Google has just unveiled the Google Art Project, which offers some amazing tools to help art lovers explore the venues and paintings that they enjoy.
One of the neatest new features is the “brushstroke-level detail“, which allow you to see some of the images in astoundingly high resolution; nearly 7 billion pixels, roughly 1,000 times higher quality than you can capture with a digital camera. For an example of one, check out “The Merchant Georg Gisze” and use the [+]/[-] controls in the upper left corner to zoom in and out.
The other great new feature they’ve added is Street View imagery inside of many of the world’s most famous galleries. To view them from Google Maps, simply go to maps.google.com/museums and browse the list of museums on the left.
Even better is that you can view all of them from Google Earth, as long as you’re running Version 6. To enter a museum, simply grab the “Peg Man” from your controls in the upper-right corner and drag him onto one. You’ll see the blue Street View lines appear more “blob-like” over museums, as seen below:
This kind of imagery is currently available for 17 galleries, including places such as the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. (KML
), the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City (KML), and the National Gallery in London (KML).For more information, check out the post on the Official Google Blog, or simply head over to www.googleartproject.com.
(via Google Maps Mania)
About Mickey Mellen
Mickey has been using Google Earth since it was released in 2005, and has created a variety of geo-related sites including Google Earth Hacks. He runs a web design firm in Marietta, GA, where he lives with his wife and two kids.
I want to point out that where it is relevant, they actually have multiple floors in the museums. There’s a button that will appear below the compass and zoom buttons on the upper left. For instance, in the Gemäldegalerie, you can switch between ‘1’ and ‘B’. They don’t seem to call that out specifically.
Also note that I do not see this button appearing in the same spot in Google Earth’s interface. I only see it in Google Maps browser interfaces.
Impressive technology, but a technologist’s approach to art. No artist ever intended you to get your nose right up against a painting.
I have to disagree, Chris. Many scholars and artists want to get enough detail to study brush strokes and how colors are worked together to understand a particular technique.
I personally enjoy being able to zoom in quite a bit, though not all of the way as I’m not a scholar nor an artist to interpret it. 🙂
@ Munden I take your point, and scholars have got up close for years, but the artist would want the viewer to appreciate the painting as whole, even those who included fascinating detail like Breugel, and, to use an analogy, there is a danger that zooming to the images of the leaves on the trees, because Google make it technically possible, will obscure the image of the wood. It’s different with GE.
Wow Its Amazing,your art galleries is best then others,i love this.