Contemplating Photography

As someone who works in the Museum industry, specifically focused on collections information, I am always searching for creative and highly interactive ways for creating access to the world’s museum collections. I have been looking into Google’s lastest venture, the Google Art Project, an exciting concept that presents detailed views of art work from the top museums. Using the View the Artwork, you can easy access high res. images of hand-selected works from significant museums, even zooming into full detail of the applied brushstrokes. Furthermore, by selecting the ‘Explore the Museum’ feature you can select the desired institution and conduct a virtual 3-d exploration of each gallery, using an interactive floor plan or your own personal ‘walkabout’. As you meander through each gallery, you can then select works on the walls, and go into further examination of each artwork. This is not really a unique or novel concept, but the highly interactive and easy to use presentation of this site makes it a pure joy to visit a virtual museum – something I have not seen created to this level. No surprise really given the fact that it was Google who is behind this project!