Rijksmuseum

Available in a number of languages, this site has more than 6,000 pages of text, 4,000 illustrations and 150 QuickTime tours (according to the designers!).

The initial page, beautiful as it is, can, however, be initially quite confusing. It is only when you move the cursor over the arrows at the very right of the page that any of the options to the main page, rather than the featured exhibition, appear. These options allow access to the online shop, latest news of the museum, future exhibitions, and descriptions of the collection.

The museum runs a very full calendar, with events every day and film showings almost every half hour. Ticket requests for future exhibitions can be emailed to the relevant local agent; a list is provided on the site.

SPECIAL FEATURES

Virtual Tour There are virtual tours for each room in the collection, which must have taken simply ages to do. The usual caveats about QuickPlayer tours apply (image quality, download speed), though care seems to have been taken to have the rooms lit properly. Sensibly, the Virtual Tour screens have a series of links to images and descriptions of the highlights of the collection

Online Collection Database Themes, techniques and the history of art are described through the analysis of 12,500 objects from the collection. Concepts marked in yellow can be clicked and definitions appear; thus, an entry for Dürer also provides descriptions of Classicism and the Renaissance as artistic concepts. These may well be beneath some people but, by contrast, the shadow and light in Rembrandt's famous Night Watch painting is rigorously analysed over 12 screens of images and text.