Museum Folkwang has presented selected works from its collections online since 2010. Since 2018 the Museum has gone to great lengths to make its work more transparent, to present items from the collection, and thus make them open to the public, all in an effort to improve access to art and make it more easily available to a larger audience.

This is why with immediate effect all the holdings currently listed in the collection database will be available for users of our website in the updated ›Collection Online‹.

This database contains some 80,000 data sets taken from the following collections:

Painting, Sculpture, Media Art
Department of Photography
Department of Prints and Drawings
Archaeology, Global Art, Applied Arts German Poster Museum

and the Stiftung für das Museum Folkwang, which makes its holdings available to Museum Folkwang on permanent loan.

At present the quality and completeness of the records on the items from the individual collections and the state of the data varies. However, work is ongoing on improving the records in particular for the Department of Photography and the German Poster Museum (some 350,000 objects).

Despite the obvious gaps still to be filled and the need for additional research we made a conscious decision to nonetheless publish the data as it now stands with a view to allowing users to experience both the diversity of our collections and the common ground shared by the individual areas.

The Collection Online provides various ways of finding out more about the holdings of Museum Folkwang:

Works
It is possible to access the Collection Online via the module ›Works‹.

Here you can either use the ›full text search‹ function or define what results are displayed by means of various filters: Either scour the data using ›with image‹ to find works currently ›on view‹ or ›all works‹ with and without an image.

For more detailed research you can use the ›Extended search‹ option. You can also consult the ›Help for Searching‹ function for further assistance.

The default setting is a thumbnail gallery, but you can also have the works displayed as a list- or detailed view.

If you select the detailed view you also have the option to mark works for a ›Portfolio‹. This allows you to create temporary work groups.

Artists
In the ›Artists‹ module you can either use the ›full text search‹ or view and use a comprehensive ›alphabetical list‹ of those artists already listed in the Collection database. Currently, the artist database encompassing all the holdings has only 10,000 entries (status 2019).

Albums
The ›Albums‹ module presents the Museum Folkwang collections by topic. Explore the focuses of the individual collection areas and artistic media or discover links between the various collections in the ›Thematic groups‹ section.
In addition, accompanying the presentation of the Collection in Museum Folkwang since June 2019 there are contemporary thematic groups devoted to ›New Worlds‹ and consequently the rediscovery of the Collection.

As the Collection Online is linked to the Museum Folkwang collection database and gets updated regularly the content is constantly changing and being improved. We are happy to accept corrections to and information on the published content and will endeavour to process such information accordingly.

Illustrations / Information on Copyright
Museum Folkwang has made every effort to ascertain the copyright holders of the published image material. Unfortunately, despite extensive research we have not always succeeded in clearly identifying all copyright and publication rights. Should our omissions affect you as copyright holder please contact Museum Folkwang.

We kindly ask you to understand that given the current legal situation regarding copyright and the fact that image material is not always available at present the majority of works can only be published without pictures. Naturally, here too we intend to expand the material available over the course of time.