LibGuides: ANTH 348: Museum and Material Culture Research: Databases

Online Museum Collections

Many museums offer online exhibits and databases about different textiles from various regions around the world. You can visit their websites to view images, annotations, and other information that can help jumpstart your research. Some links contains instructions for accessing the information you might need, so be sure to click the More link to view additional details.

If you have a recommendation for a museum database that's not listed here, email Monique Clark (mclark24@luc.edu).

Anthropology Collection Search | Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (US)
This is a curated database of anthropological items available through the National Museum of Natural History. The collection consists of over 3 million items in archaeology, ethnology, and human skeletal biology. Additionally, the museum contains the National Anthropological Archives which contains historical materials related to the study of anthropology dating back over 150 years.

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To find examples of African textiles:
1. Go to Search by Field.
2. Select the Advanced button.
3. Under Continent/Region, select Africa.
4. Under Material Type, select Fibers.
5. Near the bottom of the page, check the box next to Only Records with Images.
Art and Life in Africa | Stanley Museum of Art.
This is an archival version of a website that was hosted by the University of Iowa.
Art Institute of Chicago Collections
Search for textiles and related objects at the Art Institute of Chicago. Use the filters underneath the search box to search by Artwork Type and Places.

ARTstor
Digitized images of fine art from around the world. All images can be freely used for educational and noncommercial scholarly purposes.

Many museums, such as the University of British Columbia's Museum of Anthropology, have uploaded digital images of their textiles collection to ARTstor so this would be a good place to search for images similar to your textile or object.

British Museum Collection
The British Museum Collection online allows access to almost four and a half million objects in more than two million records.
Collections Search Center | Smithsonian Institute (US)
Search over 18.1 million records of museum objects, archives and library materials including more than 8.1 million online images, audio & videos and blog posts.

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Enter keywords related to your item in the search box. Under Search Options, check Only Return Results with Online Media to get instant access to images and other media.
Cornell Fashion and Textile Collection
The Cornell Fashion + Textile Collection (CF+TC) includes more than 10,000 items of apparel, accessories, and flat textiles dating from the eighteenth century to present, including substantial collections of functional clothing, technical textiles, and ethnographic costume.
Europeana
Explore over 51 million artworks, artefacts, books, videos and sounds from across Europe. Use the search box to find materials about textiles.
Fashion HistoryTimeline
The Fashion History Timeline is an open-access source for fashion history knowledge, featuring objects and artworks from over a hundred museums and libraries that span the globe.
Field Museum Collection
A collection of over 250,000 items curated by the Field Museum in Chicago.
Fowler Museum (UCLA)
The Fowler’s collections comprise more than 120,000 art and ethnographic and 600,000 archaeological objects representing ancient, traditional, and contemporary cultures of Africa, Native and Latin America, and Asia and the Pacific.
General African Art Videos | Christopher Roy
Videos of contemporary art and life in West Africa, including Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger, and Nigeria.
George Washington University Textile Museum
GW is home to nearly 31,000 works of art and artifacts, including extensive textile collections. More than 21,000 works are currently available online, and new records are added weekly.
Hearst Museum Online Textile Exhibit
Guide for Cloth that Stretches: Weaving Community Across Time and Space, an exhibition displayed at the Hearst Anthropology Museum.
Hearst Museum Portal
Use the filters on the left to search by object type, collection place, culture or time period, and more.
International Textile Collection | University of Leeds (UK)
The International Textile Collection (ITC) is made up of several distinct collections of world textiles, along with related objects, documents and manuscripts. It dates from Ancient Egyptian to the present day, with the greater part covering the 19th and early 20th centuries.

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Highlights of the collection include:

• European Fragments
• Egyptian Textiles
• Textiles of the Indian Subcontinent
• Indonesian Textiles
• Japanese Collection
• Kashmir Shawl Collection
• the Louisa Pesel Collection and Archive: collected (Mediterranean) and created textiles
• Qing Dynasty Textiles
• Sample and Pattern Books
• West African Textiles. (emphasis mine)

Click View Full Search Page to access options to refine your search. Searching under Place will allow you to find fabrics classified by (political) place names (e.g. Democratic Republic of the Congo).
Kent Statue University Museum
he collection goes beyond clothing and textiles to also include American glass, furniture, paintings and other decorative arts. The Museum also houses a library of books and historic periodicals dedicated to fashion and decorative arts.

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Go to the Advanced Search and search for Textiles under Description/Scope & Content.
Kyoto Costume Institute
The KCI Digital Archives on the KCI website presents image and text information for the objects in the collection, arranged in chronological order.
Mingei International Museum
Mingei International Museum collects, conserves and exhibits arts of daily use—from traditional cultures to contemporary designers.

