Privacy & cookies
ART WIKI is a non-commercial project, and gossip about guests is not done here: no analytics, no advertising, no tracking of any kind. Visitor data is neither sold nor shared.
Our cookies, all three
Each is essential for the site to work as you use it:
- artmap_lang
- the language you chose in the language menu (set only when you choose one; kept for 1 year).
- artmap_v
- marks a returning browser, so the site can tell visitors from automated scrapers and keep the catalog quick for everyone; holds no personal data (kept for 1 year).
- artmap_session
- keeps you signed in; set only if you create an account (lasts until you sign out or it expires).
Stored in your browser
Your browser keeps a few small notes for its own use (in local storage): that you have seen the cookie notice and the home page film, your theme, whether you paused the moving pictures, your recent searches on the site and on the map, and that you have read the map's hint. None of it is sent to us.
Accounts
Looking around never requires an account. If you create one, we keep your email address, a hashed password, your name if you give one, and what you mark as seen (with the date, place and note, if you add them), saved or followed, solely to show it back to you.
Server logs
Like any website, our server keeps the customary access logs (IP address, time, page requested, browser type) for security and for mending what breaks. They are not used for profiling and are shared with no one.
Images and maps from other servers
Most artwork images load straight from the museums' own servers and from Wikimedia Commons; map tiles come from OpenFreeMap. To show them, your browser calls on those servers, so they receive your IP address and may set cookies of their own, under their own rules. Images of the Art Institute of Chicago pass through our own server, so that museum's server does not see you. Our fonts we serve ourselves.
Your choices
You may delete or block cookies in your browser settings. Without the language cookie, the site will speak your browser's language; without the visitor cookie, heavy catalog filters may be rate-limited.
Last updated: September 26, 2026