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Museums onscreen: Google Art Project

UPDATE: The New York Times’ Roberta Smith took the Art Project on a long test drive and filed this excellent report on what works well and what still needs to be done, emphasizing that this is very much a work in progress.

"The Harvesters," by Pieter Bruegel the Elder," Metropolitan Museum of Art. Detail from Google Art Project.

By Bob Hicks

Say you have a hankering to see Hans Holbein the Younger‘s portrait The Merchant Georg Gisze but you just can’t get away to Berlin today to see it where it hangs, in the Gemäldegalerie.

You can always go online. But chances are that when you find it, the image will be pretty poor quality. And what if you want to examine it closely, to see Holbein’s brushstrokes or the effects of craquelure?

Then you might want to check out the new Google Art Project, which is bringing gallery tours and specific artworks together from 17 major international institutions, including the Gemaldegalerie. Not every great museum is on this list, but the 17 are pretty impressive.

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