NYTimes Article of Interest: "Google Art Project Provides Access to Works and Museums

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/arts/design/07google.html?ref=todayspaper

Google has launched a website that offers online viewing of museums around the world. It offers up close and magnifying views of paintings and other works of art visible from your computer screen. Roberta Smith, the writer says there are many bugs to be worked out but the site offers more than 1,000 works of art on the site. Smith claims that because of Google, a viewer can see something that wasn't visible before, "Google maintains that, beyond details you may not have noticed before, you can see things not normally visible to the human eye." I didn't take her word for it, I did some viewing of my own and I must agree with Smith that the paintings, the ceiling works, and other pieces of art work are incredible, giving the credit to Google. She goes on to say that googleartproject.com offers great reproductions that allow the viewer to magnify the picture, "What you see is a very good reproduction that offers the option to pore over the surface with an adjustable magnifying rectangle. This feels like an eerie approximation, at a clinical, digital remove, of the kind of intimacy usually granted only to the artist and his assistants, or conservators and preparators." Smith also says that Google enhances the online art experience, which before seemed a little sketchy. This venture by Google is the "latest phase of simulation that begin with the invention of photography." My favorite line of the whole article is the last line,"For all that time they have been the next best thing to being there. Now the next best thing has become better, even if it will never be more than next best." This line says that nothing is better than the original works of art, however this is the next best thing. I hope that you will find your way to the site, making a few impromptu visits to world renowned galleries and museums, without getting up from your computer.