Cover image: Lisa Fotios/Pexels.
There’s no question that art is best viewed in person, but that’s not always easy or even possible. Fortunately, there are plenty of alternatives. On this list, you’ll find opportunities to see high-res photographs of artworks, tour art museums virtually, learn about art, and more – mostly for free. Ever since the pandemic forced museums around the world to find long-distance ways of connecting with their audiences, opportunities to enjoy art online have proliferating too fast to follow. Since there are far too many for me to list them all, I’ll instead provide an overview and recommend some of my favorites.
Museum websites
Art museum websites are by far the best places to enjoy and learn about art online. The exact offerings are different for each museum, but you can expect to find things like high-res photos and detailed descriptions of artworks in the collection, blogs, short and long-form videos, virtual tours, curator’s talks, podcasts, educational content, teacher resources, live and on-demand webinars, and more. A few years ago, only major museums had this kind of content, but since the pandemic, it’s become ubiquitous across museums of all sizes. Some of my favorite museum websites include the Metropolitan Museum of Art (a particular treasure trove, in my opinion), Getty, Guggenheim, National Gallery of Art, and Smithsonian American Art Museum.
At a minimum, almost every museum these days allows you to explore its entire collection online, including works not currently on display within the physical museum. This is great for both visiting the museum online and learning more about things you saw during a live visit. Look on the museum website for a heading like “art”, “collection”, or “explore”, then hit “browse” or enter your search terms. More and more museums are also releasing images of their collections via CC0, meaning that you can use these photos however you wish. (This does not apply to images of artworks not currently in the public domain.)
Visit museums virtually
Ever since the pandemic, virtual museum-visit opportunities have been popular and constantly growing. These include video or VR tours of museum galleries and exhibitions as well as online-only exhibitions. For example, the Metropolitan Museum of Art now produces video tours of its special exhibitions. You don’t get to see every single artwork, but you do get some nice commentary by the curator, and the videos are available even after the physical exhibition ends.
Google Arts & Culture (more on this in a moment) is a major source for 360° virtual experiences in many of its partner museums, famous buildings, and other world monuments. How much of the building is accessible virtually varies. Find the page for the collection you want to visit (select Collections in the navigation menu) and see if there are any museum views listed near the bottom of the page, or use the “Street view” feature in the app. You can also access these tours through the museums’ own websites, but they can be difficult to find there.
Given the realism of some of these productions, it’s tempting to think that they can completely reproduce the experience of seeing art in person. Personally, I believe that anybody who doesn’t visit museums in person because they think they’re getting the same thing virtually doesn’t realize what they’re missing. However, virtual visits definitely have their benefits, including being free and easily accessible to those who can’t travel. They also let you explore on your own time and without crowds.
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Art galleries, fairs, and auction houses online
Higher-end art galleries, auction houses, and art fairs can also have valuable online presences. These establishments pull out all the necessary stops to market their luxury goods to discerning collectors, but the rest of us also get to benefit from this free content. Sam Fogg, a London-based dealer of medieval art, is one of my favorites. In addition to the expected photos, short-form content, and online exhibitions, this gallery also offers substantial free pdf books and videos relating to its more academic endeavors. International auction houses Sotheby’s and Christie’s also feature a wealth of information online, while art fair Frieze has its own online magazine and TEFAF provides videos of programming hosted at both its New York and Maastricht editions. Some art galleries also curate virtual exhibitions, while several art fairs have launched virtual viewing rooms to accompany their physical events.
Expert guidance for your next art museum adventure
Multi-museum repositories
Google Arts & Culture lets you explore hundreds of museum collections all in the same place. It has partnered with major museums and other cultural institutions around the world to offer images, virtual tours, online exhibitions, games, and other educational features. The depth of the resources on offer is amazing and constantly expanding. As its name suggests, this website doesn’t simply focus on painting and sculpture; it includes all kinds of art, architecture, history, culture, and fashion, including much that tends to be overlooked elsewhere.
Kind of like a nonprofit British version of GA&C, ArtUK is a massive project aiming to catalog all the artwork in the entire United Kingdom. At the time of writing, it includes over 200,000 paintings, all of which are free to view online. According to the website, many of these works reside in museum storage, which means that ArtUK is currently the only place to see them. It also has fun interactive features like Art Detective and writing competitions for school-aged art historians.
Bloomberg Connects is a free app with digital content for numerous museums around the world. A lot of it is audio guides meant for in-person visits, but there is some long-distance content as well. I’m not super familiar with the offerings, but this app is far too prevalent not to mention. You can find it wherever you usually get apps.
Artstor is an art image repository designed for academics. Its best features are subscription-only, but some collections are open access. If you are affiliated with a university or similar institution, you may have full access through Artstor’s parent website Jstor, an online library for academic journal articles.
In 2020, I listed some other great art repositories for DailyArt Magazine.
Learn to think like an art historian.
Social media
Tons of social media accounts, from museums and galleries to amateur enthusiasts posting about their art adventures, will give you a constant stream of art on your feed. In particular, I recommend following currently working artists. Not only will you get to see a lot of great, brand-new art in much wider variety than you could elsewhere, but you will also be encouraging practicing artists and helping them build followings. Major museums and commercial art establishments tend to have great Instagram accounts that include things like short videos, information about current exhibitions, visitor-submitted photos, and behind-the-scenes features on aspects of the museum industry most people never get to see. I especially enjoy Instagram reels from the National Gallery in London (@nationalgallery). Content created by museums is great because it’s trustworthy but largely created for non-specialist audiences.
