“We’ve never ever looked better, in terms of what’s on view,” Robinson says. “It’s really the culmination of the Cuno era, all the rich programming we’ve been developing.”

Last year over 131,000 people visited Harvard’s museums. Creation of the “Harvard Hot Ticket” increased access to the museums by letting visitors be admitted to all six museums at a discount.

The noted “Lois Orswell, David Smith, and Modern Art” exhibition at the Fogg showcased works by Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. A distinguished collector, Lois Orswell bequeathed her collection to the Fogg five years ago, and the show was the first time her collection was shown as a cohesive group.

A well-attended lecture series brought directors from Paris’ Louvre, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and London’s National Gallery to Cambridge.

The Collections Online Initiative has made Harvard one of the few museums to have images and information about their holdings on the web.

According to Gillian McMullen, who manages the project, there are currently 12,700 object records online, slightly over half of the permanent collection. They periodically add more records, allowing scholars across the country to study the images online. McMullen says very few museums of Harvard’s size have such an extensive online database.

There are still objects that haven’t been researched, but McMullen says eventually the entire HUAM collection will be available online.

“We’d love it if we were up to 100 percent in another year,” she says.

But as the art museums expanded their Cambridge collection, many of their most prized works went on tour. The Grenville L. Winthrop Collection opened in Lyon, France in March, and after touring London and New York City it will return to Cambridge early next year. The show includes more than 200 paintings, drawings and sculptures by such notable artists as Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh, normally displayed as part of the Fogg’s showings.

Some professors back on Harvard’s campus expressed concerns at the artwork’s absence.

“I strongly believe the collection should not leave the museums whose strength it is to have it,” Professor of History of Art and Architecture Ewa Lajer-Burcharth told The Crimson in March.

The museum also expanded efforts to ensure that none of their pieces were looted during World War II. Museum officials, led by Sarah Kianovsky, research the historical provenance of their pieces.

While no stolen pieces have been found, Kianovsky says they would return such works to their rightful owners.

—Staff writer Kristi L. Jobson can be reached at jobson@fas.harvard.edu.