Google Art Project

[Ruth]

This today from Open Culture: "More goodness out of Googleplex. Today, Google is rolling out a new tool called “Art Project,” which gives you access to 1,000 works of art appearing in 17 great museums across the world. Using Google’s Street View technology, you can now tour collections at the MoMA and Met in New York City, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the Van Gogh Museum and Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the National Gallery in London – just to name a few museums now virtually opened to you. And you can visit countless paintings, some rendered in super high resolution. (We’re talking 7 billion pixels!) Take for example, Vermeer’s Officer and Laughing Girl (see above) or Van Gogh’s The Bedroom. When you view Van Gogh’s painting, make sure you zoom in and look at the brushwork.

Although you won’t have access to the entirety of every museum (actually the selections are rather limited in many cases), Google’s Art Project does put 385 rooms on display. Not a bad start. You can read more about the new initiative on Google’s blog"

Here's the link: http://www.googleartproject.com/

[Heather]

That's incredible, Ruth. When I have more than a minute I'm going to look at it further. Thanks for sharing!

[Ed]

Great, I think I posted earlier that they had done a super high digitization of 17 works in the Prado, but it sounds like there is much, much more now!

[Ed]

Wow. I zoomed in on Cezanne's still life painting with apples. The touch is incredible--how he put these light shimmering touches down next to each other, and it looks so solid.

[Fran]

Ruth wrote: "This today from Open Culture: "More goodness out of Googleplex. Today, Google is rolling out a new tool called “Art Project,” which gives you access to 1,000 works of art appearing in 17 great muse..."

it's wonderful!!!

[Carol]

This is amazing. I love how you can zoom in and see the canvas through the brushstrokes. And even the cracks in the paint on the face of Venus. Thanks Ruth!

[Beka]

I'm so happy ebaut this news! Google is my God! I'am 2 days in Van Gogh Museoum :)

[Claudia]

Ruth, I didn't even see that you posted about this development as well, way before me (as soon as it happened). I think that museums and galleries will have to adapt to virtual tours to reach more viewers and visitors (or be left behind).

[Ruth]

I've tried a couple of the museums, but the tours are kind of awkward. Or maybe I'm just a bad driver.

What I really don't like are the many paintings that are blurred out for "copyright reasons." What's the deal with that?

More prevalent with the modern art than with the older stuff. That's understandable. Many of the modern artists are still living. But why wouldn't they want their art shown on Google? It isn't like they're going to miss out on a sale. That art has already been sold to a museum fgs. I should think having it on Google would only enhance their reputations. Go figger.

[Heather]

In the end, Google’s closeups intrude on the art experience


By Sebastian Smee
CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK
The Boston Globe


Google Art Project allows users to navigate through leading museums, zooming in on works such as Rembrandt's "Night Watch" at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum. (google Project)

Just how wonderful is the new Google Art Project, which allows you to navigate through galleries of the world’s leading museums and get microscopically close to masterpieces such as Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night’’?



Like Google Earth, with its ability to spy on homes halfway around the world, Google Art Project uses technology that is initially astounding — and then weirdly disappointing. You are able to see the blue and gold brushstrokes of “The Starry Night’’ at greater proximity than Van Gogh himself. It’s exciting, for those who fetishize “the hand of the master,’’ to feel oneself so close to genius.

But we’re deluding ourselves if we think Van Gogh’s brilliance can be subdivided into pixels.

Launched Feb. 1, Google Art Project provides access to more than 385 rooms in 17 world-famous museums, including the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the National Gallery in London, the Frick Collection in New York, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, and the Palace of Versailles in France. (Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, which already offers sophisticated access to its collection online, is keen to get involved down the track.)

Google allows you to zoom in on super-high-resolution photographs of particular works of art — one in each museum. You can also see reproductions at lower resolutions of more than 1,000 other works in the participating museums. And using navigational tools similar to Google Street View, you can go on a virtual tour of dozens of the museums’ rooms.

Museums around the world are terribly excited, as are quite a few art critics.

Call me a curmudgeon, but I remain underwhelmed. It’s not just that Google’s interface is frustrating, or that the choice of viewing possibilities is constrained and seemingly arbitrary. It also strikes me as a classic case of not seeing the forest for the trees. Technology is getting confused with art in ways that do little to advance the cause of either.

If you live far from some of the world’s great museums — and we all do — Google Art Project can give you tantalizing glimpses of their galleries and of individual works of art. It’s exciting, for instance, to see the confident lightness of touch and the richness of color in Whistler’s “The Princess from the Land of Porcelain’’ in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.



Similarly, under magnification, the brush marks used for the rug that covers the table in Holbein’s great “The Ambassadors’’ in London’s National Gallery seem amazingly loose and uneven; so when you see what an impression of detailed exactitude they make at a distance, you can’t help but marvel.



But it is still much more interesting to see all these things up close with your own eyes.

Continued... http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts...

[Ruth]

Interesting article, and I agree with his premise--that art is far more interesting in person. Still, I think it's a great intro to something that will probably only get better technically.

It's no substitute for seeing the art in person, of course. Just like listening to a recording is not a substitute for hearing the orchestra in person. But it's another way to experience art that we might never be able to see other than in the pages of a book.