Using specific names or more generalized selections made in an extensive check-box listing system and combined with the Google Maps application and technology, The Arts Map was used to search for what existed in a specific place, region, or country as well as to look up a subject by name or category.
A map presented for each listing pinpointed its location within the community and could be expanded or contracted via a zoom device activated by the reader.
It was useful to artists who were traveling also, as they could find professional peers and supply businesses wherever they happened to be or planned to visit, by using any connection to the World Wide Web.
The Arts Map site was created as a beta version late in 2009 and was launched on the Internet in mid-January 2010 .
Listings were expected to rise gradually as knowledge of the site was disseminated among artists, art patrons, curators, museums, schools, and supply businesses.
[4] By October 2013 The Arts Map had grown to include more than nine thousand listings in one hundred and seven countries, but despite that and the accolades garnered, the effort required to maintain the site "consumed more time and creative energy"[7] than its founders had anticipated and they closed the site, replacing it with an announcement thanking all who had participated in the project.