Explore museums and great works of art in the Google Art Project
February 2nd, 2011 | Published in Google Student Blog
Yesterday we announced the Art Project - a new site that lets you explore hundreds of artworks from 17 of the world’s most acclaimed art museums in extraordinary levels of detail, as well as take 360 degree tours of the museums using Street View technology. The combination of 1000+ artworks, from more than 400 artists, with Street View of the museums, creates a completely new way to discover art online.
The Street View technology allows you to take a virtual tour inside museums from 11 cities across the world -- including The Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA in New York, The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Tate Britain & The National Gallery in London, Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
Each museum features a super high resolution image, which in combination with a custom built viewer, enables previously hard to-see elements of an artwork suddenly become clear—such as the tiny Latin couplet which appears in Hans Holbein the Younger’s ‘The Merchant Georg Gisze. ’ The resolution, combined with the custom built viewer, enables you to discover minute aspects of paintings you may never have seen up close before, such as the miniaturized people in the river of El Greco’s ‘View of Toledo’, or individual dots in Seurat’s ‘Grandcamp, Evening’. Whether you’re an art newbie or an art history buff, you can browse the huge range of artwork in the project -- from Botticelli’s ‘Birth of Venus’ to Chris Ofili’s ‘No Woman, No Cry’, Cezanne’s post impressionist works to Byzantine iconography, ceilings of Versailles to ancient Egyptian temples.
Alongside the artwork in the info panel a whole host of information about a specific work of art can be found -- including viewing notes, artist biographies, audio tapes, and even links to Google Scholar search results. You can even watch YouTube videos while you’re exploring the brushstrokes of an artwork -- get a professional snowboarders’ perspective on an alpine landscape, or learn about the different locations of Rembrandt’s ‘Night Watch ’.
With the “Create an Artwork Collection” feature, you can save specific views of any of the artworks and build your own personalized collection. Comments can be added to each painting and the whole collection can then be shared with friends, family -- or even collaborate with others on a joint collection.
I was lucky enough to study art from a very young age, and really hope that the Art Project inspires others to learn about and love art -- and visit the real thing!
A few example paintings:
The Dream, Henri Rousseau (MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art)
Officer and Laughing Girl, Johannes Vermeer (The Frick Collection, New York - USA)
Still Life with Flowers and Fruit, Paul Cézanne (Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin - Germany)
The bedroom, Vincent van Gogh (Van Gogh Museum)
Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy -- with a view on Botticelli’s ‘The Birth of Venus’
The Street View technology allows you to take a virtual tour inside museums from 11 cities across the world -- including The Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA in New York, The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Tate Britain & The National Gallery in London, Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
Each museum features a super high resolution image, which in combination with a custom built viewer, enables previously hard to-see elements of an artwork suddenly become clear—such as the tiny Latin couplet which appears in Hans Holbein the Younger’s ‘The Merchant Georg Gisze. ’ The resolution, combined with the custom built viewer, enables you to discover minute aspects of paintings you may never have seen up close before, such as the miniaturized people in the river of El Greco’s ‘View of Toledo’, or individual dots in Seurat’s ‘Grandcamp, Evening’. Whether you’re an art newbie or an art history buff, you can browse the huge range of artwork in the project -- from Botticelli’s ‘Birth of Venus’ to Chris Ofili’s ‘No Woman, No Cry’, Cezanne’s post impressionist works to Byzantine iconography, ceilings of Versailles to ancient Egyptian temples.
Alongside the artwork in the info panel a whole host of information about a specific work of art can be found -- including viewing notes, artist biographies, audio tapes, and even links to Google Scholar search results. You can even watch YouTube videos while you’re exploring the brushstrokes of an artwork -- get a professional snowboarders’ perspective on an alpine landscape, or learn about the different locations of Rembrandt’s ‘Night Watch ’.
With the “Create an Artwork Collection” feature, you can save specific views of any of the artworks and build your own personalized collection. Comments can be added to each painting and the whole collection can then be shared with friends, family -- or even collaborate with others on a joint collection.
I was lucky enough to study art from a very young age, and really hope that the Art Project inspires others to learn about and love art -- and visit the real thing!
A few example paintings: