A Billion Works of Art

A Billion Works of Art

All works of art ever made that survive can now, in theory, be gathered together digitally to be presented in a single searchable . These are notes and thoughts on how this might come about, tracking of how close this is to existing, and what the advantages and disadvantages come with this.

You likely have some questions on how accurate any of these is, how I’m defining art and why I don’t count search engines as aggregators.

Art League Table

Art AggregatorArtworks
Europeana60 Million + (as of 9 Dec 2025)
Worldcat343 Million + (guestimate, as of 9 Dec 2025)
Culture Search Japan31,939,853 (as of 9 Dec 2025)
Museum Data Service
View the full league table

Present Notes

Notes on the developments leading to a future where all works of art are gathered together in one site/app/experience for browsing.

  • Deduplicating artworks ?
    by admin8939
    Are two copies of a book the same artwork or two artworks ?
  • Are we talking about the same person ?
    by admin8939
    There are a lot of different people who have made the billion artworks we now can see, and all their artworks are held around the world by many different institutions. How do we know if the artist in one collection is the same artist as in another collection ?

Future Notes

Scenarios from the future on what this collection of all artworks may enable, and sometimes the downsides it might bring. I inconsistently involve AI in some situations and not others. In all cases I am picturing a happy sunny future where this is the only problem to consider.