The Netherlands Institute for Art History
or RKD (Dutch: RKD-Nederlands Instituut voor
Kunstgeschiedenis) is located in The Hague
and is home to the largest art history center
in the world.
The center specializes in documentation, archives,
and books on Western art from the late Middle
Ages until modern times.
All of this is open to the public, and much
of it has been digitized and is available
on their website.
The main goal of the bureau is to collect,
categorize, and make art research available,
most notably in the field of Dutch Masters.
Via the available databases, the visitor can
gain insight into archival evidence on the
lives of many artists of past centuries.
The library owns approximately 450,000 titles,
of which ca. 150,000 are auction catalogs.
There are ca. 3,000 magazines, of which 600
are currently running subscriptions.
Though most of the text is in Dutch, the standard
record format includes a link to library entries
and images of known works, which include English
as well as Dutch titles.
The RKD also manages the Dutch version of
the Art and Architecture Thesaurus, a thesaurus
of terms for management of information on
art and architecture.
The original version is an initiative of the
Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California.
== History ==
The collection was started through bequests
by Frits Lugt, art historian and owner of
a massive collection of drawings and prints,
and Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863–1930),
a collector, art historian and museum curator.
Their bequest formed the basis for both the
art collection and the library, which is now
mostly housed in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek
(National Library).
== Open access website ==
Though not all of the library's holdings have
been digitised, much of its metadata is accessible
online.
The website itself is available in both a
Dutch and an English user interface.
=== Online artist pages ===
In the artist database RKDartists, each artist
is assigned a record number.
To reference an artist page directly, use
the code listed at the bottom of the record,
usually of the form: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/
followed by the artist's record number.
For example, the artist record number for
Salvador Dalí is 19752, so his RKD artist
page can be referenced.
=== Online artworks pages ===
In the images database RKDimages, each artwork
is assigned a record number.
To reference an artwork page directly, use
the code listed at the bottom of the record,
usually of the form: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/images/
followed by the artwork's record number.
For example, the artwork record number for
The Night Watch is 3063, so its RKD artwork
page can be referenced.
=== Online thesaurus of art terms ===
The Art and Architecture Thesaurus also assigns
a record for each term, but these can not
be referenced online by record number.
Rather, they are used in the databases and
the databases can be searched for terms.
For example, the painting called "The Night
Watch" is a militia painting, and all records
fitting this keyword (Dutch: algemene trefwoord)
can be seen by selecting this from the image
screen.The thesaurus is a set of general terms,
but the RKD also contains a database for an
alternate form of describing artworks, that
today is mostly filled with biblical references.
This is the iconclass database.
To see all images that depict Miriam's dance,
the associated iconclass code 71E1232 can
be used as a special search term.
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website
Direct link to the databases (artists, images,
literature)
The Dutch version of the Art and Architecture
Thesaurus
