http://www.exploratorium.edu
This is a great attempt to bring a museum online. There are practical
details, plus attempts to bring to life some of the San Francisco Exploratorium's
650 interactive exhibits, from a 'duck into' kaleidoscope to the Ames room
(it has no square corners). To get the full effect of the Exploratorium
pages, your system needs to support the JPEG picture compression standard.
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http://www.echonyc.com/~whitney/WMAA/
The Whitney has gone for a simple but brilliantly affecting approach.
Rather than deluge visitors with whole exhibitions and information overload,
it has put its efforts into creating a forum for people to discuss art,
the museum and its changing role in American culture. Permanent as well
as temporary exhibits are all here Ü anything from Afro-american to
Beat culture Ü but there is also a BBS for members, a collection of
conference papers to view, as well as a unique site for artists' projects
on the World Wide Web. Check out Hollywood Archaeology. Later in the year
there's an exhibition called Edward Hopper and the American Imagination.
As well as visiting it online, it's possible to order a catalogue, books
and a poster from the store next door.
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http://www.roma2000.it/zmusvat.html#cosa
Now if you're going to Rome, definitely check this out first. Beautifully
illustrated and well-written this site lists all of the Vatican-controlled
museums. There are a lot to choose from and obviously they have a certain
slant. Read about the Gregorian Museum of Profane Art, the Biga Room and
the Room of the Immaculate Conception - I'm not making this up. For art
lovers and historians this is a must and before you go you can print out
a map of all 24 museums
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http://www.compulink.co.uk/~museumgh/
It's a joy to meander around this gentle museum site, although it's
nothing flashy and some of the graphics are a bit poor. The content - a
spot of gardening history, a few old tools, featured garden designers etc
- reveals what a little gem this London-based museum is. Forget the cold
frames, come into the warm and have a look around.
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http://key-west.com/tours/museum01.htm
If you're planning a museum tour of Key West (and who isn't), here's
the site for you! Eleven choices await you - there's an antique lover's
dream in the form of The Curry Mansion Inn, literary lovers can revel in
the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum and for history lovers there's the
Wreckers' Museum - the most historic home in South Florida. Not much in
the way of illustration or interactivity, but what is there is well done
and worth a read. Quite why you would want to tour museums in such a lovely
part of the world eludes me though!
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http://www.rocknroll.org/
What an extremely lack-lustre, sad and sorry, routinely dull, wasted
opportunity of an excuse for a site. It could be a spangly sequinned celebration
of rock celebrity and culture, as presumably the museum is itself. Instead
it's an almost entirely text-based description of the museum's over-hyped
exhibits. Why not show us Buddy Holly's high school diploma or Hendrix'
handwritten lyrics for Purple Haze? Could do better.
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http://www.nms.ac.uk
Seven museums are represented here under the umbrella of the National
Museums of Scotland, including the Museum of Antiquities, Shambellie House
Museum of Costume and Biggar Gasworks. Information on current exhibitions
and permanent exhibits is included, along with lists of publications, educational
resources and how you can get to see them.
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http://www.ushmm.org/
Unfortunately this is not an attempt to put the museum's information
on the Web but merely a stopping off point when preparing for a visit. As
well as details of what is housed at its home in Washington, there is also
a list of educational resources and, more generally, some contacts for Holocaust
research and organisations based mostly in the States.
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http://www.ox.ac.uk/departments/hooke/
These very neat, precise, rather academic pages are actually very good.
In one sense there's quite a lot of text but it's accompanied by some great
images of early scientific instruments, portraits and illustrations from
the museum's collections and all together they provide a great insight into
the cultural and historical development of science as a discipline.
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http://www.net.org/
It's such a shame that what looks like an absolutely fantastic museum
fails to translate successfully to the Web. Great sounding exhibits like
The Walk-Through Computer and The Networked Planet are featured merely as
text-based descriptions, and the potential of these things online remains
miserably underexploited.
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http://ucmp1.berkeley.edu/timeform.html
Jump on the University of California's Museum of Paleontology's time
machine for a rocky ride through geological eras.
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http://www.cwc.lsu.edu
Strictly speaking this isn't a museum, it's a big time bona fide resource
for anyone interested in finding out about the Civil War.
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http://www.synergy.net/homeport.html
Having followed the discovery and restoration of the 16th century warship,
The Mary Rose, on Blue Peter, year in, year out, it's great to see it for
the first time Üænot in dock at Portsmouth but on the Web. The
virtual tour is largely text-based and has that 'school project' quality
but it's a history lesson at home.
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http://www.icsi.com/ics/morikami/
A few tranquil photographs and an item on the classical art of ikebana
from the only museum in the States dedicated exclusively to the living culture
of Japan. Peaceful indeed.
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http://www.nmsi.ac.uk/
Not the sort of site you'd want to hang around at for the whole of Sunday
afternoon. The Science Museum, after all, holds a monumental amount of stuff
to shift around online. Useful visitor information on exhibits and collections
is easily accessed but the volume of information is pretty specialised -
educational materials, research resources and a fair amount of academic
text.
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http://www.bvis.uic.edu/museum
This Chicago museum has placed a multimedia tour of its DNA to Dinosaurs
exhibit. You can page through the eras, downloading movies and sound bites.
There's also a display of Javanese masks and more to come. One to show the
kids.
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http://www.cnam.fr
Many used to come here for the random femmes page, but it's now behind
shutters. Now you'll have to be content with the Conservatoire's catalogue,
a virtual tour of the Museum of Arts and Crafts, and a nifty picture browser
which takes files from newsgroups (such as alt.binaries.pictures.misc) and
compiles them into online contact sheets.
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http://www.nhm.ac.uk/
The is the first major UK museum to enter the Internet age. You can
find out more about the museum's activities, events and timetables and there
are a few pictures. Not a substitute for a visit, but a peek behind the
scenes is nonetheless of interest. There are also links to other sources
about the earth, life sciences and the Walter Rothschild Zoological Museum.
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