Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Metropolitan Museum is one of the world’s great treasures, and the American collection of more than 4,000 works -- paintings, drawings, and sculptures -- is one of its key strengths. The website is extremely well designed and is quite easily navigated.

National Gallery of Art. Here you can find either text or images relating to the more than 106,000 objects in the gallery’s extraordinary collection. One excellent site feature is the ability to search by artist’s name, key words in a title, subject, school, medium, date of creation, and the like. A truly wonderful resource.

Wadsworth Atheneum. This is America’s oldest public art museum, and its collection is one of the finest imaginable. The museum’s Hudson River School landscapes are by themselves a good reason to visit Hartford, Connecticut. The website offers a “highlights tour” covering a number of collections, including African-American art, American paintings, contemporary art, and European paintings.

Florence Griswold Museum. The museum refers to itself as The Home of American Impressionism, and you’ll see why when you sample its outstanding online offerings. You can tour current exhibits, find information about upcoming exhibits, or simply search the museum’s database of more than 6,000 objects from the permanent collection.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The museum’s highly user-friendly website opens the door to highlights from permanent collections, among them American art, prints and drawings, European painting & sculpture, and Asian art. You can explore nearly 46,000 artworks and nearly 32,000 images, and the online offerings continue to grow.

Other art sites

Artshow.com. This attractive website is particularly helpful for artists who want to display and sell their work online. You will also find timely information on upcoming juried shows throughout the country, U.S. and international workshops, online demonstrations, and links to other websites that provide art-related advice and support.

ArtDeadline.com. This is a leading online source of information about income and exhibition opportunities for artists. The site's searchable database and magazine can help members find juried competitions, internships, fellowships, grants, festivals, jobs, and similar art opportunities.

Art Related Services

Connecticut Software Consortium. This exceptionally user-friendly organization specializes in creating websites for small businesses and has extensive experience in working with artists. CSC’s art-related credits include The New American Gallery, which it took from blueprint to fully operational site on a tight budget and an even tighter deadline.

Jack Richeson & Co. is a family owned and operated business that, among other things, offers one of the world’s finest watercolor surfaces. If you haven’t tried this Wisconsin company’s Stephen Quiller watercolor paper, you should. You may also want to check out two workshops – one in France, another in Ireland – that the company will be hosting in 2004.

ArtBusiness.com. This extremely informative site contains numerous articles of interest to both artists and collectors. For example, artists will find dozens of articles like “Price Your Art Realistically,” “Sell Art Successfully in Tough Times,” and “Learn to Sell Art Like the Galleries.” Artists can also purchase services in such areas as drafting artist statements, pricing and promoting art, and analyzing the effectiveness of personal art websites.