R E V I E W S  O F  T H E  B E S T  S I T E S  F O R  F U N,  P R O F I T   A N D  P E R S O N A L  G R O W T H.
Internet Life soul fine arts

Art Galleries and Museums

  BY RICHARD GEHR   

The museum and the Web both perform an important function: To gather cultural artifacts and information and make them public in, at best, an entertaining and elucidating fashion. A browse around a good Web site should be as unique and personal an experience as a stroll through a well-curated institution, without the pain of gallery legs. The vast majority of art museums on the Web attempt to imitate the museumgoing experience: An image of the museum opens into a picture of the entranceway, which offers a floor plan and passageways to special exhibitions, permanent collections, educational facilities, calendars, guest books, gift shops, and such. The problem of making the images both legible and load-friendly is critical. While many sites get around this by providing thumbnail images that can be expanded to full-screen size, expect loading to take a little longer than usual. The best sites offer historical context, links to other resources, and an educational component that could prove increasingly useful to educators and students. So have fun, and we'll meet you in the gift shop.


The innovative Dia Center for the Arts offers everything the typical art museum site does and much more. A gallery as extensive as many museums, the Dia Center has mounted a thoroughly modern site with a clean, easily navigable format that focuses on special on-line projects. These include Soviet artists Komar and Melamid's The Most Wanted Paintings, an interactive work that translates market research into paintings whose subject and style reflects audience preferences. Dia's first Web project, Fantastic Prayers, is an enigmatic and humorous multimedia collaboration by writer/performer Constance DeJong, artist Tony Oursler, and musician/composer Stephen Vitiello. While the multimedia aspects may tax your modem speed, they're worth the wait.

The largest and richest repository of art on the Web is, perhaps fittingly, attached to no real institution at all. A labor of love by Ecole Polytechnique professor Nicolas Pioch, the Paris-based WebMuseum, Paris (formerly the WebLouvre) is a virtual History of Western Art 101. Boasting some 5 million documents, WebMuseum contains works by more than 120 artists as well as solidly written biographies, a historical timeline, and a glossary (which includes links to Encyclopaedia Britannica and other sources). Special exhibitions devoted to, for example, 20th-century art, David Hockney, Paul Cezanne (with 100 paintings), and Les tres riches heures du Duc de Berry (a medieval illuminated-manuscript masterpiece) keep things interesting. Beholden mainly to works within the public domain, WebMuseum also contains an auditorium with representative samples of classical music. You can also search the Famous Paintings section by artist or theme or take a photographic tour of Paris highlighted by a visit to the Catacombs.

As far as traditional art museum sites go, nothing so far beats The National Museum of American Art, part of the enormous Smithsonian Institute complex of on-line museums and galleries. Boasting hundreds of extensively annotated images from its massive collection, the NMAA spans the spectrum of American art. In addition to highlights from its permanent collection, the site contains numerous samples from a pair of special exhibitions. Don't miss the dazzling Secrets of the Dark Chamber: The Art of the American Daguerreotype, and The White House Collection of American Crafts. The three search engines here ensure that you'll find what you're looking for, if its within the Smithsonian.


World Wide Arts Resources, maintained by Ohio State University's Markus Kruse, should be an early stop for anyone interested in art culture on the Web. A sporadically annotated, no-frills site, WWAR links nearly 300 museum sites and 2,000 artists in 31 countries, not to mention nearly 1,000 virtual and real galleries. If it's on the Web and deals with art, WWAR's search form should be able to track it down.

The National Museum of African Art Web site is full of wonderful African images that load surprisingly quickly, organized by specific exhibits. Part of the Smithsonian Institute since 1987, the NMAA contains art you simply won't find anywhere else in the country, much less on-line. Permanent exhibits include Images of Power and Identity, Purpose and Perfection: Pottery as a Woman's Art in Central Africa, and The Art of the Personal Object.

Many important city and university art museums have a significant on-line presence. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts does not contain many images from its permanent collection, but its two special exhibitions, Masterpieces in Motion and Lost Paradise: Symbolist Europe, are beautifully designed and load quickly. In addition to its many galleries and on-line examples, The Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University gives a behind-the-scenes peek into the duties of curators and administrators. The University of Illinois's Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion offers Frans Hals: An Exploration in Painting and Fashion and Science in the Art Museum, guided tours through works from its permanent collection.
/ /

The Paris Pages' Musee du Louvre is worth a visit, if only to read the background of this museum's museum. The entrance offers a solid introduction to the distinguished Paris landmark, including a brief history of the institution and building, organization of the collections, and a floor plan. Click on the Venus de Milo to access several classic works from the collection.

A couple of the better virtual museums specialize in Asian art. The Smithsonian Institute's Freer Gallery of Art contains Japanese painting, Southeast Asian sculpture, and documentary photos of Indian prayer painting. The On-line Museum of Singapore Art & History, a rich depository of Asian art and culture, is loaded with images and information.
/

The Electric Gallery is a commercial site that also happens to be among the more innovative and eccentric. The gallery displays stunning Haitian, Southwestern, folk, and Amazon works that can be ordered via credit card.

Several on-line museums are dedicated to the work of a single artist or milieu. The Andy Warhol Museum site is short on art but long on comprehension. Gallery views rather than individual works give an excellent overview of the pop artist's scope, influence, and prolific output. The Official Salvador Dali Museum Site contains only about five pictures, but is otherwise an informative and witty introduction to the surrealist's soft world. The Art Deco-Erte Museum and The Mucha Art Nouveau Museum are linked sites that introduce the designer Erte and artist Alphonse Mucha then point you to where their works might be purchased.
/ / /

Other venerable cultural institutions have pages in various stages of construction, so keep an eye on them. The Yale University Art Gallery should be an important art resource when its virtual galleries are completed. In addition to its famous biennial exhibit of contemporary American art, the maddeningly slow Whitney Museum of American Art site includes several pictures from the excellent show, Edward Hopper and the American Imagination as well as the more recent Beat Culture and the New America 1950-1965. The Dallas Museum of Art On-line is in the process of mounting more examples from its huge collection of pre- and post-Columbian art of the Americas. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art offers a tour of The American Discovery of Ancient Egypt, an interview with French artist Annette Messager, and good links to other sites.
/ / /

Chuck Welch, a.k.a. Crackerjack Kid, curates The Electronic Museum of Mail Art. The current exhibit, appropriately, is Cyberstamps, which contains artists' renditions of postage artifacts appropriate to on-line correspondence.

And if you feel a need to return to the classics after all this, visit Andreas B. Syrigos' virtual tour of the Acropolis at WebAcropol.

BACKHOME


| TABLE OF CONTENTS | REVIEWS: FUN | PROFIT | PERSONAL GROWTH |


Copyright (c) 1995 Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company is prohibited. Internet Life and the Internet Life logo are trademarks of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company.

web-doyenne@zdnet.com


QUICK CLICK!
Dia Center for the Arts

WebMuseum, Paris

The National Museum of American Art

World Wide Arts Resources

The National Museum of African Art

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

The Michael C. Carlos Museum

Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion

Musee du Louvre

Freer Gallery of Art

The On-line Museum of Singapore Art & History

The Electric Gallery

The Andy Warhol Museum

The Official Salvador Dali Museum Site

The Art Deco-Erte Museum

The Mucha Art Nouveau Museum

The Yale University Art Gallery

Whitney Museum of American Art

The Dallas Museum of Art On-line

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art

The Electronic Museum of Mail Art

virtual tour of the Acropolis