Capturing works of art for the Google Art Project
Google’s new art project, a collaboration with art museums around the world to enable viewing of their collections via the internet. It started off as a ’20% project’ – the time set aside for Google engineers to work on their own ideas.
Google says it’s worked with 17 art museums including, Altes Nationalgalerie, The Freer Gallery of Art Smithsonian, National Gallery (London), The Frick Collection, Gemäldegalerie, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, Museo Reina Sofia, Museo Thyseen – Bornemisza, Museum Kampa, Palace of Versailles, Rijksmuseum, The State Hermitage Museum, State Tretyakov Gallery, Tate, Uffizi and Van Gogh Museum.
The website allows viewing of famous artworks, all done in 360 degree ‘Street View’-style tours of individual galleries. A special ‘trolley’ was used to capture 360 degree images of the interior of various galleries, which were then stitched together to enable navigation. There are over 385 rooms within the featured museums to view.
Each image of artwork is take in what Google calls “super high resolution”, which has more pixels than the human eye can even see.“Enabling the viewer to study details of the brushwork and patina beyond that possible with the naked eye.”
The ‘Create an Artwork Collection’ feature allows users to save views of any of the artworks and build their own personalised collection which can be shared with other users.
