.org/
This is a major online resource from the recently expanded and refurbished Ashmolean, to open up the University of Oxford's Islamic and Asian Art collections held at the Museum to a wider audience.
The site showcases collections from the Islamic Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia, China, Japan and Korea. Currently there are around 1,400 objects on the site, but this figure will be
expanded over time as documentation work progresses and over 11,000 objects have actually been photographed as part of the project, most three dimensional objects with multiple views.
It is possible to zoom into very high-quality images from a wide range of media, including ceramics, textiles, sculpture, metalwork, paintings and prints. Much effort has gone into try to make the website as usable as possible and to provide a number of different ways in which to approach the collections, including features such as an interactive timeline and floorplan, as well as online galleries, online versions of publications and "collection trails".
As well as expanding the amount of content on the site, the next phase of the project aims to build on the foundations already created and to add new features to the website, allowing greater user interaction and ways in which to explore the collections.
The project started in 2007 with the support of arts philanthropist Yousef Jameel (for more info. see:
http://jameelcentre.ashmolean.org/project/21). Also funded by Yousef Jameel and opening later this year will be a (physical) study centre of Islamic and Asian Art at the Ashmolean.
