The best museum exhibits are always just out of reach for me. I might not make it to New York in time to catch Poiret: King of Fashion at the Met, and I haven't figured out yet how to get to October 2000 - January 2001 to see Art Nouveau, 1890-1914 at the National Gallery. Curses, but that time travel is late in getting here.

All that being said, there's some value to exploring museums on the web. Not much, but some, I guess. The aforementioned National Gallery has a decent enough site on the aforementioned Art Nouveau exhibit, although it has one fatal flaw: it presumes that the visitor is far more interested in the exhibit itself than in its content. Bad form, National Gallery.

This is cheating, a little, as I actually saw this exhibition in person eight years ago, but it was outstanding: Nicholas and Alexandra: The Last Imperial Family of Tsarist Russia. It's presumably more depressing than was the Art Nouveau exhibition, but I rather like being so engrossed by a museum exhibit. Besides which, the items were stunning.

Then there's the most fun exhibition site I've found so far -- for the Victoria & Albert Museum's International Arts and Crafts, which ran in 2005. This site actually includes a program that lets you design your own Arts and Crafts tile and, subject to site approval, add it to an online gallery. Whee! It's the little things that amuse me, sadly.