by Sam Lewis
#4-Wallace Collection
#2-The Rijksmuseum
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| Temple of Dendur, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
As museums around the world close
their doors, many digital doors open, allowing the public to still experience
the galleries they love even in lockdown. From full 360 degree museum tours
that let you explore the museum free of the bustle of tourists, to high quality
pictures of paintings that let you analyse every brush stroke on the canvas,
museums all over the world are rethinking ways to let you view art virtually.
These are my top 5 museums, judged on the quality of the art displayed, the
navigability of the website and the broadness of activities and options
available.
#5- The Getty
The art, including
famous works by Van Gogh and Renoir, was the personal collection of renowned
businessman and art collector J. Paul Getty, once the world’s richest man, who
saw art as a ‘civilizing influence’ in society and created a gallery in Los
Angeles to make it more widely available to the public. Now this art has never
been more available, as through the website visitors can view the art
collection featuring a range of illuminated
manuscripts, paintings, drawings, sculpture, and decorative arts from the
Middle Ages to the early twentieth century. However, it is not just the art
that attracts visitors, but also the Getty’s architecture. Therefore, the Getty
has now made available a series of Google Art and Culture Tours that let you
explore the incredible building known for its elegant modern design. Overall,
the Getty website is well worth a visit, with a focus on pre-20th-century
European paintings, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, and
decorative arts rivalled by no other museum on this list.
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| Jewelled dagger (Wallace Collection, London) |
Originally a private collection,
The Wallace Collection in London has opened its virtual doors displaying its
fantastic range of fine arts from the 15th to 19th century,
with a focus on 17th and 18th century paintings,
porcelain, furniture, weapons and armour. The gallery holds arguably the most
important collection of French 18th century art in the world outside
of France. The website, extremely navigable and sleek, contains the entire
collection captured with stunning photography. The items and artefacts are well
lit and beautifully photographed with incredible detail and the informative
descriptions reveal the history of each object. A great place to start is the
collection highlights which takes you through the best treasures of the gallery.
#3-The British Museum
If the Wallace Collection has a
multitude of paintings and artefacts, then the British Museum takes it to the
next level. With almost four and a half million objects, the British Museum
website has perhaps the largest collection of works to discover in this list.
The website manages to have both quality and quantity, with all the
pieces displayed stunningly. The British Museum has art from all over the world, from Egyptian mummies, to Chinese ceramics, and
African hunting tools, to the works of the Old Masters from Italy, and the
website holds the most diverse archive of art and objects on this list.
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| 'The Night Watch by Rembrandt (The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) |
Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum is famous
for world-famous masterworks from the Dutch Golden Age. Launched in 2012,
Rijksmuseum’s ‘RijksStudio’ revolutionised the museum world when it made over
700,000 incredibly high-resolution images of its collection available online
completely free of charge. Now we are in lockdown, those images are more useful
than ever. Within the RijksStudio, the images of the paintings are so detailed
that not only can you zoom in to see each and every brush stroke, but even the
texture of the canvas underneath the paint – for example the new digitised
image of the famous Rembrandt painting The Night Watch. On top of this, visitors
can create their own tours of their favourite artworks and share them on the
website, e.g. a tour consisting of all the paintings that feature dogs, or a
tour of all the pieces that contain botanical studies and the surprisingly
expansive collection of cow-related artworks. The website also has virtual
tours of the museum with Google Arts and Culture so you can explore the amazing
architecture inside and out to experience the museum without the usual hustle
and bustle of visitors.
#1-The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Being the largest museum in the
Western Hemisphere, the iconic Met in New York has over 2 million items in its
permanent collections alone and, like the British Museum, consists of pieces
from all corners of the globe, with many extremely recognisable artworks from
artists like Van Gogh, Monet, Jackson Pollock, Raphael and many more. The Met
also has likely the most navigable and clean website that outshines others on
this list for simply being remarkably easy to find what you want -- this has
proved to be very difficult for some other museum websites.
As the Met celebrates their 150th anniversary, it has launched the Timeline, which pairs essays and works of art
with chronologies, telling the story of art and culture from across the world.
The website, like others on this list, also features an immersive 360 degree
experience, however, it is presented in a video format that lets you freely
look around the most iconic spaces in the museum such as the Great Hall and the
Temple of Dendur, even using drone footage to let you take to the sky and
discover the famous Met Cloisters. Finally, the website displays a wide-ranging
assortment of multimedia features such as blogs which delve into the rich
history of many of the paintings and sculptures to provide even further insight
into the vast collection of art the Met has to offer.
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