Collections
Please click on the links below or on the Navigation Bar to the left, to discover more about the collections of the Oriental Museum. Scroll down for links to Oriental Museum objects featured on the web.
More information on how the museum's collections are used for teaching and research is available within the researchers section of the website.
Artworld
Since 2000 the Oriental Museum has contributed to the Artworld project, a collaboration between Durham University and University of East Anglia designed to enhance the teaching of world art studies. The project website includes a database of more than 300 key objects from the collections of the Oriental Museum.
This resource is currently being redeveloped, for information see the Artworld website. While the development project is underway the information on the objects included is still available through vads, the online resource for visual arts.
A History of the World
A unique partnership between the British Museum, the BBC and museums across the UK
A History of the World celebrates the things that humans have made, from flint tools to the mobile phone.
The website features a number of objects from the Oriental Museum collections including the Ancient Egyptian servant girl statuette. The servant girl was one of 10 items selected by BBC Wear for the launch of the website in January 2010. Since then museums and individuals from across the UK have been invited to add objects to the site that have a story to tell. Find out more about A History of the World here.
BBC Your Paintings
Durham University's entire oil collection of oil paintings is now available online for the first time via the new BBC website Your Paintings at www.bbc.uk/yourpaintings
Your Paintings is a partnership between the BBC and the Public Catalogue Foundation. It aims to put every oil painting in the UK's public collections online. It is a unique learning resource and, so far, features 145,000 paintings from over 1,700 UK collections including the national collections, the Royal Academy and the National Trust.
Paintings from the Oriental Museum, Durham Castle Museum and Durham University's colleges can all be viewed by clicking on 'Durham University' under galleries and collections/England/County Durham.
Virtual Collection of Masterpieces
The Virtual Collection of Masterpieces (VCM) is about sharing. Objects that are physically far apart and spread in museum collections all over the Eurasian continent are brought together in the virtual world. Besides the objects database, the VCM also features exhibitions and research projects. Curators of participating museums provide the texts. Its leading partners are the National Museum of Korea and the Museum Volkenkunde (National Museum of Ethnology) of the Netherlands. Altogether, 57 Asian and 43 European museums have contributed approximately 2000 Asian masterpieces.
The Oriental Museum is part of this network and you can see objects from the museum's collection on the VCM by following this link.
