The history-hungry and antiques aficionados can now browse online the collections of The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. The collections database with images, descriptions and object histories is now available through eMuseum on Colonial Williamsburg’s Web site.

“The eMuseum application is our latest effort to make the collections broadly accessible to scholars, historians, collectors and the general public,” said Ronald L. Hurst, Colonial Williamsburg’s Carlisle H. Humelsine Chief Curator and vice president for collections, conservation and museums. “In addition to the objects currently on view in the foundation’s museums and historic buildings, eMuseum makes available those portions of our collections that are too fragile or light-sensitive for frequent exhibition.”

Colonial Williamsburg’s eMuseum incorporates standard database search techniques to access records for objects in the collections. Users can browse the collections by object maker, material, date or type, among other categories. More than 3,200 objects are available now with more being added monthly until all objects in the collections are accessible through eMuseum.

The Colonial Williamsburg collections encompass more than 60,000 examples of fine, decorative, mechanical, and folk art. Included are American, British and Continental ceramics, glass, furniture, textiles, costumes, tools, firearms, numismatics, metals, prints, maps, paintings and drawings from the late 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, as well as outstanding examples of 18th-, 19th- and 20th-century American folk art. Many of these objects are used to furnish the buildings in Colonial Williamsburg's Historic Area — where they provide guests with a better understanding of life in early Virginia — while others are shown in innovative changing exhibitions at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum and the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum.

Colonial Williamsburg’s eMuseum — http://emuseum.history.org/code/emuseum.asp— may be accessed by going to the foundation’s main Web site (www.history.org), choosing Museums from the menu bar, and clicking on eMuseum.

Established in 1926, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation is the not-for-profit educational institution that preserves and operates the restored 18th-century Revolutionary capital of Virginia as a town-sized living history museum, telling the inspirational stories of our nation’s founding men and women.

Williamsburg is located in Virginia’s Tidewater region, 20 minutes from Newport News, within an hour’s drive of Richmond and Norfolk, and 150 miles south of Washington, D.C., off Interstate 64. For more information about Colonial Williamsburg, call 1-800-HISTORY or visit Colonial Williamsburg’s Web site at www.history.org.

Media Contact:
Jim Bradley