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Welcome to art education online!

When you think of the greatest art museums in the world, which ones first come to mind? For art teachers, such a list is likely to include the behemoths of the Musee du Louvre in Paris and the National Gallery in Washington, DC. These museums house scores of the masterworks of art we know so well through art history classes and texts.

The Musee du Louvre, available online at http://www.louvre.fr/anglais/title.htm (English) is one of the earliest museums in Europe. This venerable institution's collection ranges from ancient to contemporary art in seven departments. Major works are detailed with brief accompanying texts. The design of the site is somewhat understated. Although it is easy to navigate, there is no search feature at this time. The best features of the site are the nine different virtual tours the visitor can take. Posters of such masterpieces as the Mona Lisa, the Winged Victory of Samothrace, and Starry Night are available through the Museum Shop.

The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, available On line at http://www.nga.gov/home.htm, has an understated home page that gives little evidence of its vast riches. Its collection of European and American paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, and selected works on paper range from the Middle Ages to the present. Online tours include the collection, in-depth study, architecture, and virtual exhibition tours.

More than 100,000 objects in the collection, usually accompanied by text, can be located by artist, title, subject, provenance, or accession number. Another excellent feature is Teaching Resources: Online Programs, over twenty-two in-depth teacher guides based on the gallery's exhibitions and collections. Also offered is a teacher exchange that provides interdisciplinary curriculum ideas from alumni of the National Gallery of Art's own teacher institute. Other educational materials are available on loan and posters available for purchase are also depicted online.

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