Galleries

General

The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. - Art from around the world. Great on-line access, with tours and context for multiple paintings, multiple artists. The National Gallery of Art houses one of the finest collections in the world illustrating major achievements in painting, sculpture, and graphic arts from the Middle Ages to the present. Search the collection by specific artist, title, or a combination of criteria. Tour the collection by medium and school, or choose a foreign language gallery guide (PDF format) for your visit. In-depth studies focus on artists and works of art. (http://www.nga.gov/)

The Art Institute of Chicago - Art from around the world. Extensive online samples from the museum's more than 300,000 pieces, including QuickTime Virtual Reality access to many of the collections. (http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/index.html)

The Smithsonian Institution - Home to numerous museums and galleries of all kinds. Many of them have extensive online exhibitions, but to find them you must go to the individual museum home pages. On the Smithsonian home page, click on "Museums & Organizations" and scroll through the menu to find the home page of the museum or organization you are looking for. (http://www.si.edu/)

WebMuseum - A very good resource for famous paintings in the Western cultural tradition. (http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/)

XXIII Bienal Internacional de São Paulo - Images of works by all the artists present in the three art exhibitions of the XXIII Bienal Internacional de São Paulo. 137 artists from 75 contries 614 works, 1.733 pages and 30.636 links. (http://www.uol.com.br/23bienal/ibienal.htm)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art - Art from around the world. A few online samples from each collection. (http://www.metmuseum.org/)

Uffizi Gallery - Classic European painting. Many samples from the gallery's collections in Florence, Italy. Includes QuickTime Virtual Reality vists to several of the rooms. (http://www.televisual.it/uffizi/)

ArtMuseum.net - Rotating online art exhibitions. A collaboration between The Whitney Museum of American Art and Intel to explore how the Internet and personal computers can be used to extend and enhance the art museum experience of the twenty-first century. Very well done. Requires Shockwave, Flash, Real G2, and LivePicture plug-ins for optimal utilization. (http://www.artmuseum.net/)

Guggenheim Virtual Museum - A rather extensive website containing many images of their holdings and also lots of information of the museum. (http://www.guggenheim.org/)

California Museum of Photography - Online exhibitions and information from the California Museum of Photography. (http://www.cmp.ucr.edu/)

The Louvre - Art from around the world. A great number of (very small) online images available, but without proper descriptions or navigational help, this site functions more as an encouragement to go see the museum in person. (http://www.louvre.fr/louvrea.htm)

Contemporary/Specialty

National Endowment for the Arts - Virtual gallery of works by American visual artists. (http://arts.endow.gov/explore/Gallery/gallery.html)

digitalari - Contemporary American photography and digital art gallery. (http://www.aeternus.com/foyer.html)

PhotoArts - Curated exhibitions of selected contemporary and classic fine art photographers. (http://www.photoarts.com/)

The Bryant Foundation Collection - An HTML gallery of Caribbean art. (http://library.ucf.edu/SpecialCollections/Bryant/)

Image Collections

George Eastman House - International Museum of Photography and Film, containing photography and motion picture, and technology collections. (http://www.eastman.org/)

The Lycos Image Gallery - This is a searching database. Browse or search through more than 80,000 free images, current pictures and vintage illustrations. It allows you to click on a category, ranging from Americana to history to Entertainment, Science and Techology. (http://www.lycos.com/picturethis/)

The Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO) - A not for profit association of institutions with collections of art, that have come together to enable educational use of the digital documentation of their collections. Together, AMICO Members are building a joint digital library that is available to universities and colleges, public libraries, and kindergarten through 12th grade schools through subscription agreements. (http://www.amico.org/home.html)

ArtServe - For a charge, this server, in the Department of Art History & Visual Studies at the Australian National University, offers access to around 80,000 images concerned in some way with the history of art and architecture, available in this format to schools K-12, colleges and universities and public libraries (http://rubens.anu.edu.au/index.html)

AccuNet/AP Photo Archive - An electronic library containing the Associated Press' current photos and a selection of pictures from their 50 million image print and negative library. The largest collection of news photos available online, it allows students, teachers and librarians to see for themselves virtually all the major news events photographed from the 1840s to today. Available to schools K-12, colleges and universities, and public libraries on a subscription basis, and for a charge. (http://ap.accuweather.com/apphoto/index2.htm)

National Archives - Several interesting collections from American history. (http://www.nara.gov/exhall/exhibits.html)

Additional resources

World Wide Web Virtual Library: Museums around the world - Organized by country. (http://www.icom.org/vlmp/world.html)

World Wide Arts Resources - Links to museums, galleries, art shops, etc. by country or theme (ie: film, folk art, glass, Greek info). A good place to look for specialty museums, etc. (http://wwar.com/categories/Museums/)