The Metropolitan Museum Of Art

For some unknown reason, it has been quite some time since I last visited the web site for the Met. It was a wonderful experience. It's beautiful and classically designed. My appreciation for the exquisite aesthetic aside however, my favorite part is the searchable Collection Database. While they don't have every work from their collection of over 2 million online, they do have over 140,000. Once you pull the work up, you can zoom in into some surprisingly intense detail, plus they also document the work's provenance - which I've always found fascinating.

For example, you can learn that Pablo Picasso's "Girl Reading At A Table" (a 1934 portrait of his mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter) was given by the artist to Peter Watson of London in 1939 - 1945/6). From there it appears in the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel A. Marx, Chicago (1945/6 - 1964); then Mrs. Florene M. Schoenborn (widow of Samuel A. Marx), New York (1964 - 1996) and then to the Met.