The UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History has an extensive, searchable online collection. It focuse on material art and household items and has objects from all over the world. The website can be browsed either by geographic orgin: Africa, Asia, North and Central America, Pacific, South America, or through its two exhibits, Intersections: World Arts, Local Lives and Fowler in Focus. Some of my favorite objects (but really, everything is entrancing) are The Blind Scholar (a Taiwanese handpuppet), Chikunga (a Zambian mask) and a stirrup spout bottle which looks like a puma eating a piglet (Peruvian). All items have accompanying descriptions and some have short texts or audioguides with further information.
posted on Jul 23, 2008 - View this thread

The Spertus Museum/Spertus Institute for Jewish Studies has just canceled Imaginary Coordinates due to complaints that some of the artwork (NSFW: nudity, disturbing imagery) in the exhibit had an anti-Israeli slant.
posted on Jun 22, 2008 - View this thread

With over 35,000,000 visitors a year, it could be argued that it is the busiest museum in the world. Yet most people are there to catch a plane.
posted on Jun 12, 2008 - View this thread

Don't Eat the Pictures! Sesame Street gets locked inside of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
posted on May 24, 2008 - View this thread

But is it art? Apparently so - A page of original Tintin artwork by Belgian artist Hergé becomes part of the Pompidou Centre's permanent collection of Modern Art, the first comics artwork to do so despite Frances vibrant comics culture.
posted on May 22, 2008 - View this thread

The Museum of Broken Relationships. We've all been there. What else are you supposed to do with the garden gnome you lobbed at his car, or the axe you used to chop her furniture into tiny bits. Or the box, made of matches, that somehow helped to make it all alright?
posted on Apr 8, 2008 - View this thread

"There is not a bomb by the entrance of the museum" was the telephone message delivered to a museum employee at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum Wednesday evening. This, along with the posting of a video on YouTube entitled The fake bombing at the ROM, Toronto, 28.11.07 led to the cancellation of a gala AIDS fundraiser at the Museum and a massive police investigation. Today, Ontario College of Art and Design student Thorarinn Ingi Jonsson claimed responsibility for the "art project".
posted on Nov 30, 2007 - View this thread

This is James Savage's spare room, which contains one hundred Apple computers. He has more than 150 in his house and all of them are working perfectly, from an Apple II+ and a Lisa to the latest MacBook Pro. (One entrant among many in Gizmodo's Best Computer Rig contest.)
posted on Oct 4, 2007 - View this thread

MUVA El PAIS has been conceived as a dynamic, interactive museum bringing together the most renowned works of contemporary Uruguayan art, an important contributor to Latin American art. MUVA is devoted to quality, content, education, information and recreation through the knowledge of visual arts. In Spanish and English, Flash and/or HTML.
posted on Aug 25, 2007 - View this thread

Now Then is an exhibit of 25 comic artists showing a comparison of their drawing style now and when they were just kids. Also, check out 50 artists riffing on the theme of Duck! Fun stuff from the Museum of Comic & Cartoon Art.
posted on Jul 6, 2007 - View this thread

greenmuseum.org in a non-profit, online museum profiling environmental artists like Chris Booth, Seung-hyun Ko, Yolanda Gutierrez, Aviva Rahmani, and others.
posted on Jun 14, 2007 - View this thread

Painter and comic artist Jun-Pierre Shiozawa visited the Tokyo National Museum recently to view da Vinci's Annunciata which created protests in Italy when the Uffizi Gallery lent this artwork to Japan. Shiozawa then created a fantastic "manga review" of the experience for Tokyo Art Beat's TABlog. You can see the steps Shiozawa made to create his manga review on Shiozawa's Flickr account or blog.
posted on Jun 10, 2007 - View this thread

Recycled folk art, Mayólica pottery and other exhibitions at the Museum of International Folk Art.
posted on May 27, 2007 - View this thread

Established by the US Department of State, the Art in Embassies Program (AIEP) is "a global museum" exhibiting works by U.S. citizens in "approximately 180 American diplomatic residences worldwide". Recently, the AIEP began a collaboration with the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) to bring limited edition works by five important contemporary Native American artists to embassies around the world.

