Website of the Week

Google Art Project - http://www.googleartproject.com

Once you have downloaded Google Earth the Google Art Project allows you to use Google Street Level View to walk through 17 museums and look at some of the works they hold. Each museum has one painting which can be viewed at a resolution higher than what the human eye can see on its own.

If you click on the “I” to the right of the “Visitor Guide” you can obtain more information on the work. This includes “Viewing Notes”, “Artist Information” and “More Works by the Artist”. The site also allows you to save your favorites in your own collection and to add comments to specific zoom levels. Tip: Check out “No Woman, No Cry” in high definition and also in the dark. (It’s in the Tate Britain.)

The very disappointing aspect of this site is that the primary search method is drop-down menus. You can only search for a painting if you know what museum it’s in.

The high resolution magnification here is greater than that in the Library's Artstor database.



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