Walters Art Museum Collections API
The Walters Art Museum is pleased to an application program interface (API). The API allows for internet developers and software programmers to query data from the museum, whose online repository contains more than 10,000 digital records of art and artifacts from the museum's collection. The records include information about the artworks as well as digital images. The museum created the API so developers and programmers can more easily create their own applications that feature the museum's data and images. The data and images are made available to the public under a CC0 license that facilitates reuse, even for commercial purposes. The API was produced in partnership with Cheshire Software Solutions.
Detailed documentation is available on GitHub.
Getting Started with the API
- Create an account
- Start here.
- Get an Api Token
- You'll need this key to run calls against the API. Once you log in with your account, click the Account link to view, maintain or regenerate your API key.
- Go to the sandbox to play sample requests against the api.
- Click here.
- Review the documentation
- Review the API documentation, and find a forum to discuss any issues with the API, on GitHub
We hope you're able to use data about the museum's collection for enjoyment, discovery, and learning.
Linked Open Data
The Walters Art Museum is a founding member of the American Art Collaborative (AAC), working to create a critical mass of Linked Open Data (LOD) around the subject of the visual arts in America.
Using the AAC Data
The URI construction for SPARQL queries is data.americanartcollaborative.org/sparql. We invite developers to make use of this data in their applications and share their results with us.
Connect to the Walters' artist data using this URI schema data.americanartcollaborative.org/wam/constituent/[ID]
Example: http://data.americanartcollaborative.org/wam/constituent/4486
Connect to our artwork data using this URI schema: data.americanartcollaborative.org/wam/object/[ID]
Example: http://data.americanartcollaborative.org/wam/object/4617
Metadata and LOD from the AAC partners is freely available on GitHub
- github.com/american-art
- A complete set of data from the 14 participating institutions
- github.com/american-art/WAM
- Data from the Walters Art Museum
- View the Browse Application Prototype
- Explore objects and artists from across the 14 partner institutions, through one interface.
For questions or feedback on the Walters data, please contact Will Hays, whays@thewalters.org. For more information about AAC’s next steps, contact EleanorFink@earthlink.net