Welcome to the Smithsonian Institution, the world's largest museum complex and research organization composed of 19 museums, 9 research centers, the National Zoo and over 140 affiliate museums around the world. The Smithsonian museums have recently embarked on an agressive campaign to digitize the over 137 million artifacts under the Smithsonian Digital Initiative in an effort to deliver a robust virtual museum exhibit and museum on demand model.

The Museum of Russian Icons was founded as a non-profit educational museum by Gordon Lankton. The collection includes about 340 Russian icons, the largest collection of its kind in North America. It is one of the largest private collections outside of Russia and can be viewed as virtual museum exhibits. The collection spans six centuries, and includes important historical icons dating from the earliest periods of icon painting up to the present.