Google Art Project

  Quote

Google has taken its 360-degree Street View cameras into some of the most famous and acclaimed galleries, to open the world’s art collection to the internet.

 

From the Tate Britain in London to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Google Art Project lets you browse 385 rooms in 17 galleries, and see more than 1,000 works by 486 artists.

 

Each of the galleries has selected one piece of artwork to be photographed in staggeringly high resolution, with each of the 17 images containing around 7 billion pixels. Zoom in close enough, and you can see individual brushstrokes, hairline cracks in the canvas and microscopic details that are almost invisible to the naked eye — like tiny Latin messages scrawled on Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Merchant Georg Gisze, pictured above, in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.

 

 

“It’s our first step toward making great art more accessible,” said project lead Amit Sood on the Google blog, “and we hope to add more museums and works of art in time.”

 

The effect was captured in pretty much the same way that Google has used to map out most of the world, including Antarctica, Whistler Mountain, Champs-Élysées and Stonehenge. But instead of cars (or snowmobiles), the team used the Street View tricycle for open spaces, and a more-compact vertical trolley for the halls.

http://www.googleartproject.com/museums/tate/the-bay-of-baiae-with-apollo-and-the-sibyl-298

Some awesome stuff in there:

http://www.googleartproject.com

yeah I stumbled across this yesterday. great stuff.

there is no way of viewing a work of art other than with our own eyes,for me.

but google sure keeps bringing the most innovating concepts, and that is great as well.

pretty cool, but considering the crap resolution i don't really see the point.

crap resolution?

edit:oh, right... your image wasn't appearing for some reason.

edit2: of you click on the hovering + over the artwork it takes you to a high res image of the artwork.

  On 2/3/2011 at 2:32 PM, data said:

pretty cool, but considering the crap resolution i doin't really see the point.

 

you re doing it wrong mate

  On 2/3/2011 at 2:32 PM, data said:

pretty cool, but considering the crap resolution i doin't really see the point.

 

you have to click on these little [+] links next to the paintings:

but yeah I wish these steetview walkarounds inside the buildings would be better. They can do much higher but they only did during the beginning of streetview. Maybe its on purpose to avoid people from looking after some dirt on the floor etc lol

lol

It's sort a cool idea but in a way it detracts from the power of the internet to give you access to whatever you want by restricting you to collections of photos that are there based on availability of the originals.