Art (Including Computer Art) & Music

VISUAL ART

• Study Art
  Want to learn about cave paintings, realism, op art, or pop art? Need to know the difference between oil paint and tempera? Ever wonder what people are looking for when they stare at paintings in a gallery? This fun site has a time line and glossary that will guide you through the interesting world of art and artists. It provides quick but helpful answers to your questions about artists, artistic periods, colors, materials, the elements and principles of art, and much more.

• Artcyclopedia: The Fine Art Search Engine
  Suppose you have to write a paper describing the work of artist Grandma Moses, or explaining Gothic art, or discussing some famous landscape painters. If you have no idea where to start, go straight to Artcyclopedia—a lifesaving art search engine. Just type in a name, a title, a museum, an art movement, or an artistic style, and it will quickly generate a list of helpful online resources and viewable art related to your topic.

• Art History Resources on the Web
  This site, put together by an art history professor at Sweet Briar College in Virginia, is yet another gold mine of art information. It provides detailed outlines divided by historical period. Each outline is filled with topics that are linked to helpful online resources. For example, clicking on Middle Ages will get you to an outline that includes Romanesque. Clicking on Romanesque will get you a list of hot links to places that will tell you about and show you Romanesque art. Give it a try—it's very handy.

• The National Gallery of Art
  Have you checked in on YOUR art gallery lately? That's right—the National Gallery of Art and its collections belong to all citizens of the United States. Thanks to this great web site, it isn't necessary to travel to Washington DC to enjoy its fine collection of paintings, sculptures, and graphic arts from the Middle Ages to the present. The web site allows you to search for and view art in the collection and take virtual exhibition tours. It also offers in-depth studies of artists and works of art.

• The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Explore and Learn
  The Metopolitan Museum of Art in New York City has more than two million pieces of art in its collection, and the collection represents cultures all over the world from ancient to modern times. Don't worry if you're unable to make an expensive trip to their Fifth Avenue location. They've been kind enough to bring some of their collection to us on their informative web site. In fact, the Explore and Learn section of the site is geared toward students who are researching art topics. Here you will find information on specific pieces, artists, and artistic periods. You can do searches, try your hand at activities, or log onto the museum's online collection.

• Museum of Modern Art: The Collection
  If you want to see one of the finest collections of modern art around, check out the web site for the MoMA—Museum of Modern Art in New York City. This link will take you right to the museum's online collection, which provides an excellent overview of modern architecture and design, drawing, film and video, painting and sculpture, photography, and illustrated books. Simply click on the category you want and view rows of small images. Clicking on an image will enlarge it and bring up information about it.

• Ancient Art: The Detroit Institute of Art
  Art from the ancient Mediterranean world (Egypt, Greece, and Rome) and from the ancient Near East (Islam) is an important and influential part of world art history. This site explores, through pictures and text, some of the more important artistic achievements in these cultures. Categories include sculpture, architecture, mummies, weapons, armor, jewelry, and clothing. Simply click on your area of interest, and away you go to another time and place.

• Exploring Leonardo
  Many people know Leonardo da Vinci only as the painter who created the Mona Lisa, but this Italian Renaissance genius was a man of many accomplishments. This great site, created by Boston's Museum of Science, focuses on Leonardo the painter, the musician, the scientist, the engineer, and the inventor. Here you will find biographical information, examples of his artistic work, pictures of his machines, links to more Leonardo information, and much more.

• Microsoft Art Collection: Hope, Anguish, and the Berlin Wall
  We all know the stuff hanging in museums is supposed to be art, but do we recognize art when it appears in unlikely places? This site highlights patterns of graffiti on the infamous Berlin Wall—the wire and concrete wall erected by communist East Germany in 1961 and dismantled in 1989. Go to the site to get historical information, to see some unusual art, and to think about art in a whole new way.

• Animation 101 by Warner Brothers
  Do you ever wonder how a cartoon gets from an artist's brain to the movie or television screen? This site will introduce you to the steps of professional animation, from the brainstorming of ideas, to the creating of pictures, to the adding of sound and movement. You can jump to a particular step of the animation process that interests you or you can go through each page to get an overview of the entire process.