The Native artists selected for the project include internationally exhibited Mario Martinez, who was recently given a major retrospective at the NMAI in New York City, Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, a pioneering artist and art activist, as well as Marie Watt, Larry McNeil, and Norman Akers.
posted on Apr 2, 2007 - View this thread

The Gregg Museum of Art & Design at NC State University has a great collection of folk arts. The strongest section is in ceramics, with stupendous representation from the NC wood-fired, salt and alkaline glazed traditions. There's this 1868 Hartsoe Alkaline glazed jug, this 19th cent. jug with kild-drip, this Hancock Half-Gallon jug, this Randolph Cty salt-glazed jug with ashy shoulder, and then the moderns: Burlon Craig, Vernon Owen, Mark Hewitt. There are also great photographs, weird furniture, outsider critters, and more. There isn't a good browse function, so you need some idea of what you want to search for.
posted on Mar 15, 2007 - View this thread

The King's Kunstkammer - en vogue in Renaissance Europe, kunstkammers were status symbols of kings, vast collections of art, curiosities, and scientific and natural objects. This is a partial reconstruction of the Royal Danish Kunstkammer, established by King Frederik III in the mid-1600s. Exploring the collection's 250 objects offers insight into princely preoccupations of the era.
posted on Nov 22, 2006 - View this thread

Madonna and Child by Duccio di Buoninsegna (ca 1300) “is widely considered a key forerunner of the Italian Renaissance style and a landmark in Western European painting”. The painting “resides in a Plexiglas case in the middle of a room of medieval Italian paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art” and was purchased in 2004 for about $50million, the most expensive acquisition in the Met’s history. However James Beck, Columbia professor, founder of ArtWatch “established for the dignity of the art” (previously mentioned in this forum), is emphatic: “It’s a poor painting and it is a fake.” In a recent interview to Paul Hond in the Columbia Magazine Fall 2006 issue he admitted that such a bold and counter-mainstream proposition is “…calling attention to the mistakes of our favorite institutions of great power would not have been readily available if I didn’t have tenure.”
posted on Oct 17, 2006 - View this thread

"On September 30, 2006, for one day only, museums across the country will join the Smithsonian Institution in its long-standing tradition of offering free admission to visitors."
posted on Sep 28, 2006 - View this thread

The Match World Virtual Museum is dedicated to showcasing the best artwork from the ~25,000 matchbooks in the collection of the Japanese Match Manufacturers Association, including Foreign Matchbooks, Advertising on Matchbooks and various matchbook companies, all with decent, sized images available if you click on the thumbnail versions. Some really attractive stuff in here. Previously on Metafilter
posted on Aug 21, 2006 - View this thread

The Museum of Black Superheroes: There are galleries, articles, exhibits. See villians like Dreadlox and Hypno-Hustler, and heroes like Muhammad X and, well, Hero. All of these bios together in one place present an interesting picture.
posted on Jul 20, 2006 - View this thread

The Proud Band of Fluxus Indians, Coon Rapids, Iowa.
posted on Feb 22, 2006 - View this thread

Jeff Wall - The Tate Modern just closed up a "major retrospective" of Wall's (more info about Wall) work, but has saved the experience in this rich online presence, including a timeline of his works and influence, interviews, archived discussions of his works, and more (via ArtKrush)
posted on Jan 17, 2006 - View this thread

Web Gallery of Art - "The Web Gallery of Art is a virtual museum and searchable database of European painting and sculpture of the Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque periods (1100-1850), currently containing over 14.500 reproductions. Commentaries on pictures, biographies of artists are available. Guided tours, free postcard and other services are provided for the visitors."

Direct Links seem to be turned off.... lame, but the search function is worth checking out. One of the coolest features is being able to search for artists based on country, style, or time period.
posted on Dec 17, 2005 - View this thread

The Homeless Museum.
posted on Dec 15, 2005 - View this thread

The next Turner Prize winners? Art Craziest Nation is a mini-gallery of (in)famous pieces by modern artists, accurately reproduced with Lego by a duo called The Little Artists (John Cake and Darren Neave). The exhibition is at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool until next January. See the Lego version of Damien Hirst's Shark Tank, Tracey Emin's Bed, Jeff Koons' Balls, Andy Warhol's Money, Salvador Dali's Lobster Telephone, and many others. It's all in one single piece, with some of the artists themselves in Lego version - and others whose work is not exhibited, like Matthew Barney and Gilbert & George - hanging around sipping their Lego wine (ok, air) from Lego cups (or even throwing it at the Lego person standing next to them). Liverpool Football Club star Gerrard also featured in a tribute to the team's victory of this year's European Cup.
posted on Sep 13, 2005 - View this thread

