Writing about art and the teaching of art writing are becoming important issues in the art world. Furthering our understanding of art texts can inform the practice and teaching of art writing. In an effort to expand linguistic understanding of art writing, this study examines a corpus of 180 online explanatory art museum texts from the online collections of nine US museums using a functional profiles perspective. I use cluster analysis to group the 180 texts into functional profiles based on their use of twenty-one linguistic features. The cluster analysis resulted in five clusters that are interpreted functionally: Cluster 1 (n=56), ‘descriptive information’; Cluster 2 (n=30), ‘expanded form – adding interpretation and process’; Cluster 3 (n=40), ‘contextualising’; Cluster 4 (n=8), ‘process and interpretation with agency’; and Cluster 5 (n=46), ‘narrative focus’. It is posited that this understanding of online explanatory art museum texts can inform the teaching of future museum professionals.