Virtual Museums Around The World

One day last month while meandering around Evansville, Indiana, I ended up at the Evansville Museum. I hadn't been there in about 30 years so I thought it might be fun to check things out. What a wonderful idea that turned out to be. When I got back home, I decided to check on the Internet and see what it had to offer in the way of museums. I wasn't disappointed. Evansville's museum can be found at www.emuseum.org.

If you'd like to visit museums around the world, the best place to start is at www.icom.org/vlmp. This is the homepage of "Virtual Library Museums Pages" and it has links to most of the major museums around the world arranged by country. I clicked on USA and 965 websites were returned. If you decide to investigate some of the museums in the United States, don't fail to check out the lesser known ones as well. Sites like "The Virtual Museum of Coal Mining in Western Pennsylvania" at: http://theoldminer.virtualave.net/index1.html. I clicked on "Darr Mine" which brought up the story of the mining disaster in 1907 that took the lives of 239 miners. There are numerous pictures and stories depicting the history of coal mining in America. It was quite fascinating.

Log onto www.adlerplanetarium.org. This is the new website of the Adler Planetarium. There are astronomy exhibits and online courses that you can take right over your computer. Also check out www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org. If you think you have an OLD computer, wait until you see the computers pictured here!

A site that will take you hours to explore is the Museum of Science and History on-line. This is the largest science museum in the western hemisphere. It's at www.msichicago.org. This site has dozens of interactive exhibits that allow you to travel via your computer in and around some of the best exhibits the museum has to offer. Be sure you have "QuickTime Video" installed so you can watch the online movies. If you have a few days to kill, (better make that a month!) log onto www.si.edu. This is the Smithsonian Institution. As you can imagine, the site is awesome. I wouldn't even attempt to review this site here; it's just too big. I'll let you find out for yourself.

These are just a smidgen of the 900+ museums that have websites on-line in the United States. Now let's look at a few of the other 83 countries that are listed.

My first choice is Italy. There are 247 museums in Italy’s database. As with most foreign countries, English may or may not be the language of choice. Even so…Italy's ART is what I am really interested so words are not nearly so important here. Check out www.imss.firenze.it and www.leonet.it/comuni/vincimus the Leonardo Museum. There are dozens of historical, archeological and science museums to chose from.

Next on my list is France, mainly because of the Louvre. www.louvre.fr/louvrea.htm. Log in and take the virtual tour through the Louvre. This website is in English so you won't have to bone-up on your French to enjoy it. You'll find some of the worlds most magnificent paintings in the Louvre. Click on them for full-screen views. Of course, the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci is the star attraction.

My other favorites were Egypt (Egyptian Museum), Russia (Moscow Kremlin Museum), and China (Beijing Historical Museums). Each of the 83 countries listed has dozens if not hundreds of museums where you can explore to your hearts content. That's the beauty of virtual museums to begin with. Being able to explore what you want, when you want. And because of the way the websites are set up, you can move around in many of these museums just as if you were actually there.

One of the things that I found I needed in almost every interactive museum was the plug-in I mentioned earlier called "QuickTime Video." Because of the live feel that QuickTime offers, many web designers are using it. You can download a FREE viewer at www.apple.com/quicktime. It installs in a two-part process that you may not be familiar with. It first downloads an "installer" program that's about 300K in size. Next, you run this "installer" and it will download the main 6 meg program. Just follow the directions and you'll be all right. It will self-install into your browser. With QuickTime, you'll be able to watch multimedia movies complete with sound and video. I found that I needed this plug-in in about half of the websites I visited.

If you haven't logged onto any virtual museums yet, you are in for a real treat. Art, sculpture, technology, history…all the wonders of the world can be found online, just waiting for you to discover them. Reach me at randy@randybenjamin.com.