A treasure chest of art resources…

For those of you who sigh at the increasing amounts of time we all inevitably end up spending looking at computer screens, you may have mixed feelings about the treasure chest of art resources I am going to outline below: yet more time on the web!  Its the inevitable outcome of more than 20 years of growth on the web that we find a huge array of fascinating art resources on the web, increasing in depth and breadth with every day that goes by.  The trouble is sorting the the good stuff from all the flotsam and jetsam.  Here are a few tips to short-circuit your trawl through the muddy waters of the internet, drawn from the most recent Artists’ Yearbook.  I’m just going to list my top picks for now, but if you find it useful, I may come back with round two!   As far as I am concerned the internet is truly the best way of keeping up to date with what is going on on the contemporary arts scene.  Like it or loathe it, I challenge you not to gain stimulus of some kind from at least the first of these sites….

http://www.saatchionline.com/ This site introduces itself on its homepage as follows:   Discover art.  Get discovered.  We are an open social platform to provide the global art community a new way to discover, share, exhibit, promote, discuss and sell art online. We built this site for artists, art lovers, and anyone who appreciates a creative environment. We built this world for you.
http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp This site describes itself as the first art newspaper on the internet.  Easy to view layout led by images, into interesting stories that are doing the rounds about art of all kinds, from pre-Renaissance painting to the seriously conceptual.
http://www.culture24.org.uk/home This website is a British based, Arts Council sponsored catchall for culture.  It has a large art section within it, offers daily arts news and events bulletins, and publishes exhibition reviews.  It has listings information with more than three thousand venues including museums and galleries.
http://www.artsjournal.com/ This is a weekly digest of some of the best arts and cultural journalism in English today.  The website combs more than 200 arts magazines, newspapers etc every day.  A slight US dominance, its divided by subject: art, music, culture etc, so you can easily home in on your subject specialism.
http://absolutearts.com/ This website, though strongly biased towards American artists, is one of the largest art sites on the internet, and is a good place to start to get a view of the grassroots American art scene.  Having said that, the website is pretty difficult to navigate around, and over-packed with small text. It also has links to art blogs written by collectors, artists and curators from all round the world, as well as online galleries, that any artist can add to.

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