Welcome back to Musings of an Arthritic Artist!
For the past year, I've been using online art museum collections as reference for my senior paper. I have searched many collections, including the Louvre (not easy to navigate, in my opinion). These are my top 14 user-friendly online art museum collections.
I was initially going to do my top 10, but after further research, I decided to add 4 more (I had added 5, but for some reason the photos that are supposed to show the works weren't visible on the collection). Why not? Most of the museums I've listed are closed due to the pandemic anyway. May as well visit an art museum virtually.
These are judged by how easy the site is to navigate and how easy it is to input keywords to find works of art. I've linked the museum collections and the other museum links I mention at the end of this post.
Technically speaking, these are listed, but the only one that is really ranked is the first one. I do believe that #1 is the best online art museum collection. Any other museum listed could go in any order.
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| King, Alexandria. Musings of an Arthritic Artist. 2021. |
1. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City, New York)
Whenever I'm doing art research, the Met is my automatic go-to. The site is incredibly easy to navigate. The best part about this site is how efficient it is, and how much information you can find, with very little clicking. You can filter by object type/material, geographic location, date/era, and museum department. There are also options to show only artworks with images, artworks on display, museum highlights, or open access art pieces.
Out of all the online art museum collections I've been on, I would highly recommend the Met's site. Another great thing about the Met's website is it has more than 406,000 high quality images for works of art in the public-domain due to their Open Access program, which they began in February 2017.
It's a great site for art research and inspiration, though if you're an art-lover, you can easily get distracted by the thousands of works in their collection (I'm not going to deny that I've probably spent at least 16+ hours cruising it by now). The Met also has a timeline of art history, along with essays written about different artists, movements, materials, and themes.
I've referenced how efficient and user-friendly this site is to my sister dozens of times, so I feel as if she would find it bizarre if I didn't include it on the top of my list.
Another thing that is interesting about the Met (which I only found out about a week ago) is if you click on an Open Access/public domain work, there is a share icon. When you click on that icon, there are the usual sharing domains (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and E-Mail), however there is also a little leaf. If you have been playing Nintendo games for a while, you may be familiar with the leaf logo. That logo stands for Animal Crossing, a Nintendo game that was originally released in North America on the GameCube in 2002. A new one was released on the Nintendo Switch last year (Animal Crossing New Horizons). Anyway, if you click on the leaf, you can scan a QR code and get that art piece in your game to place in your house and on your island (you need the online membership to use this).
The works aren't hyper realistic (they're pixelated), but as an art geek who enjoys playing Animal Crossing and video games, I appreciate the effort.
2. Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, California)
The LACMA is very user-friendly. The site is easy to navigate. The thing I enjoy most about the LACMA is that if you search a keyword, you can filter by public domain images, which makes it easy to use it for school research, along with not having to worry about legal artist copyright if you wish to use these images. They do have Terms of Use, though, so if you intend to use any images, make sure to refer to them (I've linked them below).
3. Kimbell Art Museum (Fort Worth, Texas)
The Kimbell's online collection is pretty simplistic, but it is easy to navigate. You can filter by Geography, Date Range, or Medium. You can also filter only by works that are currently on view. There isn't much to say about this site. The Kimbell doesn't have as many works as some of the other museums I've listed. The main reason why I included this collection is because the Kimbell has the only Michelangelo painting in the Americas (not including loans of his other works; for now, this is permanent), which I was actually able to see in person in 2019. I will link the painting below if you wish to see it.
4. Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas, Texas)
The cool thing about the DMA is that you can explore different things. One of my favorite things is you can explore their collection by the color of the items. You can also explore the collection by beasts and monsters (dragons, mythological creatures, felines, etc.). However, searching the collection is a bit more convoluted (at least, in my opinion). You can still filter between quite a few options, but to me it aesthetically isn't as pleasing to search.
5. The British Museum
I feel as if this is cheating a tiny bit. The British Museum in London is a human history, art, and culture museum. The site is relatively easy to navigate. They recently re-vamped the site, so they have a guide to navigating it, which is handy. It can get difficult at times, but the more you use it, the more you get used to it, like most things. I would usually say that if a guide is given, it probably isn't that user-friendly, but I had to include the British Museum. It is worth one visit, if only for the ancient art in their collection, especially the Egyptian relics. The British Museum is most known for housing the Rosetta Stone, so if you are interested in Egyptian history, I'd definitely check out their collection.
6. Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
The Philadelphia Museum of Art's site is very streamlined and straight-forward. The search could be improved. However, once you search, you can't filter, which is a downside, but otherwise this site functions very readily.
7. San Antonio Museum of Art
The San Antonio Museum of Art allows you to click on a collection and view the works in that collection. If you know (more or less) exactly what you are looking for, you can do an advanced search. You also can't filter the works once you search, but this collection isn't as large as the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
8. Cleveland Museum of Art
The Cleveland Museum of Art has an Open Access program like the Met does, however the Met's collection is larger. The search can be filtered. Overall, the site is very user-friendly and streamlined in a way that looks professional and almost academic.
9. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is easy to navigate. Like most of the collections I've listed, there are quite a few options to filter by. Honestly, there isn't much I can say about this collection.
10. Santa Barbara Museum of Art
The filter option appears as a small rectangular section on the left of the page. The search bar is located as a small bar on the left side of the screen. At the moment, their collection isn't fully digitized, but every so often, new works appear on the site.
11. Brooklyn Museum
I looked at this collection and wasn't initially going to include it on this list, but after I explored it more, I saw how different it was. It seems difficult to navigate at first, but it really isn't. There's a standard search, along with an advanced search, but the part I find most interesting is the collection menu tab located on the left of the search bar. Once you click it it lists collections and museum locations. If you click on one of these locations, it shows you what items are located there. It technically is a bit more convoluted, but when I was going through, I felt like I was going through a museum virtually, seeing as my family and I always go section by section when we visit museums in person.
12. Museum of Fine Arts Boston
This collection has a search bar at the top of the page, however it also lets you view by the highlights in their collections just in case you don't know what to search. It also has an advanced search option. You can filter once you search as well, however while most museums have the options to filter under the search bar, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston has the options to filter on the left, which means no matter how far down you scroll, the filter section is always accessible.
13. The National Gallery London
You can't filter once you search, but the collection only allows you to view paintings, so the search query doesn't refer many results depending on what you search. The more broad your search, the more results you get.
14. Uffizi Gallery
The Uffizi Gallery in Florence actually has a very user-friendly site considering how I find most international art museum sites (most of the ones I've looked at are hard to navigate). The main reason why I included this collection is because it has some notable artworks and artists (The Birth of Venus and Spring/Primavera by Sandro Botticelli and a work by Michelangelo).
That's it for this post!
See you Thursday,
Lexi K🖌
Links to online art museum collections mentioned above:
The Met
The Met Collection | The Metropolitan Museum of Art (metmuseum.org) (opens in new window)Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art (metmuseum.org) (opens in new window)
Works of Art | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art (metmuseum.org) (opens in new window)
Open Access at The Met | The Metropolitan Museum of Art (metmuseum.org) (opens in new window)
Frequently Asked Questions: Image and Data Resources | The Metropolitan Museum of Art (metmuseum.org) (opens in new window)
Terms and Conditions/Terms of Use | The Metropolitan Museum of Art (metmuseum.org) (opens in new window)
Own a Van Gogh … in Animal Crossing, with The Met's New Share Tool | The Metropolitan Museum of Art (metmuseum.org) (opens in new window)
LACMA
Terms of Use | LACMA (opens in new window)
Kimbell Art Museum
Search Collection | Kimbell Art Museum (opens in new window)The Torment of Saint Anthony | Kimbell Art Museum (opens in new window)
Dallas Museum of Art
Cleveland Museum of Art
Search the Collection | Cleveland Museum of Art (clevelandart.org) (opens in new window)
Open Access | Cleveland Museum of Art (clevelandart.org) (opens in new window)
San Antonio Museum of Art
Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Santa Barbara Museum of Art
The British Museum
Collection | British Museum (opens in new window)
Guide | British Museum (opens in new window)
Contact us | British Museum (opens in new window)
Museum of Fine Arts Boston
Collections Search – Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (mfa.org) (opens in new window)
Terms of Use | Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (mfa.org) (opens in new window)
Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn Museum (opens in new window)
Brooklyn Museum: Brooklyn Museum Terms of Use Agreement (opens in new window)
The National Gallery, London
Search the collection | Paintings | National Gallery, London (opens in new window)
Terms of use | National Gallery, London (opens in new window)
Uffizi Gallery
The artworks of the Uffizi Galleries | Uffizi Galleries (opens in new window)
Rights & Reproductions | Uffizi Galleries (opens in new window)
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