Lines and Colors has a great article on displaying your art on the web. Not only is it full of great advice, it also takes the form of an angry sarcastic rant. (So, it’s funny and useful!) Here’s a bit that points out one of my pet peeves about art sites:
Use tiny, square thumbnails with a nondescript crop from some obscure corner of the artwork. You wouldn’t want someone to miss the fun of playing “Concentration” when trying to remember where a particular image is; and if the thumbnails clearly described the images, visitors might actually go to one they like in the eleven seconds they have to look at your site.
Even better, why bother with thumbnails or preview images when clever little dots, squares or enigmatic shapes are so much more artsy? Everybody already knows how cool your stuff is, they’ll certainly take the trouble to click through all the shapes to find an image. Plus if they come back looking for a particular image, they have the fun of discovering all over again!
Also covered are the benefits of having a long complicated domain name and putting everything in frames. This was written by someone who has looked at a lot of art sites and knows their business.
Creative Creativity 