Web Museums
"ARTSERVE"
http://rubens.anu.edu.au
Australian National University offers access to an impressive collection of images (reportedly 16,000 and growing) related to the history of arts and architecture. Among the featured categories are classical art & architecture, a survey of "Western Art"--a survey still under construction--as well as contemporary architecture in Hong Kong. A new service called "ImageServe" provides tutorials on Art History, reference works and source images for Architectural History. (Vol. 1 No. 3, June '96)
"California Museum of Photography"
http://www.cmp.ucr.edu/netscape.html/
The website of the "California Museum of Photography" does more than just display photography on the Web. In addition to photographs from its collections and archived exhibitions, it also features Web-specific art. Currently on view are Steve Axelrad's Self Museum Search Engine as well as WomEnhouse, a collaborative, multi-authored site that explores the politics of domesticity and gender relations through virtual "rooms" and conceptual domestic "spaces." The site also includes a section on media education. (Vol. 1 No. 11, March '97)
"Diego Rivera Web Museum"
http://www.diegorivera.com/diego_home_eng.html
When we look at the computer screen--is it like a window or like a wall? When is a wall a door? When it has been painted by Diego Rivera. This is a great site dedicated to a great Mexican artist. It includes a biography, a gallery and selections from the murals. It also contains links to Mexican Folk-Ways , the famous magazine for which Rivera served as the arts editor. It was, as Carl Sandburg said, "a finely human publication."
(Vol. 1 No. 7, November '96)
"MIT Museum"
http://web.mit.edu/museum/
The logo for this site includes the line: "Discover where Art and Science Meet." This exaltation is doubtlessly being heard by many of our readers, and a visit to this site is in tune with this quest. MIT may be associated with cutting-edge technology but one of the fascinations of this site is the way it historicizes concepts like "the cutting-edge," for instance, by documenting the evolution of sailing vessels in the Hart Nautical Collections. A more contemporary focus is provided by the museum's Holography Collections. (Vol. 1 No. 2, May '96)
"Stedelijk Museum Of Modern Art Amsterdam "
http://art.cwi.nl
The website of the world-famous museum of modern and contemporary art highlights monumental pieces from its collection--which includes works by Kirchner, Malevich, Chagall, Mondrian and Picasso--and provides information on current exhibitions. Until the summer of '97, visitors to the museum itself can witness the restoration of Matisse's "The Parakeet and the Mermaid," which is being carried out in an exhibition gallery. The museum has created an online archive for its shows and is planning to make almost its entire collection accessible on the Web. (Vol. 1 No. 10, February '97)
"University Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive"
http://www.uampfa.berkeley.edu/
This site represents the efforts of the University of California at Berkeley's primary visual arts center. Its outstanding feature is the way its online exhibitions manage to place visual images in an historical context. This isn't a new idea, but doing it successfully, so that viewers can find new ways of engaging with works of art, is rare. The dedication and skill of this site's contributors promise to make it a place worth often returning to in the future. (Vol. 1 No. 5, Sept. '96)
"Virtual Museum"
http://www-oi.uchicago.edu/OI/MUS/QTVR96/QTVR96.html
The "Virtual Museum" of the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute transports the museum's collections of antiquities from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran, Syria, Palestine and Anatolia into cyberspace. Making use of a series of Apple Quicktime VR panoramic movies, the "Virtual Museum" takes you on an alcove by alcove tour of each of the museum's galleries. You may tour the space by subject, by gallery images, or according to the physical museum's floor plan. The site is still under construction, but already provides an impressive amount of information, including descriptions of each alcove and its artifacts, and links to related material on the museum's server.
(Vol. 1 No. 7, November '96)