Visual Arts Collection Query Agent

Ask Questions Naturally

The query agent provides a natural language interface to explore the visual arts collection. Instead of navigating menus or learning a specialized query language, you can simply ask questions in plain English. Ask about paintings by location, explore techniques and materials, discover connections between works, or browse by medium. The agent understands art terminology and can provide context—when you ask about a technique, it draws from both the collection's own definitions and broader art historical knowledge.

Connected Results

Results are presented conversationally with clickable links back to the artworks, tags, and concepts in the collection. When you ask about painting notes or related works, the agent not only summarizes the content but also provides direct links so you can explore further. The system handles everything from simple lookups to more sophisticated queries that traverse relationships in the data, such as finding works connected through shared thematic tags or discovering what criticism exists for a particular piece.

How It Works

Behind the scenes, the agent is powered by Claude, Anthropic's AI assistant, which translates your questions into precise database queries against the collection's structured knowledge graph. This semantic web approach means the collection data is richly interconnected—artworks link to techniques, materials, locations, and interpretive notes—and the agent can navigate these connections to surface relevant information. The combination of natural language understanding with structured data enables a conversational exploration experience that would be difficult to achieve with traditional search interfaces.

Query List

• are there any paintings that aren't watercolors
• artworks from Antarctica
• artworks from Korea
• artworks with invalid or missing dates
• artworks with multiple types
• artworks with notes but no other tags
• artworks with the most tags
• artworks without dates
• artworks without images
• artworks without location
• based on tags, what paintings use cadmium yellow pigment
• cold press paintings
• compare cold press vs hot press
• find works that share tags with Seoul
• how many egg tempera paintings
• how many paintings
• how many paintings of type EggTempera
• list all painting types with counts
• newest painting
• oil paintings
• oldest painting in the collection
• paintings from 2030
• paintings from the 1980s
• paintings from the last 3 years
• show me all notes
• show me artworks from Korea
• show me notes for Circular Courtyard
• show me sculptures
• show me the URI for "Seoul"
• tags that aren't used by any artwork
• tell me about work with id work:86754ffe-2ca6-477a-80b9-819c1c655011
• tell me about work:86754ffe-2ca6-477a-80b9-819c1c655011
• what concepts have definitions vs what concepts lack definitions
• what is cold-pressed paper
• what is gesso
• what is the media for "Cup Vase Plate and Shawl"
• what paintings use cadmium green pigment
• what paper finishes are used
• what papers are used in the collection
• what papers have no artworks using them
• what tags use prefLabel instead of label
• what types of paintings are there

Future Capabilities

At this time the agent can only handle text-based analyses since the LLM is not vision capable. In the future, the intention is for the agent to use vision-capable LLMs. At that time the following queries should be supported:

• Compare the artwork "Tomato" found in the database to the work "Gourds" by John Singer Sargent
• What works in the database have significant similarities in technique to works by John Singer Sargent?
• What works in the database have significant similarities in technique to works by Winslow Homer?
• How would you categorize each of the watercolors in the database? Create the categories to use with definitions.