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Google Art Project provides virtual museum tours

02 February 2011 12:38 (UTC +04:00)

Baku - APA-Economics. Google has opened the doors on its Art Project, which is essentially a version of Street View which allows you to wander round a museum rather than a town, Techwatch reported.

Art Project lets the viewer take a virtual tour of 17 of the worldâ€™s most famous art museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA in New York, the Tate Britain & The National Gallery in London, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

So, for example, you can go to the latter and wander its virtual halls, taking a closer look at some of Van Goghâ€™s work, such as the â€œCafÃ© Table with Absinthe.â€ Itâ€™s possible to zoom in on the paintings to see some impressive levels of detail, right down to the brush-strokes. Incidentally, itâ€™s a really big glass of absinthe â€“ no wonder the post-impressionist master went loopy.

In total, there are more than 1,000 pieces by some 400 artists, with one work in each gallery taken using super high-resolution â€œgigapixelâ€ photo-capturing, which boasts an immense amount of detail.

Drop-down menus allow you to go straight to a particular piece if you donâ€™t want to roam the virtual museum environment, and thereâ€™s a button to create your own custom collection of the art you enjoy (which can then be shared with friends). Take a peek at the Art Project here.