See the Cracks from the Comfort of Home

When I was in college art history, not that many years ago, I remember poring over tiny glossy photographs from expensive art books and catalogues raisonees to write about Van Gogh, Toulouse Lautrec, the Renaissance. I was internet savvy, but I didn’t imagine that the students and art zealots who came after me would be able to zoom in close enough to see the cracks in the oil paint in Sunflowers from the comfort of their bedrooms.

Google collaborated with 17 museums around the world to scan ultra-high res images of artwork from their galleries. Using Google’s Street View, you can virtually navigate you way through the collections in the Tate Britain in London or take a tour of the grounds of Versailles. Some of the artwork on the walls has been blurred because of copyright issues, but Google has managed to garner the rights to showcase an impressive array of work — currently over a thousand artworks, with plans for more. And you can zoom in closer than you can in real life, without guards to chase you off.

The comfort of my bedroom can’t compare with standing face to face with Sunflowers. Art Project is a fantastic replacement for a dusty book that you can’t afford anyway, not for real-life experience; Van Gogh shouldn’t be limited by the size and pixels on your screen. For those of us who aren’t on the budget to museum-hop to Amsterdam and beyond, though, Google Art Project can get us closer than ever to some of the world’s very awesomest stuff.