The Top 5 Best Online Art Exhibitions

In the wake of the pandemic, hybrid and full virtual art exhibitions are increasingly becoming the new standard.

The Top 5 Best Online Art Exhibitions, Dot Red
Virtual art exhibitions have become a valued means of experiencing art and conducting business, from emerging digital platforms to the world’s most prolific museums. Even as businesses, communities, and galleries re-open to welcome in-person guests in the wake of the pandemic, hybrid and full virtual art exhibitions are increasingly becoming the new standard.

Let’s learn what makes a successful virtual art exhibition, and explore today’s top virtual art exhibitions.

What is a Virtual Art Exhibition?

Visitors can remotely view and learn about collections that were once available only by physically traveling to a museum or gallery space.

Online art shows use videos, photos, and 360-degree images to transform real art exhibitions into online art exhibitions. Some incorporate augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), sound, or other multisensory elements.

Many virtual art exhibitions are free and open to anyone on the internet, while others require entrance fees or are for members only. Either way, visitors can remotely view and learn about collections that were once available only by physically traveling to a museum or gallery space. Understandably, some art enthusiasts still prefer in-person, real-life visits. But virtual art is gaining in popularity and digital art shows offer significant promotional advantages for artists and greater accessibility to art for admirers.

Physical galleries typically only accommodate limited audiences and cater to a niche audience of people who live nearby or are highly motivated and willing to travel to experience and see specific art exhibitions. In contrast, virtual art galleries can instantly reach a global audience 24/7 and according to the viewer’s individual preferences, schedule, and availability.

As awareness and familiarity with digital art appreciation grows, the online art exhibition format is becoming its own artistic medium. It offers new opportunities and mechanisms for elaborate, multisensory creative expression, and offers art lovers unique, inspiring experiences.

Features of the Best Online Art Exhibitions

Compared to admiring masterpieces of artwork in person, appreciating digital art on a screen is a different emotional process. The most compelling online art exhibitions recreate the intimacy of a gallery by using multisensory components that construct a unique and engaging experience.

Truly mesmerizing works of art leave the audience wondering about the artist as a person, their creative process, and from where their perspective derives and what it means. The best online art exhibitions elevate themselves by offering audiences unique insights that inspire their curiosity and answer their fervent questions.

1. Google Arts and Culture

Since early 2011, Google’s Arts and Culture project probably offers the most extensive online art database. It covers history’s most prominent works and artists from prehistory to contemporary art and everything in between. To view all the important masterpieces featured, one would have to travel to museums all around the world.

Google Arts and Culture greets guests with a vast, open library of virtual art galleries to explore from home or from anywhere with an internet connection. Users may navigate by artist, medium, movement, time period, subject, locale, theme, collections/museums, and popular topics. Guests can even save their favorite artworks and assemble their own collections to share.

In Virtual Gallery Tour mode, the massive platform offers Google Street View vantage points from the interiors of physical art exhibitions. UseGallery/Microscope View to zoom in close. Many exhibits feature select close-ups alongside intriguing explanations of artists, pieces, and details, like a virtual tour guide. In addition to educational resources, the platform integrates cool video and audio content.

Where and when:

https://artsandculture.google.com/explore

Initial release- February 2011. Available indefinitely.

2. Louvre Virtual Tours

The Louvre has made art collections from its Petite Galerie wing available online in Virtual Tours. Art enthusiasts are free to roam through the museum’s floor plan. Zoom in close, and read about the artists, pieces, and movements (in French).
Currently, there are four seasons of Petite Galerie collections available as Virtual Tours: The Advent of the Artist, Power Plays, The Body in Movement, and Founding Myths: From Hercules to Darth Vader. The Advent of the Artist ponders the classical and Renaissance artist with Delacroix, Rembrandt, Tintoret, and more.

The Louvre at Home is an extra immersive online educational room with podcasts and kids’ content. Also, experience 2020’s groundbreaking behind-the-scenes DaVinci VR experience: ‘Mona Lisa Beyond the Glass,’ also mobile-friendly.

Where and when:

https://www.louvre.fr/en/online-tours

Initial release- March 2021.

3. National Gallery Virtual Tours

Anyone can enjoy the National Gallery’s collection of over 2,600 paintings through a phone, desktop, or VR headset. Manually select images, zoom in, then read through their facts and descriptions.

Alternatively, delve into the narrated Director’s Choice virtual art exhibition, virtual reality tour of the Sainsbury Wing’s Renaissance art. Or, become hypnotized by “Sensing the Unseen: Step into Gossaert’s Adoration” with its poetry and interactive soundscapes.

Where and when:

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/visiting/virtual-tours

Available indefinitely.

4. Pace Online Exhibitions

Pace offers three “on view” collections. From September 15th to October 23rd, a real-world show and an exclusive online art show collide in Convergent Evolutions. This exhibition highlights Anthony Akinbola, Caitlin Cherry, Sam Gilliam, Sonia Gomes, Kylie Manning, RJ Messineo, Chibuike Uzoma, and Rachel Eulena Williams. Lucas Samaras debuts two NFTs from his XYZ series.

Between September 9th and October 23rd, peruse a selection from the late Thomas Nozkowski accompanied by the artist’s studio soundtrack, and read personal commentary from his son. Finally, browse six new Torkwase Dyson works between October 8th and November 6th, 2021.

Where and When:

https://www.pacegallery.com/online-exhibitions/

Fall 2021

5. Galleries Now

Get lost in an immense collection of online art shows in VR. Navigate through any online art gallery, and click for details and up-close images of the artwork. Wander through endless current art galleries in 360 degrees.

Where and when:

https://www.galleriesnow.net/vr-exhibitions/

Exhibition timelines vary.

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Art Changes the World; The World Changes Art

Living and creating during the global pandemic has profoundly influenced the business and cultural dynamics of art. The disruptive impact of shutdowns has inspired artists, galleries, and museums to take unprecedented control of how we share and appreciate art.

The internet has become an incredibly accessible and popular medium. The art world has embraced digital platforms to make art more accessible, audible, educational, exciting, and visible for people and communities across the world than ever before. Virtual and multisensory art exhibitions are the future of the modern art creative and business landscapes. An engrossing interactive space, Dot Red is a creatively rich digital destination that offers the most compelling and memorable online art exhibitions.