LOS ANGELES, CA.- The J. Paul Getty Museum announced it has joined nearly two dozen museums worldwide in posting videos on ArtBabble, an online video-sharing forum created by the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

On ArtBabble, the Getty joins the Guggenheim, Art Institute of Chicago, MoMA, LACMA, and others sharing their videos. “ArtBabble is a truly innovative, dynamic site for art-related videos. It’s quickly building a community of art lovers by fostering discussion, sharing and exploration,” says Erin Coburn, head of the Getty’s Collection Information and Access department, a unit charged with creating and delivering interpretive information about the Museum’s collections and exhibitions.

In addition to joining ArtBabble, the Getty recently launched its presence on YouTube. “We produce videos with an eye toward their life and usefulness beyond our own galleries, and YouTube and ArtBabble are ideal sites for sharing our material,” says Coburn.

Thanks to these online channels, a Getty video will be seen by visitors to exhibitions of Spanish polychrome sculpture in the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the National Gallery and the Museo Salzillo in Spain.

“We receive many requests for copies of our videos for use by other educational and cultural institutions,” says Coburn. “These channels let users easily embed, download or stream high-quality copies for their own educational use and distribution.”

In addition to disseminating video online, the Getty recently began posting images of the Getty Center and Getty Villa on Flickr, including photos of visitors and the artwork they create in the Getty Villa’s Family Forum, exploring the imagery used by ancient artists.

Over at The Commons on Flickr, a special site within Flickr for images in the public domain housed in archives, museums and libraries, the Getty Research Institute has made postcards of Algiers available, in connection with its recent exhibition “Walls of Algiers: Narratives of the City,” which explored the effect of French colonialism on Algiers from 1830 to 1962.

“With all these channels we are working to make our collections accessible to anyone with an internet connection, no matter where they are in the world, and to create opportunities to engage with the public more directly,” says Ron Hartwig, vice president for communications at the J. Paul Getty Trust.