Using your TV to display fine art when you aren't actively watching is a great idea, which is why most smart TV platforms offer a gallery or slideshow mode that turns any TV that supports it into a big digital picture frame . Many go even further with the concept, offering entire curated art stores with collections accessible for a monthly fee, or generative AI that produces 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, and it lets you turn your TV into a showcase of beautiful works of art, 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 Know There 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. 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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 The Best Digital Picture Frames for 2026 I’m a Certified Calibrator and These 5 Pro Tips Instantly Make Any TV Look Better How to Turn Off Motion Smoothing on Your TV Tawaraya Sotatsu, “Waves at Matsushima” Cooper Hewitt, “Sunlight and Shadow” Charles Ethan Porter, “Still Life with Roses” Jerome Myers, “Italians in Jefferson Park” Jacob DeWitt, “The Examination of Urine” Yale University John Trumbull, “The Resignation of General Washington” (Yale University) If you like detailed, dynamic Revolutionary War art, take a look at Yale's digital collection, because it's got more Trumbulls than you can shake a musket at. Don't worry, there are plenty of other artists, subjects, and styles to be found among the 4,000+ Open Access paintings available. Highlights: John Trumbull, “The Battle of Bunker’s Hill, June 17, 1775” John Trumbull, “The Resignation of General Washington” George Henry Durrie, “Winter Scene in New England” Antonio del Pollaiuolo, “The Abduction of Deianira” Luca Signorelli, “The Adoration of the Magi” How to Put Digital Art on Your TV After you've put together a nice collection of art and, hopefully, had some educational fun building it, you need to put it on your TV. Doing so depends on your TV's model and the platform it uses. Fire TV and Google TV Google Photos album selection for Google TV's screensaver mode (Credit: Will Greenwald) Your best bet for the smoothest, easiest time is if your TV uses Amazon Fire TV or Google TV, or if you use a media streamer like the Fire TV Stick 4K Max or Onn 4K Pro . These platforms, along with Roku OS below, are commonly used by manufacturers such as Hisense, Panasonic, Sony, and TCL, as well as Amazon's own Fire TV-powered TVs. Fire TV lets you set any album you upload to Amazon Photos as your media streamer’s screen saver background, and Google TV lets you do the same thing with Google Photos albums. All you need to do for either platform is make a new album on the appropriate cloud storage service and upload all the works of art you downloaded. After that, go to the Ambient Mode or Screensaver settings on your TV or media streamer, then select the album. Amazon Photos selection for Fire TV's Ambient mode (Credit: Will Greenwald) Don't worry too much about cloud storage space on either service: Amazon Photos provides 5GB, while Google Photos offers 15GB. Unless you've already used up that space with photos or plan to download the complete contents of a digital collection at the highest possible resolution, you should be good. If you need more, Amazon Prime members can store unlimited photos (and you can get that much space without a Prime membership for $1.99 per month). For Google Photos, the basic Google One subscription gives you 100GB of storage for $1.99, shared across Google Photos, Google Drive , and Gmail. LG TVs Unfortunately, right now, LG just doesn’t have a screensaver mode you can customize. The Gallery app in webOS that offered this feature has been replaced by the Gallery+ app, which is purely for accessing LG’s art collection, with generative AI options and a $5 subscription. That, well, sucks. My recommendation for showing free art on your LG TV? Get a Fire TV, Google TV, or Roku media streamer. Roku TVs Roku Backdrops (Credit: Will Greenwald) Roku lets you use a Google Photos album as a screensaver, just like Google TV does. However, you must first link your Google account to your Roku account via the Roku mobile app or the Roku Backdrops page. If you don't want to use Google Photos, you can also upload photos straight to Roku Backdrops. Either way, once they're loaded, you can set Backdrops as your TV's screensaver. Samsung TVs Samsung TVs have their own Ambient mode that can display art and photos, though you have to use the Samsung SmartThings mobile app to set it up. In the app, select your TV, then tap "Ambient Mode," then "My Photo Album." You can upload up to 50 pictures from your phone, which are displayed as a shuffled slideshow in Ambient Mode. Annoyingly, this must be done on your phone. The easiest way to do this is to find your favorite works of art, paste their URLs into an email to yourself, load that email on your phone, and save each piece to your phone’s gallery individually. It's a clunky process, but that's because the mode is intended more for displaying your photos and not downloaded art. It'll work, though!