This is a great time to be an art lover on the web. Almost every major museum has a web site, and there are many pages on the web devoted to art. Some "image archives," as they are often called, have thousands of images. Among all of these choices, what makes The Athenaeum different? Why should you spend your valuable time here, instead of some other site? Below we list some of the things that set The Athenaeum apart.

There are only a handful free art archives as large as The Athenaeum. Currently we have over 49,000 artworks in our database, and because users of the site can submit new information, we are growing all of the time. Our goal is to become the biggest art resource on the web.

For some artists, we are already the best source on the web. Here are the top ten artists on our site (click and take a look):

Note: For a more complete list of how many works we have for each artist, visit this page.

At the moment, art is our strongest area, and we know that most of our visitors come for the art. But our goal is to have information about all aspects of the humanities - history, philosophy, literature, mythology, art history, religion, archaeology - well, you get the picture. This is our goal for several reasons. For one thing, we are interested in all of that stuff. Perhaps more importantly, we believe that all aspects of the humanities are intertwined. Why look at a painting of the Lady of Shalott without the poem that inspired it? The paintings of Caillebotte give us a valuable window into the world of the "new" Paris in the late 19th century. Wouldn't it be great, when reading Dante's Inferno, to be able to get short biographies of the people he meets, or to see artworks depicting various scenes? This is the way learning should work, but in practice it all gets divided up into academic boxes - history goes here, art goes there. We want to change that. It's a difficult task, but one worth working on. At the moment, The Athenaeum stores art, information about historical people, some geographic information, poetry, and a glossary. You can link from an artwork directly to the artist's biography, or from Louis XIV directly to the list of France's Rulers. As time goes on, we will add more branches of the humanities, and more ways to interconnect them. As far was we know, no other web site of similar size takes this approach.

Almost all other web sites force you to be a passive recipient of information - you just look at what they have for display, with no way to add your own voice to the discussion. The Athenaeum is built by its users, and no web site even comes close to the customized tools we give you to contribute. Members of The Athenaeum (joining is free, and we don't provide your information to anyone) can currently do all of the following things, and more:

• Add new art images, as well as various types of data about the artworks (who modelled for the artwork, studies, dates, descriptions, where it is, etc.)
• Add new records for historical persons, such as artists, poets, and rulers.
• Add poems.
• Add entries in the glossary.
• Add information about countries - enter history, the ruling line, or upload an image of the flag.
• Participate in our forums.
• Create multiple lists of artworks, with different themes. Create a "favorites" list, or use a list for a paper or project.
• Add notes and comments directly on the artwork and person pages. You can keep these notes private for yourself, or make them available for everyone.
• Choose which font you prefer.
• Reorder lists of artworks or people to look at things the way you want

There are more things we haven't listed here, and more on the way. No other art or humanities web site gives you such an important role in its development. Plus, we do all of our own programming, so we can be very responsive. If you want to do something, and there's no way to do it, just ask!

Many art web sites hawk wares at every turn. Each time you look at an artwork, you are confronted with a distracting banner ad, or links to buy books, posters, movies, lunchboxes, and who knows what else. We understand those motivations; after all, hosting images is expensive, and we pay for this whole site out of our own pockets. However, we think there has to be a better way. We will eventually offer an interface to shop for things, so that if you choose, you can help support our operations that way. But it will be something you can turn on or off as you please. We want our site to be a respite from the crass, commercialized world outside.

We want to make this site useful to both the casual user and the scholar. Our eventual goal is for The Athenaeum to be *the* place to browse, research, and discuss the humanities. As such, we want your feedback. There are lots of ideas, and we have to choose which ones to work on. What do you want? Let us know, at athenaeum@the-athenaeum.org.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy browsing the site!