Third Floor Search Desk

Because the elves are so small it still takes some time for them to run around the whole museum, so be patient. But our recently acquired winged speedo shoes have helped the Elves considerably. Elves are not the best possible docents, they tend to take their clues a little too seriously. How the Elves behave and how to best use them to search the museum is described just below the Research Center, it includes several examples. READ IT BEFORE YOU SEARCH. It will save you time, and the Elves will thank you because they will have less useless work to do.

 

Elf Research Center

Clues for your research elf:

Remember: Use one or more complete words for your search, or you will most certainly confuse your elf. Then Click on the "Go" button to do the search.

 

Our research elves only look for complete words. If you give them more than one clue -- the elf will make sure that ALL your clues are present in a gallery before reporting that gallery back to you. If you want them to check for ANY word in your list, then include the word ANY in your clues; it must be all upper case. If you want to exclude galleries that have some word present in them give the elf the clue with a dash (or minus) sign preceding it. Don't use punctuation in your search clues, it will probably just confuse an elf. Before you do any searching, look at the most common searches which are listed farther down this page -- check to see if what you want is already listed with a quick link.

Example Clues:	Find all Galleries with:
Dali	"Dali"
Dalí	"Dalí" --- with the proper accent on the i
Pablo Picasso	find both "Pablo" and "Picasso" in the same place
pablo picasso	exactly the same as: Pablo Picasso or PABLO PICASSO for that matter
Pablo -Picasso	all the "Pablo"s that contain no reference to "Picasso"
asso	may find something, it may not, it will not find "Picasso".
ANY Pablo Dali	all the galleries with either "Pablo" or "Dali" in them, or both for that matter. Note that the "ANY" must be all capital letters. "Any" will include the word "any" in the search and you probably won't find anything.

Since the Elf looks for all your search words and expects them to be reasonably close to one another -- the best bet for a search is to pick one or two words out of the things you are looking for, and make that word rare in other places. Usually an artist name is a good choice. So if you really wanted to give the elf the clue:
              Auguste Rodin watercolor paintings of nudes.
The Elf will not find what you want -- because the museum text does not have all those words in one place. But if you tell the Elf something short and rare like:
              Rodin
The elf will probably get you results that are close enough so you can find what you want. The words:
             watercolor, paintings or nudes
would be bad choices for clues since many artists did watercolors, paintings and nudes. A little thinking about how to phrase your request will make life much easier for you and the elves. They are a crabby sort.

If you learn how to spell the names of artists you want to find -- That will also help your searches a great deal. If you don't know how to spell "Rodin" then you could try the following kind of search:
            ANY rodan ridan roden rodent rodin radin radon radio
This will save you searches by trying all these different spellings in one search. IMPORTANT!! Capitalize ANY! And don't put quotes around your search clues ... or the Research Elf probably won't find anything.

Note: During the Christmas season there are not as many elves available because they are employed elsewhere. You may get a response that no elf is available to do your search. It only takes a moment or two to search the museum; so if you try again in a few moments you should get lucky and an elf will have returned and be ready to serve you.

Common Search Requests and Quick Answers:

These are the six most common search requests for eras in art in the last four months:

These are the eight most common search requests for artists in the last four months:

Just select a yellow link to jump to that particular gallery. The top and bottom banners on every page contain active links that will move you around in the museum, just click on where you want to go.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION (if you're curious)

Hermes, messenger of the Greek gods, came by the other day on a quick visit. He suggested that what we really needed was shoes like his for speeding up our searches. He seemed a bit inclined toward vanity... he was only interested in pictures of himself. He was a bit impatient with our search service, which he felt was much too slow. After he left we called Hephaestus and ordered ten pair of Hermes speedos. It turns out that he had made quite a few that were much to small for Hermes, but they are perfect for our elves. He demanded great sacrifices at his altar in the market place in Athens. We tried this for almost a year with no results, we're really not sure what we were doing wrong.

One day in late September of 2002 we were in Athens getting material for the Greek art gallery, and all we had in hand was a little US money (usually we burned Euros as a sacrifice). So we burnt two Benjamin Franklins on the altar accompanied by a paean to technology and speed. To our surprise upon going back to our hotel room we discovered a messenger boy loaded down with twenty pairs of small winged boots that were to be delivered to "The Original Elven Aquatic Circus and Mercenary Navy". We told the boy we were the admiral and vice-admiral of the Mercenary Navy. Even though the boy looked like he didn't believe us -- in the end he left the speedo boots with us. Perhaps the Benjamin Franklin tip we gave him helped. These new winged boots that we have acquired have made a substantial improvement in the search speed, although they are somewhat odd since on the insole they are marked Nike-Samothrice.