ARTstor and The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) have just launched more than 1,400 images of works from the MoMA’s permanent collection in the Digital Library. The images have been selected from the museum’s unparalleled collection of modern and contemporary painting and sculpture. The works in the Department of Painting and Sculpture represent a comprehensive overview of major artists and artistic movements from the late 19th century to the present.

To view the collection after logging in, search for: moma “painting and sculpture”

The first-ever English version of the Musée du Louvre Collections Database, Atlas, is now available online.

Atlas allows the direct online consultation of 35,000 works of art exhibited in the Louvre. Online visitors can access the basic information displayed on labels accompanying works in the museum, together with authoritative commentary and analysis by the curators and staff. Visitors can carry out simple or advanced searches by keyword, artist, title, inventory number, medium, technique, department or room. Recent acquisitions are also highlighted. Atlas allows visitors to create a personalized album. When printed, the selected works are grouped by location within the museum (wing and floor number).

NewYorkHeritage.org is a research portal for students, educators, historians, genealogists, and others who are interested in learning more about the people, places and institutions of historical New York State. The site provides immediate free access to more than 160 distinct digital collections that reflect New York State’s long history. These collections represent a broad range of historical, scholarly, and cultural materials held in libraries, museums, and archives throughout the state. Collection items include photographs, letters, diaries, directories, maps, newspapers, books, and more.

A list of participating institutions may be found here; for more information about the project, click here.

Collections from London’s National Gallery are the first to ever be accessible via a downloadable iPhone application. iPhone owners can now explore the museum’s galleries from anywhere in the world using a free (for a limited time) Pentimento application called Love Art.

Making use of special iPhone features such as its large touch-screen, zoom, Rolodex and scrollable menus, Love Art offers a playful exploration of the collection, together with informative commentaries. The paintings are showcased to the best advantage using high-resolution images on the iPhone’s excellent-quality screen. Due to a tactile interface the experience gained through this application is not only highly enjoyable, but also lets you zoom in to see details that are often missed.

For more information, read this review from Applelinks, or see the National Gallery’s page about Love Art.

The much-anticipated Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago is now open. Enjoy free admission through Friday, May 22, and don’t forget to contribute to the Greater Chicago Food Depository by bringing a canned good or nonperishable item along.

Click here for a peek at current exhibitions in the museum’s newest space, including recent work by artist Cy Twombly.

ArtsConnectEd, a joint project between the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Walker Art Center, launched in Beta on May 4, 2009.

The new ArtsConnectEd is completely redesigned as a dynamic and social Web site that empowers teachers, students, and museum educators in the creation and sharing of content and ideas in the process of learning about art.

The new Art Finder offers an intuitive and powerful interface to the combined collections of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) and Walker Art Center (WAC), encouraging both wide exploration and in-depth research.  Users can browse over 90,000 works of art, watch and listen to more than 1,000 video and audio records, and read thousands of articles and object labels.  All of these resources can be collected and arranged as interactive presentations for personal or classroom use, which can in turn be published for others to use.  ArtsConnectEd also allows users to enhance their presentations with video and photos from services such as Flickr, YouTube, and the new ArtBabble video site.

Located in London, England, the Wellcome Library is one of the world’s top research facilities for the study of medical history. Their online image collection contains thousands of images with themes ranging from social history to contemporary biomedical science.

Images on the site are freely available for download for research, teaching, or personal use. Browse by Highlights, Illness & Wellness, Life, Culture, Nature, and War. You can also narrow keyword searches to historical or contemporary images, and an advanced option allows searches by date and technique.

If you prefer not to download images but would like to group them for later reference, you can register for a free account. The grouping function in Wellcome’s image library is called “My Lightboxes.”

Whether it’s medicine or magic, the sacred or the profane, science or satire – you’ll find more than you expect.

This week the Indianapolis Museum of Art announced the launch of ArtBabble.org, an interactive website dedicated to art-based video content.

It is intended to showcase video art content in high quality format from a variety of sources and perspectives… ArtBabble was created so others will join in spreading the world of art through video.

Videos are organized by Series (such as “Behind the Scenes at MoMa“), Channels (similar to subject areas, with a large number of videos about Contemporary Art), Artists, and ArtBabble Partners. Videos can even be exported as MP4s for offline play on computers or Ipods — just click on the Ipod icon beneath a selected video to download.

Contributing institutions include Art21, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and The New York Public Library.

“Steve” is a collaborative research project exploring the potential for user-generated descriptions of the subjects of works of art to improve access to museum collections and encourage engagement with cultural content. We are a group of volunteers, primarily from art museums, who share a common interest in improving access to our collections. We are concerned about barriers to public access to online museum information. Participation in steve is open to anyone with a contribution to make to developing our collective knowledge, whether they formally represent a museum or not.