Online catalogues
When Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel presented its first on-line inventory catalogue in 2004, featuring its architectural drawings from the 17th to the 20th centuries, it broke new ground and set an example at the same time. Further catalogues and databases were to follow, providing an overview of and insight into the various MHK collections.
Online databases
Our on-line databases are not so much academic catalogues but rather tools for researching objects. They provide access to parts of our collections that so far have not been fully reviewed and researched. The databases are continually complemented and updated. Note that the quality of the data as well as the quality and resolution of the published photographs can vary greatly.
Academic inventory catalogues
Our academic inventory catalogues present stocks that have already been thoroughly researched and documented. The stocks are rendered accessible by a well-structured catalogue but searches can be specified by search function as well. Most objects are exhaustively described and illustrated with scalable, occasionally high-resolution images.
- Inventory catalogue of 17th-20th-century architectural drawings
- Inventory catalogue of Italian hand drawings in the Print Room
- Inventory catalogue of 19th-century paintings
- Classical stone sculpture and modern-era copies at Kassel
- Catalogue of ancient coins with the reverse depicting the Hercules Farnese in the Collection of Antiquities
- Catalogue of post-ancient cameos in the Applied Arts collection
- Catalogue of Ottoman weaponry
- Catalogue of ancient Peruvian ceramics
Provenance research
Provenance research is taking on an ever greater significance in the art world. In the context of a project promoted by Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste, we are currently looking into purchases made by the state collections between 1933 and 1945 to identify paintings possibly looted by the Nazis, and finding descendants entitled to inherit where appropriate. In cases of this nature MHK would adopt an active restitution policy. Research results will be published in our analogue and digital networks.
A list of paintings of as yet unidentified provenance is here:
Contact: provenienzforschung[at]museum-kassel.de