I would avoid the smaller point-and-shoot cameras if you are wanting the flexibility to produce publishable-quality images in a range of settings. Those smaller cameras have small, poor-quality, lenses that will not produce superb images, especially if you need to shoot in less-than-ideal lighting situations. Buyers often erroneously focus on the megapixels of a
camera rather than the lens. Both are important, of course, but usually the bottleneck for great images is the lens, not the megapixels. A tiny lens on a
camera the size of a pack of playing cards is not going to let in enough light to be really useful. If you buy a bigger
camera with a better lens it will let in the light that you need.
I am not a professional photographer, but I have read the books on how to take photographs of art and artifacts. What I use personally in my work as an art historian is an entry-level digital SLR camera. When I chose a camera for myself I wanted to be able to take pictures of art in a wide-range of settings, from outdoors in a public park to the interior of a dimly-lit cathedral to the unevenly lit stacks of a research library. Thus, I determined that a camera for me should have, at the minimum:
* A large enough lens that I could take clear pictures in moderate indoor light with no tripod and no flash.
* A fully-automatic mode that makes the camera work like a point-and-shoot.
* A mode that is automatic except for manual control of the aperture, which I find useful for shooting 2D images in low light with no flash.
* A setting to adjust for incandescent lighting.
* A setting to adjust for fluorescent lighting.
The entry-level DSLRs met those needs the best for me, and this type of camera costs $550-$650 today. The one I bought is a Canon Digital Rebel, which at the time was the most affordable camera of this quality, and I have been very happy with it. Nikon makes a similar camera, which I believe is the D40.