YouTube
YouTube is full of art-related content in varying degrees of quality, so pick your sources of information carefully. Fortunately, there are plenty of channels run by art museums, auction houses, galleries, and other reliable arts professionals. Some of my favorite YouTube channels are Baumgartner Restoration (in which Chicago-based art restorer Julian Baumgartner explains and demonstrates the intricacies of his craft), The Frick Collection (especially its Cocktails with a Curator series that was so celebrated during lockdown), and The British Museum (where super-enthusiastic curators talk about ancient art and artifacts). I’ve also enjoyed the collection of past lectures on American art themes hosted by The Olana Partnership. Naturally, some museums host their videos through Vimeo or another platform, so you’ll have to find their offerings directly through their websites.
Travel companies sometimes also post museum tour videos lasting up to an hour or longer. I found a bunch by searching for “museum tour”, but you could probably also search for specific museums. A few years ago, Apple also filmed a five-hour video tour of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. It’s unique as far as I can tell.
Understand the messages that art exhibitions share with their viewers.
Take an art history class
You can take a course in pretty much any subject online these days, and art history is no exception. In addition to my own online courses, you have three major options.
- Major universities offer MOOCs (massive open online courses) through companies like Coursera, Future Learn, and edx. They do offer many art-related classes, though they’re usually not well promoted. They are generally free to join unless you want credit or a certificate of completion, which will most likely be unnecessary for you. MOOCs feature weekly videos, readings, and assignments.
- Online learning platforms like Wondrium offer engaging video lecture series by leading professors in various fields. You pay a monthly subscription fee to the whole platform and can watch whatever interests you at your own pace. There are plenty of art-related courses, but I prefer to use these platforms to learn about related subjects.
- Three prominent arts institutions – V&A Academy,the Courtauld Institute of Art, and the Barnes Foundation – all offer both in person and online art history courses. These are the places I go to further my own art history knowledge, though I believe they also have offerings aimed at beginners. Reflecting their greater sophistication, these courses don’t come cheap, especially if the exchange rate is working against you. If you happen to live in London or Philadelphia, you can also take these courses in person, but the online versions are set up to accommodate people in any time zone.
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Reading material
Books
More and more art museums are now allowing you to read the art books they publish for free, either by downloading them as pdfs or reading them on directly on the websites. This is usually limited to books now out-of-print, which doesn’t actually take all that long for art books. Prolific museums such as the Getty, Guggenheim, Met, Yale University Art Gallery, and National Gallery of Art have very broad selections. Some older art books may also be available on websites like Google Books or The Internet Archive.
Loads of art books are also available at local libraries, secondhand bookstores, museum stores, and major booksellers. Coffee table books, though inconvenient to carry around, generally delight the eyes with large, high-quality photos of art and architecture. Exhibition catalogs – books published to accompany museum exhibitions and expand on their themes – are also great options, since they typically illustrate just about every work in the exhibition. However, their texts can be fairly sophisticated.
Finally, many museums publish guidebooks or books introducing the highlights of their collections, and these may feel more accessible to newcomers. These include photos and descriptions of key artworks, often alongside content about the history of the museum and other related topics. If you prefer to unplug while enjoying art, these guidebooks are like analog alternatives to virtual museum visits.
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Websites
- Smart History is written by art history PhDs, but it’s aimed at a general audience. Smart History primarily teaches through videos, but it also has lots of images and text posts. It also offers a few free ebooks as well as resources like syllabi for teachers. The website covers a wide range of topics and styles, and its offerings are always expanding. I love Smart History’s light and approachable explanations and frequently turn to it as a resource in my own work. You can think of it like a super-sized, online art history textbook.
- DailyArt Magazine is a great online magazine about historical and contemporary art and architecture. I was a regular contributor for several years. DailyArt also has a great app with different content than the website.
- The Collector, another online magazine I’ve contributed to, publishes on art, architecture, history, and philosophy.
- The Art Story contains lengthy and detailed articles about the history of modern fine arts, decorative arts, and architecture. It has also started to branch out beyond modernism in the strictest sense to cover wider art history topics.
- Hyperallergic, Colossal, and My Modern Met all discuss art and design, especially contemporary works in diverse media and from all corners of the globe. You’ll find stuff there you would never get to see otherwise. They sometimes discuss historical art as well.
- ArtNet News is a good source of general arts news.
Periodicals
- The Art Newspaper is the art world’s primary news source. Prolific and international in scope, The Art Newspaper is heavily interested in the political aspects of art, which may be a plus or a minus for you depending on your preferences.
- Apollo is a major art history magazine published in the UK. It addresses historical art, contemporary art, and antiques (decorative arts), and its selection of topics can be pretty eclectic. I feel like Apollo is always offering special deals on subscriptions; join their email list and see if they send you one before subscribing at the advertised rate.
- Burlington Magazine is an international art history magazine with a more scholarly focus – perhaps halfway between a magazine and an academic journal. It’s much more expensive than the other two, even in digital format.
All three of these international publications offer both print and digital subscriptions to readers all over the world. Non-subscribers can join their email newsletters and access a limited number or selection of free articles each month.
There are also tons of regional and specialized art magazines out there. I’ve generally had good luck finding a selection at my local Barnes & Noble, but you can also search for magazines that have gone online-only in the past few years.
