Google Art Project

I just came across this news, looked it up myself, and was so impressed that I felt it deserved more than just a simple "share" on Google Reader or Facebook! It's not a strictly travel-related topic, but in a sense it is about why we choose to travel to certain places. I doubt that any of us will take a pass on visiting a museum when we are in Paris, London, New York, or Saint Petersburg. Sometimes this is why we go to these cities in the first place - to see Mona Lisa or The Starry Night. But it's hard to visit them all. And most of the time, we are overrun with hordes of tourists and hurried by museums attendants to the point where we spend 30 seconds in front of a painting we want to look at for hours just to be carried away by the tide to the next one. But we make do, because the alternative most of the time is a low resolution off-color image on Wikipedia that gives us only a vague idea of what the actual thing is like. Well, now we have a better option!

On February 1st, Google unveiled the result of their newest internet endeavor - the Art Project. In collaboration with 17 of the best museums of fine art in the world, Google created a virtual tour of some of the greatest museum halls (Tate, MOMA, Hermitage, Met, etc) and art pieces (Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Botticelli, and many, many more).

For each museum, you can "walk through" selected galleries (some museums have most of their exposition space available, while others - like MOMA - allowed to scan only one or two rooms) using Google's Street View technology. You can rotate, zoom in/out, move forward/back, etc - everything you can do with your Google Maps. This way you can "walk" from room to room just as you would in a museum. Don't be surprised when at some point you get to a room where all the paintings are blurred - that means that you've reached an area that was not allowed to be represented on the website. Alternatively, you can jump from room to room by clicking on the map to the right. The map provides a brief description of each room and what you can find there.

Once  you're in a room, you can select a particular piece of art for more close viewing. Of course, you can do it without roaming through the museum by simply selecting a particular artwork from a drop-down menu available for each museum, but I feel that unless you are looking for a particular painting, it's actually nice to see these items in their natural habitat first (well, I guess, their current "habitats" are not quite natural and probably not what the artist had intended in the first place, but still).

The close-up view of the artwork will allow you to read more information about it (the plaques available in the museums), zoom in to get a closer look at certain parts of the painting, or select other works of this artist in this or any other museum available on the site.

The most astonishing part of this project, I think, is the ability to really zoom in on some of the paintings. Each museum allowed Google to scan one artwork with high-res technology. And when they say "high-res" they mean it - it's 7 gigapixels! It allows you to see every brush stroke, every crack in the varnish, every paint transition). It is simply amazing!

Paintings available in high resolution have a little plus sign next to them. Otherwise, what you see is an empty art-frame icon (you can still zoom in for those paintings, but just not as much).

The site allows you to compile your own "collections' by selecting works of art from different museums by artist, topic, or your own preferences. 

I hope people will use this site, and Google will expand it (although what they have represented there is already highly impressive). It doesn't substitute for the real thing, of course, but it does give us a way to imagine and dream about these artworks. Let's just say this - I was in the Hermitage and I went to see Return of the Prodigal Son (one of my favorite Rembrandt's pieces), but after working my way through the crowd (and it was massive!), all I could do is slightly lean forward over the rope to get a tad closer to the painting than allowed 2 feet. And having a specific interest in particulars of brush work, I was quite disappointed. Well, thank you, Google!

And while we are on the subject of awesome Internet museums, I want to make a plug for the website of Lascaux caves (the site of the most amazing Paleolithic cave paintings). The website allows you do make a virtual trip through the galleries with close ups of different panels and detailed descriptions of what is depicted and why it is important. Given that in-person cave tours keep eroding these incredible pieces of history and art, the virtual reality seems like the right way to go.