The Google Art Project Makes Masterpieces Accessible to All

Gone are the days of jet-setting to galleries in Manhattan, Florence, London, or Madrid. As of yesterday, all you need to become a museum maven is an Internet connection. Google Art Project, the brainchild of a small group of art-happy Google employees, brings the Street View technology of Google Earth and Google Maps inside 17 museums around the world. The roster includes The Uffizi, the Tate Britain, The Met, MoMA, and the Van Gogh Museum.

The Google Art Project collection, as a whole, consists of 1,000 works of art by more than 400 artists, and this is only the beginning. Google hopes to add more museums and works of art to its virtual dossier soon.

As I explored the project I couldn't help but recall my first college art history class, "A Survey of Art History." In the class, which was, by the way, far from a survey, and more of a sketch, we covered centuries of art in just over three months. Do I remember specifics about any single work of art? Of course not (with the exception of the fertility statue, Venus of Willendorf, for obvious reasons). Venus of Willendorf aside, the only other memory I carried with me at semester's end was my professor's tagline about every famous work of art: "You couldn't possibly understand until you see it firsthand." I remember thinking to myself, "If I couldn't possibly understand artwork in Williamsburg, Virginia, then why am I here?"

Read more: The Atlantic
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