I suspect that The Thinker's success will lead to other museums sharing their artworks with the rest of the world via the Internet. With 60,000 drawings, prints, engravings, watercolors, and photo-graphs, The Thinker represents the entirety of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, the prints and drawings department of the Fine Arts Museums. The total database of The Thinker comprises the largest group of artwork available on a single site and is the first step toward the institution's goal of displaying its entire collection online and becoming more of a resource and less of a repository. The California Palace of the Legion of Honor and the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum collections are enormous. We're using the Internet to give everyone full access, to let them discover artwork they might not otherwise see.
Users can navigate through the collection database using their personal interests as their guide.
Along with practical information, the site includes exhibition schedules, guided tours, collection summaries, complete teachers' guides to American and African art, and hundreds of student poems about objects from the collections. Bringing Art To People Robert Futernick, chairman of the Fine Arts Museums' conservation departments, sees a link between the history of printmaking and the increased access made possible by the Internet. Historically, because works on paper were available in editions, they made exposure to fine art possible to people beyond the upper echelon of society. The museums' Web site expands on that tradition. Parker also expects that extended distribution and wider exposure will stimulate interest in seeking out the original artwork, which will increase attendance at the museums.