Online Art Gallery and Exhibtion

Purpose and Type of Online Art Galleries
An online art gallery refers to a website that display artworks. Usually, the online gallery is run as a business, with the purpose of displaying the artwork being to promote it to potential buyers. Other variations include:
A contemporary art gallery displaying art work from their current, future, or past exhibitions, most often to promote the exhibitions, rather than with a view to selling the work via the website.
An artist hosting their own gallery, either on their own website or on other websites. This approach is usually adopted with a view to increasing the percentage of the sale price the artist themselves receive.
Viewing Art Online
Viewing art online is an improving experience. Ideally, art should appear exactly as it would if seen in the real world, but there are factors that limit the extent to which this is possible. Factors include:
Whether or not natural lighting can be approximated
The extent to which a viewer is able to see the art from various angles i.e. other than head-on
The impact on art that uses layering or raised effects when it is not viewable as a three dimensional object
The increased adoption of broadband, and improvement in web programming techniques opens up the opportunity for improved display of art online. Whilst no online gallery yet uses light filtering effects, and 3d photography is not yet available, much richer images and improved display techniques provide the viewer with a much richer experience. One example of this approach is Exemplars.

Online Art Collection
There are a number of online art catalogues and galleries that have been developed independently of the support of any individual Museum. Many of these are attempts to develop galleries of artwork that are encyclopedic or historical in focus, while others are commercial efforts to sell the work of contemporary artists.
A limited number of such sites have independent importance in the artworld. The large auction houses, such as Sotheby's and Christie's maintain large online databases of art which they have auctioned or are auctioning. The site artnet.com, founded in the late 1990s, hosts an exclusive, fully illustrated database of Fine Art and Design auction lots sold worldwide since 1985. Bridgeman Art Library serves as a central source of reproductions of artwork, with access limited to museums, art dealers and other professionals or professional organizations.

Exhibitions
Art exhibitions are traditionally the space in which art objects (in the most general sense) meet an audience. The exhibit is universally understood to be for some temporary period unless, as is rarely true, it is stated to be a "permanent exhibition". In American English, they may be called "exhibit", "exposition" (the French word) or "show". In UK English, they are always called "exhibitions" or "shows", and an individual item in the show is an "exhibit".
Such expositions may present pictures, drawings, video, sound, installation, performance, interactive art or sculptures by individual artists, groups of artists or collections of a specific form of art. The art works may be presented in museums, art halls, art clubs or private art galleries, or at some place the principal business of which is not the display or sale of art, such as a coffeehouse. An important distinction is noted between those exhibits where some or all of the works are for sale, normally in private art galleries, and those where they are not. Sometimes the event is organized on a specific occasion, like a birthday, anniversary or commemoration.
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