COMPUTER ART

• Inside Art: An Art History Game -- During a trip to an art museum, you are sucked into a famous painting. Can you use clues to guess the painting's identity--and escape?

• Pintura's Place -- Take part in the adventures of A. Pintura, Art Detective, as he solves mysteries in the art world. This site is really fun, and it's loaded with information about famous paintings and artists.

• KIDLINK Worldwide Computer Art Exhibition -- See what young computer artists from around the world have created.

• The Clip Art Connection

• Free Art for HTML

• Barry's Clip Art Server

MUSIC

• Music Education at Datadragon
  This fun site is a great introduction to the study of music. In one section, you can find information on musical genres such as jazz, reggae, rock, Celtic, classical, country, and blues. Each genre is given a brief description, a list of signature musicians, and links to related sites. In another section, you can learn the basics of reading music. In still another section, you get a brief overview of different types of instruments, from woodwinds to brass to strings to percussion. Not only that—you can click on each featured instrument and actually hear what it sounds like. As an added bonus, the site tells about interesting stuff that has happened on any given day in music history.

• The Instrument Encyclopedia
  Hey, there's more to life than your run-of-the-mill guitar, flute, trumpet, and drum set. For instance, there's the zither, the duct flute, the flugel horn, and the talking drum. Not sure what these are? Then check out this interesting web site by Music Heritage Network. Sure, they have plenty of information about the instruments we all know and love. But they also have information on instruments that are less common or that come from other times and other cultures. You can search by general instrument type, such as percussion, string, wind, and electronic. You can also search by country of origin using a colorful map of the world. The site also features a music glossary.

• Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum
  This site represents an important part of our history. No, it's not about elections, wars, and the passing of laws. It's about what¹s been playing on our radios, record players, and CD players as the country has grown and changed over the years. Here at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame site you can search for information about influential artists, different styles of rock and roll, musical fashion, and what our rock music says about us at any given time in history. You can also look up artists who have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This site is a good place to start if you are writing about or studying American popular culture.

• The Classical Music Pages
  So you have to write a paper about the Baroque period of classical music, a female composer, or the history of opera? This site is a good place to start your research. Just a few clicks gets you information on classical music and composers. Subjects are arranged in the following ways: by musical epoch, or period; by musical form; or by composer's names. The site also provides a brief history of Western music and a look at the musical concepts of melody, harmony, and rhythm.

• Early Music by Women Composers
  Music history isn't only about all those famous European men—the Mozarts and the Beethovens of the world . This web site focuses exclusively on the role of women in music through the years. It features an interesting tour of women's early music history, a chronology, a list of specific musical works, descriptions of musical instruments, and stories of how women have connected music with other art forms.

• WWW Music Database
  Sometimes you just need to find that perfect song—the one that will liven up your presentation, speech, or dramatic reading; the one that demonstrates a particular culture or style of music; the one that reminds you of a person, place, or time in your life. This handy database allows you to search for music in a number of different ways. You can search by album title, artist, song title, musical style, language, or country of origin.

• What Is Jazz?
  This site provides an excellent overview of Jazz—the style referred to as "America's classical music." The site's text comes from a four-part lecture series by noted jazz pianist and historian Dr. Billy Taylor. His lectures cover the roots of Jazz, in African-American slavery, through ragtime, swing, bop, and progressive jazz. With just a click you can also learn what Taylor has to say about specific artists and styles.

• Ludwig van Beethoven: The Magnificent Master
  Just who was that famous German composer Beethoven? Well, he was the greatest composer of his day, and he produced some of the best-known classical pieces in the world. Not only that, he built his reputation as composer and musician even as he slowly lost his hearing over the course of his life. Check out this site for information about his life and work, to listen to examples of his music, and to find out what folks are still saying about Beethoven's contributions to the world of music.

• The Mozart Project
  Mozart is widely considered one of the greatest composers in history. The Mozart Project presents the most important events in Mozart's life in a time line that also shows world events that took place at the same time. You'll also find a catalog of Mozart's life work, cross-referenced chronologically as well as by category. The site does not only list compositions, but offers detailed insights into each work. And, you can also listen to clips of his music.