This Free Trick Turned My TV Into a Rotating Art Gallery

This Free Trick Turned My TV Into a Rotating Art Gallery | PCMag

Skip to Main Content

PCMag editors select and review products independently. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing.

(Credit: Will Greenwald, Gustave Caillebotte)

Your TV doesn't have to be a black rectangle when you aren't actively watching it. You could be using it to display fine art. That's why most smart TV platforms offer a gallery or slideshow mode that turns any TV that supports it into a big digital picture frame, and many go even further with entire curated art stores with collections accessible for a monthly fee or generative AI tools that produce an image from a voice prompt. You might not want to go down those paths, though, whether you want to avoid paying a subscription or completely eschew generative AI for any number of reasons. Fortunately, there’s another option to consider that lets you showcase beautiful works of art on your TV, entirely for free and without any ethical compromises.Museums across the world have massive digital collections of their exhibits. Photos and scans of art, literature, and historical objects can be found if you know where to look. That includes thousands upon thousands of famous paintings. Accessing those collections and browsing their contents is easy. To get them on your TV, all you need to do is download the high-resolution files, transfer them to a USB drive or a cloud photo storage service supported by your TV, and enjoy the art. I'll detail how that works on different TV platforms below, after a few pointers and information about several of the best museum digital collections I've found.Finding Free Art for Your TV: What You Need to KnowThere are two important details to keep in mind before you seek out your favorite art pieces. First, paintings and photos are just two kinds of items in a given museum’s collection, and they’re seldom the most numerous. You May Also Like

Second, not every painting or photo will be available as a free, high-resolution download. Just because a work is displayed in a museum doesn't mean it's free of copyright legal constraints. You want art that's identified as Open Access, which means it’s in the public domain and you can legally get a high-resolution scan (at least 3,840 by 2,160 pixels) to do justice to the work on your TV.Fortunately, most digital collections have relatively simple ways to filter for Open Access works. In the search options, make sure that the results are limited to paintings, prints, and/or photographs, and that "Open Access," "Has Images," and/or "Download Available" are selected. Keep in mind that the highest-resolution image available might be much bigger than your TV needs, resulting in a slow load time. When multiple size options are available, download the ones that are closest to 2,160 pixels high.The Best Free Museum Digital Art Collections Here are some of the best digital art collections available, along with how to search for them. I've also included some of my favorites from each one, based on a light perusal and a complete lack of art history education. Art Institute of Chicago

Francesco Guardi, “The Garden of Palazzo Contarini del Zaffo” (Art Institute of Chicago)

Chicago is home to one of the United States' largest and oldest art museums, with a digital collection that’s breathtaking, especially if you like Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. Among the more than 1,800 public-domain paintings are many great works by Cezanne, Monet, Renoir, Seurat, and van Gogh. On the search page, check "Public domain" under Show Only, and "Painting" under Artwork Type.Highlights:George Seurat, “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte”Paul Cezanne, “The Bay of Marseille, Seen from L’Estaque”Claude Monet, “Water Lilies”Vincent van Gogh, “Self Portrait”Francesco Guardi, “The Garden of Palazzo Contarini del Zaffo”Getty Museum Collection

Vincent van Gogh, “Irises” (Getty Museum Collection)

Getty is best known as a commercial stock photo clearinghouse, but it also has an entire educational branch with its own digital museum collection. It includes not only almost 800 paintings, but more than 70,000 historical photos, all Open Access. On the Search page, check "Open Access" and "Has Images," and select "Paintings" and "Photographs" in the Object Types drop-down menu.Highlights: Joseph Ducreux, “Self-Portrait, Yawning”Francesco Zuccarelli, “Landscape with the Education of Bacchus”Rembrandt van Rijn, “The Abduction of Europa”Christen Schjellerup Købke, “The Forum, Pompeii, with Vesuvius in the Distance”Vincent van Gogh, “Irises”Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Claude Monet, “In the Woods at Giverny: Blanche Hoschedé at Her Easel with Suzanne Hoschedé Reading” (Los Angeles County Museum of Art)

LACMA has an impressive digital collection with more than 1,000 public-domain works you can download, spanning a wide range of styles from abstract to tenebrist. Check "Public Domain" and “Works With Images" on the search page, and select "Paintings" under Classifications in the filter menu.Highlights:Paul Mondrian, “Composition in White, Red, and Yellow”Valentin de Boulogne, “A Musical Party”Jacob van Ruisdael, “The Great Oak”Claude Monet, “In the Woods at Giverny: Blanche Hoschedé at Her Easel with Suzanne Hoschedé Reading”Benjamin West, “Thetis Bringing Armor to Achilles”Mauritshuis

Jan Steen, “Peasants Dancing at an Inn” (Mauritshuis)

If you like the Dutch Masters, this museum in the Hague has you covered. Its digital collection includes more than 900 works by Rembrandt, Steen, Vermeer, and many others, and every one of them is free to download in high resolution for non-commercial use.Highlights:Johannes Vermeer, “View of Delft”Jan van der Hayden, “View of Oudezijds Voorburgwal with the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam”Jan Steen, “Peasants Dancing at an Inn”Jan Brueghel the Elder & Peter Paul Rubens, “The Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man”Frederik de Moucheron & Johannes Lingelbach, “Italian Landscape”Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jacques Louis David, “The Death of Socrates” (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The MET in New York City is one of the greatest museums on the East Coast, and its digital collection is massive, with nearly 9,000 paintings available in Open Access. On the search page, check "Has Open Access" and select "Paintings" under Object type/material in the filter menu.Highlights:Thomas Cole, "View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow"Jan Steen, "Merry Company on a Terrace"Paul Cezanne, "The Card Players"Jacques Louis David, "The Death of Socrates"Jean-Baptiste Greuze, "Broken Eggs"National Gallery of Art

Juan Gris, “Glass and Checkerboard” (National Gallery of Art)

The Smithsonian isn't the only world-class art museum in Washington, D.C. with an equally world-class digital collection. The National Gallery of Art has more than 2,600 public-domain paintings to download and display on your TV.Highlights:Juan Gris, “Glass and Checkerboard”George Bellows, “New York”Felix Vallotton, “The Church of Souain”Edouard Vuillard, “Theodore Duret”William McGregor Paxton, “The House Maid”Smithsonian Institution

Tawaraya Sotatsu, “Waves at Matsushima” (Smithsonian Institution)

The Smithsonian is the world's largest museum complex, so it’s no surprise that it has huge art collections. Its digital collections include more than 6,000 Open Access paintings, with particularly large selections of American and East Asian works. To browse them, check "Free to Use (CC0)" on the search page, and select "Paintings" under "Object Types."Highlights: Recommended by Our Editors Pro Tip: This Is the Most Important TV Setting to Tweak for Watching Live Sports The Best TVs for 2026 Is Your TV Randomly Turning On or Off? 10 Quick Tips to Solve the Problem

Tawaraya Sotatsu, “Waves at Matsushima”Cooper Hewitt, “Sunlight and Shadow”Charles Ethan Porter, “Still Life with Roses”Jerome Myers, “Italians in Jefferson