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April 25, 2011

Google Art Project

Recently, Google, the company that plans to be Everything, introduced Google Art Project, a virtual tour of famous museums around the world and their renown artwork.

Based on a suite of Google technologies, including the use of Google’s Street View cameras, (see image below) you can now visit many of the world’s greatest museums from the comfort of your computer and have a front row seat viewing the masterpieces and learning about them through delivered content.

The list of accessible museums is a who’s who of the world's most acclaimed galleries.  The Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, the Freer Gallery of Art at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, the Palace of Versailles in France, the Tate Britain Gallery in London and the Van Gogh in Amsterdam are just some of the major museums that have collaborated with Google.   There is access to more than 385 rooms in 17 world-famous museums where you can investigate the museum's layout and view their paintings.

While this is not meant to replace the feeling of looking at a painting first-hand, Google Art Project puts you right in front of the paintings and allows you to open a high-resolution image of the art work so you can study it in a “microscopic view”.   You can even zoom into a painting so you can study the intensity of a brushstroke close-up.  Art Project also has a collection feature where you can save specific views of any of the 1000+ artworks and build your own personalized collection.  Comments can be added to each painting and the whole collection can then be shared with friends and family.

This type of viewing is perfect for firing up your Google TV or Apple TV box hooked into your large flat screen TV and taking the family on a virtual trip to museums around the world to view and study the art of the masters.  As said, this isn’t to replace going to these places in person, however, with today’s economy, gas prices and unrest in the world, this becomes a viable way to travel.

‘til next time, take care.
Bob

 

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check this out

For a visitors guide to Art Project, click here.

 

Check out this UTube link for an indepth behind the scenes look at how Google created the Art Project.

 

Here is the GoogleBlog's take on the Art Project giving you a more in-depth view of the project.

 

This is a link to the National Gallery of Art's Van Gogh virtual tour. Not as elegant as Google's, this still gives you viewings of a master.

This site is for teachers giving them access to virtual tours of various museums and sites. Worth checking out.

 

The Web Gallery of Art is a virtual museum and searchable database of European painting and sculpture from 11th to mid-19th centuries

 

Here is the Metropolitan Museum of Art's virtual tour of African Art. The images are static and not very high resolution. You can click on the image to get a larger version, but there is no ability to zoom in. Google is setting the standard for virtual tours!