The worlds of art and technology rarely converge, except in the high concept salons of cyberculture and workshops of digital artists. But despite the apparent rift, some of Britain's grandest artistic institutions are increasingly using technology to get their message across.

The National Gallery today unveiled its ArtStart programme, a system aimed at using technology to provide a deeper and more satisfying experience to the 5m visitors who come through its doors each year.

ArtStart, which has been more than three years in the making, has put almost all the 2,300 items in the National Gallery's permanent collection - including famous images such as Van Gogh's Sunflowers and Raphael's Madonna of the Pinks - into a graphics-rich multimedia database accessible from touch-screen monitors throughout the building. Visitors can browse - and search - their way through the collection, finding out more about the artists, paintings and art history along the way. There is even the option to print out a tour of the gallery based on the pictures that have been browsed, or to surf through a series of pre-defined tours.

"Our overarching ambition is that ArtStart will inspire visitors to seek out paintings, or return to a painting having discovered something new or thought-provoking about it," says Steve Dale, the deputy head of new media at the gallery. Despite the tricks offered by new technologies, he says the project concentrates on making the paintings the focus of the system.

Built with £500,000 from the American Express Foundation and hardware sponsorship from Hewlett Packard, each of the gallery's 16 kiosks is linked with back-office systems to provide up-to-the minute information on the location and condition of the paintings, as well as hooking into multimedia content such as audio reports and video clips. Around 750,000 words were written about the collection for the launch, with deeper context given for 30 of the most popular paintings. ArtStart also lets viewers get closer than ever before to the paintings by providing huge resolution images - taken by a 100 megapixel camera - that users can zoom in on and move around. It is a smooth, well-designed and easily navigable interface that the creators are hoping will satisfy the vast majority of visitors.

"It's definitely the longest single project we've ever worked on," says Philip Read, the managing director of interactive design agency Nykris, which put the system together. "We wanted to give people new ways to engage with the beautiful paintings in the collection. We wanted to build a system that would help as many people as possible get more out of their visit. It's not first and foremost for arts scholars, but the content has been specially written by experts to an extremely high standard."

ArtStart is not the only recent digital development undertaken by Britain's top galleries. The Tate is also forging ahead by expanding online. Last month, it launched a new "Explore" feature (www.tateorg.uk/britain/explore), which allows surfers to go on a virtual journey around Tate Britain simply by logging on to the website.

The Flash application, built using sponsorship money from BT, lets users trek around a map of Tate Britain and examine the works - such as the extensive Turner collection - room by room. The offering is not only aimed at those who cannot get to the gallery, but also those who want to plan their visit in more detail. "While Explore Tate Britain opens up the gallery and its contents to new audiences around the world," says Jemima Rellie, the head of digital programmes at the Tate, "it also enables visitors to make better use of their time at Tate Britain."

With more than half a million views of the Tate's website in December, it claims to be the most-visited arts website in the country. The National Gallery, however, has no firm plans to take the ArtStart project online.

"We see it as complementary to our website," says Dale. "We're providing high-resolution images, video, audio and a rich, filmic interface in a way that wouldn't be easy to achieve online."

"The acid test is going to be when the public get their hands on it," says Read. "At the end of the day, it's what the public thinks that matters."