Today Google dipped its paws into the art industry.  Art Project is “a unique collaboration with some of the world’s most acclaimed art museums to enable people to discover and view more than a thousand artworks online in extraordinary detail.”  In short, over the past 18 months Google’s traveled to 17 art museums around the world and captured super high resolution images of famous artworks.  Now online users can take 360 degree tours of individual galleries using the same Street View click, zoom, and pan techniques most are used to using when navigating Google Maps.  Google hit up many world renowned museums including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, State Tretyakov Gallery, and Van Gogh Museum.  And check this: each of the 17 museums hand-picked one piece of artwork to be photographed using gigapixel technology; these super super high definition selections contain around 7 billion pixels allowing users to explore them in extreme detail.  For example, the people hidden behind the tree in Ivanov’s ‘The Apparition of Christ to the People’ suddenly become visible thanks to the gigapixel capture.  In addition to browsing the beautiful works of art, Google is enabling users to create their own collections, share them with others, and make them sociable with commenting support.

Head over to http://www.googleartproject.com/ to check it out!  Look after the break for official PR and some videos detailing the project.

Food for thought: Libraries are dead because of the digitization of books; with instant access to high definition galleries are museums on their way out now as well?

[Via GoogleBlog] Continue reading Google Art Project brings galleries from around the world to your computer screen →