My monitor is turned all the way up (brightness and contrast) and it''s still a tad dark which will mean I won't get to fully enjoy all the great art.
Any suggestions? (and thank you for helping!)

If you have an nvidia or ati graphics card there should be some gamma and contrast settings in there control panels.

Thanks Ralackk! I'll give that a shot (ATI here). I'd like to mark this as solved so you get credit for the suggestion but don't see how to do that : (