The Art Institute of Chicago. Includes activities for children. Excellent opening page with animated changes of the art images. Includes exploring “A Mysterious Mummy” and “Thousands of Dots” (about a painting by Georges Seurat).
http://www.artic.edu/aic/kids

The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. The museum offers nontraditional learning opportunities for children and their families. Includes explorations of dinosaurs and visits to “Rex’s Lending Library”
http://www.childrensmuseum.org/

The Exploratorium, San Francisco. An online version of a hands-on museum in San Francisco that permits you to do your own cow’s eye dissection or learn the science behind a home run. Be sure to visit the “Learning Studio.”
http://www.exploratorium.edu

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Utterly fabulous site combining multiple museum holdings in an over 75,000-item database. Images are excellent, and you can send your comments and knowledge about the paintings to the museum. Requires plugins.
http://www.thinker.org

Illinois State Museum, Springfield. Provides online exhibits about the Ice Ages and prehistoric mammals as well as a trip back to our Midwestern lands 16,000 years ago.
http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. This is one of the largest and finest art museums in the world. Its collections include more than two million works of art—several hundred thousand of which are on view at any given time—spanning more than 5,000 years of world culture, from prehistory to the present.
http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/index.asp

The National Air and Space Museum Web Site, Washington, D.C. A part of the Smithsonian Institution, this museum contains resources about flight, airplanes, and space travel.
http://www.nasm.si.edu/

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. The National Gallery of Art and its collections belong to the people of the United States of America. European and American paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, and selected works on paper. Full-screen views of whole paintings and details allow close study. The site also includes information on artists and on the museum’s facilities and services.
http://www.nga.gov/

National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Contains the largest collection of Canadian art in the world. Contains a virtual tour. Includes sections on Intuit Art, Contemporary Art, and European, American, and Asian Art. Requires plugins.
http://national.gallery.ca/

National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C. Part of the Smithsonian Institution, this museum is devoted to the protection and study of the life, languages, literature, history, and arts of Native Americans.
http://www.si.edu/nmai/

Salem (Mass.) Witch Museum. Useful since kids study this area of history. “Haunted Happenings,” a commercial part of Salem stuff, is very neat.
http://www.salemwitchmuseum.com/

Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Great site for gaining an understanding of the natural world and our place in it.
http://www.mnh.si.edu

University of California Museum of Paleontology, Berkeley. If you like paleontology, you’ll enjoy the online exhibits here (recommended for third grade and up).
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/

WebMuseum, Paris. This is an exciting collection of resources on many subjects ranging from Paul Cézanne, to information on Paris, to Medieval art treasures. Many images can be enlarged for closer viewing.
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/