We present ArtVis, an application combining advanced visualisation techniques and tangible interaction to explore a large digital collection of almost 28 000 European artworks managed by the Web Gallery of Art. In order to get new insights by exploring, analysing and browsing the artworks, our graphical ArtVis user interface offers three complementary but synchronised visualisation components. We further developed a tangible ArtVis user interface for the playful exploration and seamless integration of the digital artwork collection with physical artefacts. A formative evaluation of the ArtVis prototype revealed that users are able to answer relatively difficult questions as well as get some new insights based on the vast amount of data. A second user evaluation of the tangible ArtVis interface has shown that this sort of physical interaction attracts users and stimulates them to further explore the digital artwork collection.