Rembrandt's Late Religious Portraits. No one knows why Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn began painting half-length portraits of religious figures late in his life. The subject was uncommon in Protestant Amsterdam, where he lived. Paintings and sculptures, deemed idolatrous by Luther's followers, were not permitted in churches; existing images were removed and often destroyed. In 1681, a local authority described Rembrandt as the "foremost heretic in the art of painting." In Los Angeles, the Getty Center brings together, for the first time, 16 of these mysterious paintings. More inside.
posted on Jun 18, 2005 - View this thread

MoMA Free Tomorrow for New York MeFi Readers! Well, everyone, actually. The Museum of Modern Art in New York reopens tomorrow and graciously offers a day of free entrance for all. Your chance to avoid the much-criticized $20 admission (views: con, pro-fessional, mayoral). Even good old free-admission Fridays bear the price tag of aggressive name-branding [paragraph 6] by an image-crazy donor (it's not charity anymore if it's advertising, folks, much less design-heady classiness-by-association). Some reports (scroll) from the press preview.
posted on Nov 19, 2004 - View this thread

The last phase of the Met's Timeline of Art History is now live and well worth visiting.
posted on Oct 7, 2004 - View this thread

The Museum of Bad Art
posted on Mar 15, 2004 - View this thread

The National Library of Scotland and its interesting collection of online exhibits : the Murthly Hours, an illuminated book of hours (folios here); 16th century maps of Scotland; playbills from Edinburgh's Theatre Royal; 16th century Scottish books; the albums of the Edinburgh Calotype Club; R.L. Stevenson; Robert Burns; World War I stories; more.
posted on Jun 24, 2003 - View this thread

Southwestern United States Rock Art Gallery. 'This page is devoted to Native American Rock Art of the Southwestern United States. Currently, most images on this page are from Utah. This will change as time permits.'
Related :- this Precolumbian Collection from Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection (which has an interesting history itself).
posted on May 18, 2003 - View this thread

Mille Fiori by Chihuly - a sweeping glassworks art installation marks the opening of the new Tacoma museum building. Dale Chihuly, one of the great masters of our time, also has an exhibit in Hamilton, NJ through July. Not content with stunning windows, walls and chandeliers, Chihuly creates towers, gardens, ceilings, and more, often weaving his work within natural elements to create fantasy waterscapes and landscapes. - more -
posted on Apr 26, 2003 - View this thread

"The Ho-Am Art Museum began with the donation of over 1,200 Korean works of art collected over a period of more than 30 years by Mr. Lee Byung-Chul, the late chairman of the Samsung group. [more]"
posted on Mar 1, 2003 - View this thread

"It is with pleasure that I welcome you to the Website of the Kyoto National Museum. We hope this site will open up the fascinating world of East Asian art to a broader audience than ever before possible." [1]
posted on Feb 26, 2003 - View this thread

In these troubled times, we would all do well to remember the lesson of the Apasht. But you'll have a hard time finding this vanished Neolithic culture in any mainstream anthropology textbook. That's why these archives are such an invaluable resource.
posted on Jan 31, 2003 - View this thread

The Smithsonian offers an online sampling of its Collection of Aeronautic Sheet Music. From the introduction: "...widespread fascination with flight has inspired an enormous output of historical drawings, paintings, advertisements and illustrations for publications. Some of the most colorful illustrations are those which adorn sheet music. In the Bella Landauer collection, you can find illustrations that range from the bizarre to the commonplace, from the humorous to the mundane. But most are colorful and interesting."
The collection is divided into categories such as "Ballooning", "Biplanes", and "Flying Machines". I love this one from 1914, called "A Hundred Years From Now".
posted on Nov 12, 2002 - View this thread

Tales from the Land of Dragons. 100 years of Chinese paintings. From the overview :- 'In China, painting is one of the "Three Perfections," linked with calligraphy and poetry as the most refined of artistic endeavors. This exhibition ... focuses on the years in which the great traditions of Chinese painting were established, during the Tang, Song, and Yuan dynasties ... '
posted on Nov 3, 2002 - View this thread

