Baltimore – The Walters Art Museum

The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore is one of the few museums around the world which has placed into the public domain photos of nearly every major item in their collection. This seems to me a wonderful gesture which is in keeping with the aim of a museum, which is to promote and share knowledge.

And, as if that wasn’t enough, they’ve gone further and made a real effort to detail the provenance of items in their collection. This isn’t a unique policy, but it should be much more common in my view. So, visitors to the museum can discover not just more about a particular item, but also how it came to be in the collection of a Baltimore institution.

I visited the museum in the summer of 2015 and the museum was so clearly laid out, with friendly staff, that I remember much of my visit. There is also no admission charge, a decision made in 2006, to try and enable as many people to visit as possible. Out of all the museums and galleries that I’ve visited, this remains one of my favourites.