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Use the Advanced Search to search for textiles under Object Type.
The Museum of International Folk Art
The museum holds the largest collection of international folk art in the world, numbering more than 160,000 objects from more than 100 countries. The core collection of 2,500 objects was donated by museum founder Florence Dibell Bartlett.

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Use the Advanced Search to search for textiles under the Classifications box.
Royal Ontario Museum
The Royal Ontario Museum is home to a world-class collection of 18 million artworks, cultural objects, and natural history specimens, featured in 40 gallery and exhibition spaces.

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Use the Advanced Search to search for Textiles under Classifications.
Search the Collection | Metropolitan Museum of Art (US)
View the Met's collection of artworks online, including textiles and related materials.

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To search the Met's database
1. Under Filter By, select the specific object type/materials, and geographic location.
2. Select Artworks with Image to limit results to descriptions with accompanying pictures.
Source Database | Fashion History Timeline
The Source Database contains a list of books and other publications about the history of clothing across various places and times. You can use the library's catalog to verify whether we have access to these sources.
Textile Museum of Canada
This museum focuses solely on textile arts. Use the filters to search for African textiles.
Textile Research Center Collection (The Netherlands)
The collection of the Textile Research Centre, Leiden, contains over 47,000 textiles, garments and accessories such as headgear, footwear, jewellery and walking sticks. It also includes technical items such as hand spinning and weaving equipment. The objects derive from all over world and date from some seven thousand years ago to the present day. The collection was started in 1997 and since then has grown rapidly.

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Use the search box to enter keywords related to your item. Narrow your results using the filters under Category and/or Gender.
Textiles | Iowa Digital Library
This links to search results containing textile materials. The museum’s textile collection encompasses both functional and fine art objects ranging from ancient Andean textiles to Dada assemblages by Lil Picard. Other highlights include twentieth-century, handwoven and dyed cloth from West Africa, finely beaded objects from Native North America, hats from Africa and Peru, Turkish flatweaves, and Gee’s Bend–style quilts.
V&A Museum Textiles Collection
The V&A holds the national collection of textiles and fashion, which includes more than 75,000 individual objects or sets of objects that span a period of more than 5,000 years, from Predynastic Egypt to the present day.
Zotero Sources | Fashion History Timeline
This is a crowdsourced list of fashion history and research hosted by the Fashion Institute of New York.
[ARCHIVED SITE] Afrocentric Fashions and Textiles Links | Costumer's Manifesto
The Costumer's Manifesto was a website that provided extensive resources on Western and Global fashion history. The site is now archived, so some of the links may not be functional. Of interest on this site are the links to traditional African clothing, textiles, and beadwork.

Loyola Anthropology Databases

Consult the databases below for highly-relevant subject-specific information about anthropology and related topics.

Anthropology Online
Full-text collection of ethnographies, field notes, seminal texts, memoirs, and contemporary studies, covering human behavior the world over.
Anthropology Plus
Indexes including international coverage of the fields of anthropology and archaeology, and related interdisciplinary research. Updated monthly. Coverage: 1899s - present.

Limited to 4 simultaneous users.
AnthroSource
Comprehensive collection of journals, newsletters, and bulletins, including the complete archival holdings from the American Anthropological Association (AAA).
Ethnographic Video Online
Ethnographic films, documentaries, select feature films, and previously unpublished fieldwork for the study of human culture, behavior and society around the world. Topics include language, food and cooking, economic systems, caste systems, religion, music and the arts, sex, gender, and family.
GenderWatch
Index of some-full text articles and abstracts related to gender studies, including women's studies, feminism, masculine studies, masculinity studies, transgender studies, LGBTQ, LGBTQA, and sexuality.
eHRAF World Cultures
Index of cross-cultural and ethnographic descriptive information on all aspects of cultural and social life. Collection is organized by cultures and ethnic groups.
Indigenous Peoples: North America Archive
Covers the historical experiences, cultural traditions and innovations, and political status of Indigenous Peoples in the United States and Canada. The archive includes monograph, manuscript, newspaper, periodical and photograph collections. Sources include the National Archives and the Federal Bureau of Investigation Library, the Alaska Indian Language Collection of Gonzaga University, and the W.S. Prettyman photograph collection of Wichita State University.
Oxford Bibliographies Online: Anthropology
Bibliographies covering anthropology.
Scopus
Index of scientific journals, books and conference proceedings focused on the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and arts and humanities.

Research & Education Librarian

Monique Clark

Contact:

Cudahy Library, Rm 108
773.508.2677

Subjects:

African Studies and the African Diaspora, Anthropology, Criminal Justice &
Criminology, Pastoral Studies, Theology & Religion

Email Me

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ANTH 348: Museum and Material Culture Research