The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has just taken an impressive step toward sharing its vast collection with the public. The Museum has uploaded roughly 400,000 digital images for the free use of academics, students, and anyone working with "scholarly not-for-profit" ideas. The images are under the title "Open Access for Scholarly Content" (OASC). They include works which the Museum has decided are not copyright protected but are in the public's interest. Most of the pieces have not been seen on the Internet prior to this. Here is an extraordinary resource that should help to fulfill the underlying promise of the Web.

A site called Daily Overview is offering views of the Earth from satellites that are worth seeing. Unlike NASA's images, which tend to focus on the natural environment, these show how humanity has impacted the landscape and really give food for thought.

An artist from the U.K., called INSA, has taken shots of graffiti art from city neighborhoods and created animated gifs with them. INSA nicknames these moving images "gif-iti". You can see more work by INSA at his site. Note: these pieces are provocative: he describes them as a "world where art, product, graffiti, fetishism and desire collide".

This site is decidedly more commercial than fine art but fun nonetheless (do the two have to be incompatible?). Addidas has produced new shoes for soccer players in time for the FIFA World Cup in Brazil. Their bold graphics are worth seeing, let alone wearing. Speaking of shoes, you can now design your own athletic shoes at Reebok's site, an excellent use of the Internet's interactive abilities.

Frank Gehry has returned to his creative roots once again with the design for the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. Too many of his firm's recent pieces have appeared rather humdrum, but this architecture speaks with a fresh voice.

For decades I have watched with joy the organic shapes of William Latham's work. Latham is one of the early creators of digital art. His latest exhibition uses large translucent curtains and video projections of evolutionary forms. Latham's Mutator software produces shapes which he describes as "evolution driven by aesthetics". More information about Latham can be found at iMAL Center for Digital Cultures and Technology.

In case you doubt that the times they are a changin', an algorithm has been appointed to the Board of Directors of a venture capital firm. The algorithm, named Vital, will cast its vote for or against investing in companies. It has already signalled its consent to two such investments.

Kara Walker has been known for her black and white cut-out figures, signifying the powerful and the powerless, the results of being in either group, the resonance of black/death and white/shining. Now Walker has devised a large sculptural piece entitled: "At the behest of Creative Time Kara E. Walker has confected: A Subtlety or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant". The title is surely a mouthful, but not nearly so dominant as the piece itself. Pure white, 75 1/2 feet long and 35 1/2 feet high, the sculpture is loaded with metaphor, history, and innuendo. There is more than a mouthful to absorb and contemplate here.

By now you have heard about the prizes awarded at the Cannes Film Festival, but I wanted you to be aware of the portrayal of JMW Turner by director Mike Leigh. Timothy Spall, in the lead role, has brought the robust character of the British landscape painter to vivid life. As Spall says of his portrayal, "I like to paint angels in anguish". Turner's idiosyncrasies are acknowledged: he mixes his spit with the paint because he likes the consistency it gives. His acute loneliness is also illuminated, along with his inability to acknowledge the offspring of his liaisons. The Guardian newspaper calls the film a triumph for the director, the actors, and the cinematographers.

In the year of her 76th birthday, Maya Angelou reminds us what a superb writer she is. If you haven't already read it, her poem "Phenomenal Woman" is deeply moving. If you have, it is worth a second visit. Note: As I publish this, Maya has died. She was 86.

In an article entitled "Vivien Maier and the Problem of Difficult Women", the New Yorker magazine introduces us to a secretive and obsessive street photographer who worked as a Nanny in Chicago while taking hundreds of thousands of photographs. We can thank an amateur historian named John Maloof for rescuing this body of work at an auction in a Chicago suburb in 2007. The discovery of Maier's work and her life are documented in a film by Maloof called "Finding Vivian Meier".

Can paintings be both frantic and serene? Jacqueline Humphries seems to have found the answer. Her canvases reflect both qualities, seen as well at her own website.

I don't hear as much about Frank Stella these days as I used to. His colorful abstractions have morphed from flat panels into architectural panels and now into sculpture. As you would expect, the sculptures are aggressive assaults on space, yet remain playful and engaging. It is refreshing to watch the progress of this gifted artist. These two sites will take you on a visual journey through Stella's outpit, glorious indeed.