Hello All! Greg here, Cowan Pottery Museum Curator and Local History Librarian. During this time many museums and cultural institutions have expanded their already substantial online presence to give patrons remote access to their resources. Each week we will be highlighting a different institution and all of the free resources they offer. Whether you are looking for new educational opportunities, entertainment, inspiration for your own creative practice, or research resources for remote academic resources.

The first institution we will be highlighting is a local one:

The Cleveland Museum of Art.

---

The Cleveland Museum of Art will be be coming to RRPL with the new speaker series:

---

Exploring the Collections

Celebrating over a hundred years (founded in 1916) this museum already offered many online and remote resources. Recently they have made it very easy to find all they offer by creating their Home Is Where the Art Is resource page.

On this page you will find links to search and explore their vast collections online. You can choose different stylistic periods, limit results by medium, artists, and culture. Some objects have video that allow for a more dynamic appreciation of sculptural pieces and information on the history of the piece.

Learn about their 30,000 public domain artworks and how they are being used in commercial and non-commercial ways. This resource also has 3D models that can be downloaded via Sketchfab.

Looking for some direction? You can hear from their staff with their Blog and new Video Series. A great resource when you are looking where to start.

---

Parents and Educators

Additional they offer some amazing resource for learners at any age with their:

And

Patrons can search these resources by grade level and topics to create engaging lessons about the history of art as well as connecting them to STEM.

---

Research

The Museum’s library, Ingalls Library, has some amazing remote resources for researchers. I have personally used these resources when researching the artists of the Cowan Pottery Studio. Specifically their May Show Archive has been especially valuable to my research of Cowan Artists’ careers. When researching my talk for last year’s Cowan Pottery Symposium I was able to use their Entry Card Database to find the handwritten entry cards from artists like R. Guy Cowan, Edris Eckhardt, Thelma Frazier-Winters, and many more!

To get familiar with these resources a great place to start is their Digital Collections. This page highlights their digitized resources and allows users to become comfortable with the interface.

The Editorial Photography collection gives you the opportunity to see exhibition’s from the museum’s past. You get the chance to see previous exhibits as well as how the museum’s appearance has changed over the years.