The Tenth Muse

The Tenth Muse (10M) allows you to search over 100,000 artworks across 17 insitutions and museums — by emotion, atmosphere, medium, or era. Every piece links back to its source.

I built it because the references that used to shape creative work are buried. The paintings, the craft, the ideas that held up across centuries — gone. Replaced by feeds recycling yesterday's look. Entire industries stuck in a sea of sameness.

The world's greatest art sits scattered across museum websites, gated behind interfaces built for scholars, not makers. No platform lets you search by feeling. That's how designers like me actually think. So, I built one.

The name comes from Greek mythology. Nine Muses inspired poets, painters, and philosophers for centuries. The Tenth Muse is what happens when your own taste meets the canon — and that collision shapes what you create. In this world of AI, you must be the tenth muse.

Timeless art teaches you to see. Not what's trending. What lasts. The Tenth Muse brings that back within reach.

What you allow into your life shapes what you make.

Fight the slop. Taste starts here.

Currently this is best enjoyed on desktop/laptop.

10m.co

Thank you to the institutions that provide APIs. Without this access, this project would not be possible. I hope 10M encourages other institutions to create APIs so people like me can leverage these archives.

1. The Met
2. Art Institute of Chicago
3. Rijksmuseum
4. Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
5. Cleveland Museum of Art
6. Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum
7. Europeana
8. Harvard Art Museums
9. New York Public Library
10. Library of Congress
11. Victoria and Albert Museum
12. Tate
13. National Gallery of Art
14. Walters Art Museum
15. Whitney Museum of American Art
16. Smithsonian
17. Museum of the Bibliothèque nationale de France