For centuries, artists and physicians have rendered the human body and its anatomy in a myriad of ways, and with the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, the number of anatomical drawings and their like multiplied. Drawing on the collections contained within the National Library of Medicine, this revealing digital exhibit explores some of the ways in which human anatomy has been...

Humans have been wandering around Washington for thousands of years, and over the millennia, some of these people created maps based on their journeys. This excellent digital collection from the Washington State University (WSU) Libraries brings together almost 1,000 maps that document the area's history. As the introduction to the collection notes "By studying these past maps we find - hidden...

Circling high above the Earth, Landsat satellites have collected digital image photographs of the planet's continents and coastal areas. The Library of Congress has collected a number of these remarkable images (with the assistance of the United States Geological Survey) and visitors to this site can use the interactive features to zoom in and out on each image. The images have interesting titles,...

The Yousef Jameel Online Centre for Islamic and Asian Art provides visitors with access to the Ashmolean Museum's Eastern Art collection. Anyone with an interest in the visual arts will find much to enjoy here amongst the thousands of items collected from the past 5,000 years. The site consists of five primary areas, including Galleries, Exhibitions, and Highlights. This last area features 35...

This very attractive website catalogs the work of the Nebraska-born artist, Ed Ruscha. The site is elegant in its simple scheme of gray text on a cream background, red hyperlinks, and floating menu at the top of each page. Visitors unfamiliar with the paintings, drawings, photography and artist's books of Ed Ruscha should check out the "Biography" link to learn about his work that "combine[s]...

The exhibition web site for Edward Hopper, from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, features a slideshow of a dozen of Hopper's paintings, and a digital version of one of the artist's sketchbooks. Some Hopper paintings, for instance Nighthawks, 1942, have been reproduced so many times and in so many formats - posters, prints, t-shirts, coffee mugs - that they have become iconic and these are included...

The Kallir Research Institute, a non-profit foundation established in 2017 to continue the scholarly work of art historian Otto Kallir (1894-1978), has released a digital catalogue raisonne for Austrian painter Egon Schiele (1890-1918). This digital catalogue is based on the print version by Jane Kallir (Otto Kallir's granddaughter), entitled Egon Schiele: The Complete Works, which was published...

New York Public Library presents this enjoyable way to leaf through a selection of Japanese books from the Spencer Collection, that encompasses "300 manuscripts and 1,500 printed books from Japan; the manuscripts range from the 12th to the 20th century, and the printed works from the year 770 to the present". The collection guide points out highlights for those uncertain where to begin in this...

Noted Ghanaian artist El Anatsui works with a variety of found objects, including wood, ceramics, and discarded pieces of metal. For the past 28 years, he has lived in Nigeria, where he as spent a substantial time creating metal "cloths" from the aluminum wrappings from the tops of bottles from local distilleries. This utterly engaging online exhibit from the National Museum of African Art is...

Legendary political cartoonist Herb Block left no pressing issue (or political party) unturned during his long career, which spanned most of the 20th century. Along the way, he picked up three Pulitzer Prizes, including one in 1973 that he won with his Washington Post colleagues for their coverage of the Watergate scandal. In 2002, the Herb Block Foundation donated over 14,000 of his original...