It’s strange times we’re living in, and many of us are joining the working-from-home club or entering periods of social isolation. While our museum doors may be temporarily closed to the public, we’re fortunate enough that the wonders of the internet has made keeping everyone in touch easier than ever, and we’ll be using our social media channels to ensure that you’ll still have access to our amazing stories and objects from the comfort of your own home.

Even while the museum is open, only a tiny proportion of our approximately 750,000 objects can be on display at any one time so many of our treasures aren’t available to view. That’s why our curators are always working hard to make our collections accessible through other means, and we’ll be producing more online content than ever before over the next few weeks. Did you know that you can already explore thousands of our objects, and even browse the galleries themselves, from the comfort of your own device?

In July 2017, the galleries of The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery were captured by the Google StreetView Team. So you can stroll through the museum on your own private viewing – check it out on our website: www.pmag.org.uk/virtual-gallery-tour/

You can also browse image galleries of our Temporary Exhibitions from throughout the museum’s history – we’ll be continuing to add more over time, so be sure to check back often.

Our website also hosts our collections online. Thousands of our museum treasures can be viewed as part of our Online Collections, and we’ll be working hard to add more in the coming weeks. You can even add your own descriptive tags to help other users find things they may be interested in, or leave a comment for our curators. 

Another resource is Exploring the Potteries, which allows you to search resources from across Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire County Council by exploring local maps. Find out about pottery, maps and photographs from near where you live!

 Our Fine Art collection can be browsed through a partnership with ArtUK and ancient treasure held at The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery and other archaeological institutions can be browsed via the Portable Antiquities Scheme at https://finds.org.uk/. Our Peak District archaeology collections can also be browsed at Wonders of the Peak, hosted by Derbyshire County Council.   

View our collection of watercolour paintings collated by The Watercolour World, a UK-based charity working with public and private collections from around the world to create a free online database of documentary watercolours painted before 1900. https://www.watercolourworld.org/collection/potteries-museum-art-gallery

And of course, you can keep up to date with the work we’re doing behind the scenes and current projects, such as the restoration of the City’s Spitfire, on our museum blog.

So be sure to follow our Facebook and Twitter feeds to keep up to date with our work as we strive to make more and more of our collections accessible online.