What is being searched?

How does the search work?

How will search results be displayed?

How do I type special characters?

What is being searched?
In this part of the Metropolitan's Web site you are invited to explore individual works of art, special exhibitions, overviews of artists' lives and work, and areas of the permanent collection through games, activities, and other online features. Use the search function to find specific topics that may be addressed in one of these features. You may also search the Collection Database for information about a specific artwork.

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How does the search work?
This search engine "crawls" the entire Explore & Learn area to find pages that contain the words you enter in the search box. For example, if you are interested in mummies, enter mummy or mumm* in the search box to find all of the pages in Explore & Learn on which mummies are discussed.

The search will not recognize partial word matches unless you use an asterisk at the end of the partial word. Typing impression in the search box will locate neither "Impressionism" nor "Impressionists," but impression* will find both. Asterisks do not work at the beginning of a word (*pressionism would not be an effective search term).

Use "and" and "or" to refine your search. If you want to learn about mummy decorations in particular, enter mummy and jewelry to find pages on that topic.

Unlike other Web searches with which you may be familiar, this search looks for exact phrase matches by default (as if the words had been typed inside quotation marks in a typical search). For example, if you perform the same search as above but enter mummy jewelry rather than mummy and jewelry, the search will return no results since those two words do not appear consecutively on any pages in the Explore & Learn area.

To find information related to a particular country or culture, enter its name as a noun or an adjective separated by "or." (China or Chinese or chin* will probably produce more results than China or Chinese alone). To find a topic related to a particular time period, enter the name or partial name of the period (such as Qing dynasty, Qing, or 17th century.) You may also enter a specific date or partial date truncated with an asterisk (192* will locate products and publications related to the 1920s, but remember that "twenties" is sometimes spelled out, so a more comprehensive search term would be 192* or twenties).

The search is case-insensitive; thus, typing Qu Ding, qu ding, or QU DING in the Artist/Maker field will produce the same result. Otherwise, the search is looking for perfect matches; in addition, diacritical marks (accents) need not be entered into the fields. Typing Durer in the Artist/Maker field will locate works by Albrecht Dürer. If you know the word you are entering has a special character and you would like to enter the keystrokes required to produce it, see below. Since there are different codes for capital and lowercase letters with the same kind of accent (such as ç and Ç), this aspect of the search is case-sensitive.

You may either type the word you are looking for without the diacritical mark, or you may use an asterisk to avoid having to type the special character: cloisonne or cloisonn* will locate "cloisonné" and Velazquez or Vel* will locate "Velázquez" (among all other names and words beginning with those letters). If an artist's first or last name does not contain an accent, consider searching by that name alone (Albrecht for Dürer, Manet for Édouard Manet).

To the extent that it is possible online, The Metropolitan Museum of Art retains diacritical marks on capital as well as lowercase letters. Names and terms transliterated from languages not based on the Latin alphabet—such as Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Russian—traditionally use a range of less common diacritical marks, such as the macron (a straight line over a letter). These characters, however, do not appear on the Museum's Web site. Substitute the closest corresponding Latin character.

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How will search results be displayed?
Search results are displayed in groups of twenty and are described by page title, URL address, and text excerpt. As this search engine will return all pages that contain the desired word string, use the text excerpt to distinguish between rich content and content pointers, such as tables of contents.

If your search returns no results, review the tips above, check your spelling, and note that the Explore & Learn section illuminates idiosyncratic areas of art history and only a small percentage of the Met's collection. Explore & Learn content is expanded on an ongoing basis, so visit regularly to find what you are looking for.

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How do I type special characters?
On a Macintosh, use the Key Caps utility to produce accented letters.

On a PC, there are simple keyboard commands, based on ASCII codes, for the most commonly used accented letters. To produce an é, for instance, hold down the Alt key on your keyboard while typing 0233 on the numeric keypad, usually at the far right of the keyboard. Make sure that "Num Lock" is selected on the numeric keypad; if "Num Lock" is off, the commands will not work. Note that there are different codes for capital and lowercase letters with the same accent.

Alt + 0224 =à
Alt + 0192 = À
Alt + 0225 = á
Alt + 0193 = Á
Alt + 0226 = â
Alt + 0194 = Â
Alt + 0227 = ã
Alt + 0195 = Ã
Alt + 0228 = ä
Alt + 0196 = Ä
Alt + 0229 = å
Alt + 0197 = Å
Alt + 0230 = æ
Alt + 0198 = Æ
Alt + 0231 = ç
Alt + 0199 = Ç
Alt + 0208 = Ð
Alt + 0232 = è
Alt + 0200 = È
Alt + 0233 = é
Alt + 0201 = É
Alt + 0234 = ê
Alt + 0202 = Ê
Alt + 0235 = ë
Alt + 0203 = Ë
Alt + 0236 = ì
Alt + 0204 = Ì
Alt + 0237 = í
Alt + 0205 = Í
Alt + 0238 = î
Alt + 0206 = Î
Alt + 0239 = ï
Alt + 0207 = Ï
Alt + 0241 = ñ
Alt + 0209 = Ñ
Alt + 0242 = ò
Alt + 0210 = Ò
Alt + 0243 = ó
Alt + 0211 = Ó
Alt + 0244 = ô
Alt + 0212 = Ô
Alt + 0245 = õ
Alt + 0213 = Õ
Alt + 0246 = ö
Alt + 0214 = Ö
Alt + 0248 = ø
Alt + 0216 = Ø
Alt + 0156 = œ
Alt + 0140 = Œ
Alt + 0154 = š
Alt + 0138 = Š
Alt + 0249 = ù
Alt + 0217 = Ù
Alt + 0250 = ú
Alt + 0218 = Ú
Alt + 0251 = û
Alt + 0219 = Û
Alt + 0252 = ü
Alt + 0220 = Ü
Alt + 0253 = ý
Alt + 0221 = Ý
Alt + 0255 = ÿ
Alt + 0159 = Ÿ