Revolutionary Enhancements

By Stan Parchin
Thursday July 14, 2005

Just in time for Bastille Day, two newly accessible and affordable sources of information for those interested in Art History have become available.

(1) Check out the Musée du Louvre's new website. By museum standards, it's pretty good. Yes, there's an English version. No museum's website is comprehensive when it comes to its own collections. But this one is a major improvement over the Louvre's first attempt.

(2) Manhattan's renovated and expanded Museum of Modern Art, whose $20.00 admission fee is seen by some as prohibitive, has just waived its fee for recorded tours to its permanent collections and special exhibitions, thanks to Bloomberg News. MoMA's free recorded tours are available in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Japanese.

In addition, MoMA's website provides free audio files that can be downloaded onto MP-3 players.

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From your Guide: Stan Parchin, Senior Correspondent for Museums/Special Exhibitions, is a specialist in ancient, late-medieval and Renaissance art and history. His interests include: the art and culture of Old and New Kingdom Egypt; the Italian and Northern Renaissances; Church history; and witchcraft, heresy and social dissent in late-medieval and early Modern Europe.