KEEP
of objects
that matter
What makes an object worth keeping?
236 objects from The Met. Six families. Many recorded lives.
Enter the atlas
objects from The Met, in six families: vessels, textiles, boxes and chests, tools, toys and games, accessories.
Walk through twelve objects.
Scroll to walk through the gallery and see each object. Select a photograph to open its record.
Open the atlas ↗Twelve objects from six families.
Explore twelve museum photographs arranged in a virtual gallery.
All 236 objects.
Explore all 236 catalogue records, including five with a full social biography. Pick two objects to compare.
What the records leave out.
Each square is one of the 236 retained objects. Choose a kind of evidence to see which records have it. Counts describe this corpus only.
Reviewed 27 October 2026Six thousand years of keeping.
A closer look at the six families
The selection began with 40 objects per family. Four exclusions left the totals below. The evidence columns count objects with at least one documented or reported claim in each category; a record can appear in more than one column. These are counts within this selected corpus, not estimates for objects in general.
Scroll sideways to see all evidence columns →
How each record begins an object’s history
Every square is one object, placed in the period of its recorded date (the middle of its date range). Periods are of unequal length. Select a square to open its record.
View the numbers
Who is remembered by name
The museum keeps too
View the numbers
Each department tells it differently
View the numbers
These shares describe what the records contain, not how often objects actually changed hands, were buried or were forgotten.
Reading the traces.
Three essays follow family histories, examine repairs and explore gaps in the records.
These essays offer interpretations of the cited museum records. Follow the links to read the evidence for each example.
How do everyday objects become worth keeping, and who decides?
KEEP explores the histories of objects through The Met’s Open Access records. Each object history links back to the evidence behind it; gaps in the records remain visible.