Online Museums, From Interesting to Unique to Freakishly Strange

There are many great museums in the world, but sadly most people will only ever get to visit a fraction of them. Fortunately, a lot of them have an excellent online presence—along with a huge number of less-great museums, many of which have no real-world counterpart.

I recently happened upon an excellent site that collects links to these online presences called, appropriately enough, the Museum of Online Museums. I’ve only just scratched the surface of the museums, but have already found some excellent sites with online galleries and games suitable for my kids. There’s also some fascinating sites for adults, of course. Not all of the links are up-to-date—I found a few 404s—but it’s well worth checking out nonetheless.

It’s a rare list that includes the National Gallery of Art, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Condom Wrappers of the 30s and 40s (which is, in case it wasn’t obvious, not one of the sites I plan to share with my kids). My favorites among the online-only museums include A Few Thousand Science Fiction Magazines, the Philip K Dick Book Cover Gallery, and the Vintage Poster Collection (some images slightly NSFW in an Art Deco sort of way).