Fresh ideas from museums around the globe in your inbox each week
October 02 2025
By Manuel Charr
When the Rijksmuseum launched Rijksstudio back in 2012, it made headlines for offering the world high-resolution images of masterpieces—completely free to download, remix, and even use commercially. Ten years later, the museum has taken an even more ambitious leap.
“We wanted to go beyond just zooming in on the details,” says Peter Gorgels, Digital Products Manager at the Rijksmuseum. “Our ambition now is to make all our collection information, data, and stories available to everyone in the world—and to encourage users to discover and tell their own stories.”
The result is the “Infinite Rijksmuseum”, a new online platform launched in late 2024. Powered by Linked Data and supported by AI, it’s an immersive environment where visitors can explore centuries of Dutch art in ways that are endlessly expandable.
From Zooming In to Zooming Out
The earlier Rijks Studio focused on detail—zooming in so close to Rembrandt’s brushstrokes that you could almost feel the texture. The new platform takes the opposite approach.
“The ambition this time is to zoom out—again and again, infinitely,” Gorgels explains. “You can start with a single artwork, then expand to an artist, then to a theme like moonlight or skating, and from there to broader cultural stories.”
Instead of silos, the museum’s vast holdings—1 million artworks, 450,000 books, 800 metres of archives, terabytes of research—are now unified into a single integration layer. This allows users to move seamlessly across formats and narratives.
Design Challenges: Beauty Meets Linked Data
One of the greatest challenges was making Linked Data, with all its complexity, feel intuitive to a general audience. “Typical Linked Data interfaces are powerful, but they’re intimidating,” Gorgels says. “They look more like search systems for data than a beautiful showcase for art. People are more familiar with the visual style of Pinterest or Airbnb.”
The team’s solution? Automatically generated “node pages” that bring together everything on a single topic: artworks, historical developments, related artists, even visitor-created stories. “We wanted each page to feel visually immersive and inspiring,” Gorgels notes. “We combined that with a omnipresent floating search and recommendation tool that makes it possible to jump from anywhere anytime to a theme or artwork that inspires you.”
Still, balancing the needs of scholars and casual browsers wasn’t easy. “Our goal was one interface for everyone,” he admits. “That’s ambitious, maybe even a little reckless.”
The Role of AI: Inspiration, Not Authority
AI is at the heart of the experiment, but the museum took a cautious approach. The Art Explorer tool invites users to type in any question—serious or whimsical—and receive unexpected suggestions from the collection. To
But, as Gorgels points out, “AI-generated content wasn’t reliable enough to integrate directly into our core experience. So we positioned Art Explorer as an inspiration tool, separate from the main search. The reliable results come from Linked Data; the AI is there to spark ideas.”
It’s a design philosophy that blends excitement with responsibility. “The Rijksmuseum has to be a guardian of authentic imagery,” Gorgels adds, especially at a time when the boundaries between real and fake images are blurring.
Tell Your Own Story: The Creative Toolkit
The Infinite Rijksmuseum isn’t just about exploring—it’s also about creating. Recognizing that visitors have their own stories to tell, the platform offers tools designed to transform passive viewing into active curating.
One feature allows users to build their own Collections in a modern way, which automatically generates an interactive video clip featuring their selected artworks. For those who want to get up close and personal, the Comparator lets you place two artworks side-by-side, making it easy to zoom in on even the smallest details.
The most personal experience, however, may be the My Gallery of Honour tool. Inspired by the museum’s most iconic room, this virtual space allows you to curate your own version of the Gallery of Honour, telling your personal story within this legendary setting.
Building the Engine: Under the Hood
The technical backbone came from a partnership with design agency Fabrique and digital product studio Q42. “We wanted to return control of the data back to the museum,” says Erwin Verbruggen, Technical Lead at Q42.
The system combines Elasticsearch for speed, Neo4J graph technology for complex relationships, and a content management system for editorial control. “It’s not a simple landscape,” Verbruggen admits. “But it means users can search blazingly fast, while also being offered serendipitous connections they didn’t expect.”
The challenge was making a graph built for speed handle the enormous density of museum data. “Museum collections aren’t sparse networks,” Verbruggen explains. “They’re thick with connections. We had to push graph technology to its limits.”
Success—and Criticism
The launch was celebrated in the Rijksmuseum’s iconic Gallery of Honour, with director Taco Dibbits in conversation with Dutch AI specialist Alexander Klöpping. Awards soon followed, including two Webbys for Best User Interface. Average time spent on the site jumped to over four minutes—a significant boost from the old platform.
But the project hasn’t been without its critics. Some users found the interface overwhelming. “We had people say things like, ‘You ruined my life, I can’t bear any more sadness,’” Gorgels recalls. “That sounds dramatic, but it shows how emotionally invested people were.”
Others struggled with too much information on screen, confusing recommendations, and a search bar that felt omnipresent. “The feedback was clear,” Verbruggen says. “People still expect text-based search to just work. We need to refine that, simplify the browsing, and dial back the flood of data.”
What’s Next
Despite the bumps, both Gorgels and Verbruggen see the Infinite Rijksmuseum as a foundation for the future. “We’ve built a robust infrastructure we can grow on for years,” says Gorgels. Upcoming plans include integrating more archival material, restoration research, and user-generated content, along with experiments in AI-powered visual search.
Verbruggen agrees: “Data is never complete, and user needs keep evolving. But with this framework, the Rijksmuseum can keep iterating, improving, and inspiring.”
The question that remains is whether the Infinite Rijksmuseum truly embodies the principle the team set out to follow: Most Advanced Yet Acceptable. “Maybe we went too far in some areas,” Gorgels reflects. “But isn’t that what innovation is about? You push, you stumble, and then you learn.”
–
Peter Gorgels from Rijksmuseum and Erwin Verbruggen from Q42 spoke at the Digital Collections Summit 2025.
About the author – Manuel Charr
Manuel Charr is a journalist working in the arts and cultural sectors. With a background in marketing, Manuel is drawn to arts organizations which are prepared to try inventive ways to reach new audiences.
