Two websites aimed at helping collectors discover visual arts that they like are among the nominees for a Webby award this year. 

One is Artsy.net, the New York-based site that just raised $18.5 million in Series B funding. The other is newcomer Curiator.com, also in New York City, founded by a designer and a former Google programmer.

Anyone can vote for a Webby nominee online. The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet, presented annually by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Categories include websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile. Artsy and Curiator are two of five nominees for a Webby People's Voice Award in the art websites category. 

Launched in October 2012, Artsy has accumulated artworks from 1,800 galleries, 230 institutional partners and 25 art fairs. There are more than 125,000 works by over 25,000 artists to browse. Of note, you can browse through art fair booth inventory, catching fresh offerings from dealers at far-away fairs.

The art market equivalent of user-driven radio website Pandora, Artsy announced in early April that it had raised $18.5 million in Series B  funding from the likes of the Rockefeller family, and other high-profile backers.

Princeton grad Carter Cleveland dreamed up Artsy and he quickly ained momentum with the support of gallerist Larry Gagosian; Rupert Murdoch’s former wife, Wendi Deng; Eric Schmidt of Google; Peter Thiel, founder of Paypal, board of Facebook; and Jack Dorsey of Twitter; among others. 

Curiator, a new online platform to discover, collect and share art online, takes more of a social media approach to art collecting. It launched to the public earlier this month, after a six-month private beta phase, and has rapidly gained recognition.

“We’re very excited to have received the honor of this nomination by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, especially in light of our very recent launch," said Moenen Erbuer and Tobias Boonstoppel, founders of Curiator. 

Designed for art enthusiasts and professionals alike, Curiator is a digital, collaborative art collection to which people contribute their favorite art and where they discover an ever-expanding inventory of works and curated rooms. 

Curiator allows you to build your personal digital art collection by importing images of art you like and collecting art added by others. Users can follow each other’s collections as well as artists, and explore the catalog through various feeds. The catalog is organized by artist and fully searchable, and Curiator regularly features artists and guest curators to provide additional value and education for its community.

Headquartered in New York City, Curiator was created in 2012 by Moenen Erbuer, previously Senior Designer at AKQA, an award-winning interactive agency, and Tobias Boonstoppel, previously a software engineer at Google where he was working on Google Maps and in Google Research. 

In its beta stage since 2013, Curiator quickly went to approximately 4,500 users who have contributed over 20,000 artworks by more than 8,000 artists and is expanding fast. 

View and vote for the Webby nominees here.