The WebMuseum, a Rich Source for Images

One of my favorite sources for painting and drawing images has long been the WebMuseum. It is particularly strong on European art of the 20th-Century, but also goes back as early as the 1200s, and contains an extensive area of Japanese art.

The images are often of very high quality, suitable for presentations or use as screen savers. I used the image on the left, Albrecht Dürer's "The Large Turf," for my screen saver for years.

The WebMuseum is one of the oldest websites still around! It was first created in 1994, a mere 3 years after the World Wide Web was developed. Its creator Nicholas Pioch believes firmly that art belongs to everyone and created the site so that people all over the world could have access to part of our cultural history.

Award-winning 20th C Art History short film

"Mona Lisa Descending the Staircase" won an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film in 1992, and is now viewable on YouTube. One painting morphs into another, and the morphs are so well chosen the meaning of the paintings -- and connections between artists -- are illuminated. Please watch! It is only 7 minutes long.

Webby Awards for Art Announced

Are you ready to expand your mind and ideas of what art can be on the internet? 

The Webby Awards have been announced, and here are some of the nominees and winners in the art categories for best website:

Winner: Adobe Digital Museum: What Adobe has done is hire a famous architecture firm to design a museum, and instead of building it in New York they built it on the internet, and are holding virtual exibitis and events online. Link: adobemuseum.com.

YouTube Play: A Guggenheim-curated exhibit of 25 art videos. Link: www.youtube.com/play.

Mural Explorer: An interactive introduction to neighborhood murals created by the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program. Link: explorer.muralarts.org

Bauhaus: Workshops for Humanity: The online component of MoMA's recent exhibit on the Bauhaus. Link: www.moma.org/bauhaus

Enjoy! I will post more coolness from some of the other arts categories soon.