This CNN article reminded me of something I've been wanting to share with my fellow MeFiers for a long time now: the Storm King Art Center. There really aren't enough places in the world where you can view dozens of monumental abstract sculptures on 500 acres of rolling hills and beautiful wooded groves. For those interested in a 3D look (albeit via an obscure plug-in) try these views of a few Storm King sculptures. So, has anyone else ever been there? Better yet, anyone care to share any other unusual "museums" you've discovered?
posted on Nov 1, 2002 - View this thread

The Russian Avant-Garde Book is an online version of the MoMA exhibit, featuring 112 books originally published in Russia during the intensely creative period between 1910 and 1934, before Stalin outlawed any style but social realism. The site is separated into three chronological themes and includes examples of futurist works, constructivist graphic design, children's books, propaganda, photography and photomontage, revolutionary imagery, architecture and industry, war themes, folk art and judaica...
posted on Oct 8, 2002 - View this thread

Schplerter. Schplutz! Sklop, splerd, and splood, too! No, I'm not cussing you out. I am telling you to get thee hence to the Museum for Non-Primate Art, where you can learn what these terms mean, as well as see cats dance and paint!
posted on Sep 23, 2002 - View this thread

How far should the commercialisation of fine art go? The British Museum has licensed an on-line company atelier 350 to sell reproductions of some of the drawings in their collection. This article argues that the sales description is misleading and if replicated on a wider scale could harm the general public's perception of access to the collections in the long run. I agree that museums have to raise funds somehow and I'm not against the selling of some of the more popular images, however, surely their first responsibility must be to educate not to distort or hide the truth in the way which is shown here.
posted on Jun 6, 2002 - View this thread

Who owns the products of slave labour? Or, more broadly, how do we remember the Holocaust? A unique dispute over ownership rights to artwork in the case of the Auschwitz Memorial Museum vs. former camp prisoner Dinah Gottliebova Babbitt illuminates underlying moral questions about the Holocaust and post-Holocaust culture. Babbitt, now living in southern California, is a university-trained Czechoslovak artist who has been fighting to reclaim her art from the Auschwitz Museum since 1973... [She] was a Jewish prisoner there in 1944 when Josef Mengele learned of her artistic skills and forced her to make watercolor portraits of dying Gypsies in order to get the kind of documentation he wanted on exact skin color and ear shapes. Gottliebova Babbitt made a dozen such portraits, seven of which are now tucked away in Room No. 11 of the Auschwitz Museum. [...] "Mengele ordered me to do it as slave labor. But it was my work, my paintings."
posted on Mar 28, 2002 - View this thread

Italy privatizes its culture. At least that's what will happen when a bill turning management of all of its museums sails through the Parliament this week. Critics of the Berlesconi-driven measure say that trying to turn culture into a profit center is foolish as there are only a few attractions that make any money now.
posted on Dec 8, 2001 - View this thread

Speaking of Veterans Day, here in Chicago we have the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum. Art by Vets about the War. Most pieces are on-line with a short essay. The Above and Beyond memorial is impressive to say the least.
posted on Nov 11, 2001 - View this thread

My favorite art site After going to the Smithsonian's Scenes Of American Life when it came through Seattle--about the first time I'd gone to an art exhibition in years, to show you what a scenester I'm not--I went looking for online works by George Tooker after seeing In The Summer House there. I came across The Tigertail Virtual Museum--for quality, this is the best site I've yet to see, even if it lacks the breadth of my previous favorite; Carol Gerten-Jackson's CGFA--no Bouguerau's, for instance. But beau coup works by 20th century American artists--now you can send spam or Three Stooges Wallpaper and it'll be aht... Cool or what? And your favorites?
posted on Sep 28, 2001 - View this thread

The Museum of Depressionist Art: a very funny collection of art parodies, all done with a 'depressionist' theme. ok, i suppose it's not that funny, but fellow art history buffs(?) might enjoy.
posted on Apr 23, 2001 - View this thread

Mini-MOMA is all the wonder of a large US city Museum of Modern Art, crammed into tiny pixelated goodness. Mouseover the pieces to see titles and artist names. [via archinect]
posted on Dec 5, 2000 - View this thread

Jeff Koons on his art: "I'm interested in making objects that you would want to grab and take with you if your house was burning down. " He also says he's really into cereal boxes. New York Times (registration required)
posted on Jun 27, 2000 - View this thread