Manchester museums launch online collections search

Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester Museum and the Whitworth have partnered to launch a new online collections search.

Visitors now have the opportunity to browse more than 750,000 objects across the three venues, including thousands that aren't on display.

This new tool is a decade in the making and has been developed as part of the Manchester Museums and Galleries Partnership, which unites the venues as part of a collaboration between Manchester City Council and the University of Manchester.

Information available via the search goes beyond that which visitors would find on an interpretation panel, including details of past exhibitions, imagery, video and 3D models. The tool is also aimed at researchers looking to use collections to support their work and local and global communities building greater knowledge and understanding.

The search enables the creation of ‘living labels’ that can evolve over time, allowing community knowledge, personal stories, opinions and recollections to be included alongside the perspectives of curators and researchers.

The intention of including a diverse range of perspectives is to form a richer narrative around each object and enable equitable cataloguing that brings people together to explore what the collections mean to them.

Manchester Museum is currently working with African diaspora communities to better understand its African collections, create new knowledge, reassess provenance research, develop object biographies and make collaborative decisions on how these collections can best inspire future generations.

Try the search