Free! The Guggenheim has put 65 modern art books and catalogues online. 

From OpenCulture:

In recent days, the museum has made 65 art catalogues available online, all free of charge. The catalogues offer an intellectual and visual introduction to the work of Alexander Calder, Edvard Munch, Francis Bacon, Gustav Klimt & Egon Schiele, and Kandinsky. Plus there are other texts (e.g., Masterpieces of Modern Art and Abstract Expressionists Imagists) that tackle meta movements and themes.

Now let me give you a few handy instructions to get you started. 1.) Select a text from the collection. 2.) Click the “Read Catalogue Online” button. 3.) Start reading the book in the pop-up browser, and use the controls at thevery bottom of the pop-up browser to move through the book. 4.) If you have any problems accessing these texts, you can find alternate versions on Archive.org, which lets you download books in multiple formats – ePUB, PDF and the rest.

Here is another “Open Learning” resource, this time from the Open University. You have to sign up (it’s free) and then you have access to a wide range subjects and short courses to choose from.

It’s all there: science, arts and humanities, law, maths and stats, languages etc. The resources are multimedia and can be downloaded. What’s more, they are open source.

Each module also has it’s own forum where you can discuss with others what you have learned or what you are struggling with and a section called “learning tools” offers tips and tools for those who haven’t been in education for a while and are breaking back in (or just those of who who have developed bad habits), for example note taking, where to look for info, learning journals etc. Some of the modules also act as introductions to learning and researching in a certain area (e.g. Finding information in Arts and History (LIB_1))

And for Museum people units of interest might include:

• Musee de Louvre (A216_1)
• Word and image (E301_1)
• Language and thought: introducing representation (AA308_3)
• Goya (A207_4)
• Reading visual images (DD100_6)
• Engendering citizenship (D218_6)