Last discussed in the March 30, 2012, Scout Report, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) has spent the last six years continuing to make available digital versions of many thousands of artifacts from its collections. This bounty can be searched or browsed using categories based on the MFAH's collecting areas, such as Latin American art, modern art, or photography. For those interested in American painting and decorative arts, possibly the best way to start is to select the Bayou Bend Collection - art collected by Ima Hogg (1882-1975) and housed in her former home, Bayou Bend, which is now part of the museum. Miss Ima's collection dates from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries and includes paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts - furniture, ceramics, glass, metals, and textiles. Digital versions of almost 4,000 items from the Bayou Bend Collection can be viewed online. Early American painters represented in the Bayou Bend Collection include paintings by Charles Willson Peale, Rembrandt Peale, and John Singleton Copley. There are over 50 patchwork quilts and hundreds of jars, pitchers, silverware, and other household items.
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