Radical Bliss

Officer and Laughing Girl, Johannes Vermeer (The Frick Collection, New York) 

Google has unveiled Art Project, an interactive virtual tour of some of the world’s greatest museums, with an interface similar to Google Street View.

As the Official Google blog explains: “You’ll find a selection of super high-resolution images of famous works of art as well as more than a thousand other images, by more than 400 artists—all in one place. And with Street View technology, you can take a virtual tour inside 17 of the world’s most acclaimed art museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA in New York, The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Tate Britain & The National Gallery in London, Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.”

Also, each of the 17 museums selected one artwork to be photographed in extraordinary detail using super high resolution or “gigapixel” photo-capturing technology. And with the “Create an Artwork Collection” feature, you can save specific views of any of the artworks and build your own personalized collection.

The Starry Night, Van Gogh, extreme closeup (MoMA)