Museums may have closed at the start of the COVID pandemic, but no one appreciates art. Lovers of great paintings, sculptures and other visual works can still find ways to virtually explore their favorite museums around the world via Google Arts and Culture.
Since its launch in 2011, the Mountain View tech company platform has enabled art lovers, amateurs and the common curious to see paintings, sculptures, and other artworks found in more than 2,000 institutions around the world – all from the comfort of your home. And Google has used its 360-degree street view technology to offer virtual walks through galleries, monuments and historical areas.
It all made life more bearable in the dark days of 2020 and 2021. However, even though the world has reopened since then, there’s no reason to stop exploring with Google Arts. First, even the most determined globetrotter is unable to reach a fraction of these 2,000 institutions. However, connect to the Internet and you can immediately engage in art and culture anywhere you like, via laptops, phones or tablets. And you can visit places that are not on the usual tourist route.
Adding to the viewer engagement factor, Google’s “gigapixel” art camera allows people to view works in a way that simply is not possible in any other way, even in person. As any museum-goer knows, crowds, security concerns, and other logistics often keep you from getting close to famous works for long periods – at least not without causing the museum wardens to fail.
“When you go to a museum and see it live, you can feel emotions you don’t get online,” says Simon Delacroix, head of Google Arts and Culture North America. “But with the Art Camera tool, you can get to know a work of art with sometimes intimate detail that would otherwise not be obtainable in a museum, so it’s a nice addition.”
Every day, Google Arts posts articles, videos, and other detailed visual information about a specific work, artist, movement, and culture in a city. You can read, view and use the Art Selfie filter to include yourself in famous portraits or solve art-inspired puzzles and crosswords.
However, this is a deeper goal. As Delacroix explains, Google Arts has taken on the important task of digitizing and sharing collections that may be lost forever or have been disabled due to natural disasters, wars and other natural disasters.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this year turned the locations of the country’s museums into war zones. At the same time, the US State Department advised Americans to avoid traveling to Russia. But thanks to Google Arts, Americans can still visit the National Center of Folk Culture or the National Museum of Art in Kiev, the State Museum of Fine Arts named after Pushkin in Moscow or the State Hermitage Museum in St.Petersburg. One of the largest museums in the world, the Hermitage Museum, is housed in the former Tsar’s Winter Palace.
There are so many places to discover in Google Arts, both nearby – Legion of Honor San Francisco, Stanford’s Cantor Museum of Art – and far away. Here’s a sample of virtual journeys that will take you halfway around the world, introduce you to some of the world’s most famous creations, or introduce you to some of the platform’s latest initiatives.
