Museums You Can Now Visit Virtually
On the topic of accessibility, many museums across the globe have made it so that people can “visit” their exhibitions and experience their collections from the safety of their homes. The pandemic has made visitor outreach crucial for museums, and digital accessibility has expanded their outreach to anyone who has access to the internet around the world.
This digital expansion has resulted in museums offering virtual tours and online collections through Google’s Arts & Culture pages. Google Arts & Culture’s collection includes many of the world’s biggest museums: Tate Modern and the British Museum in London, the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum in NYC, among hundreds of others. In most, you can browse through entire exhibitions online, and in many, you can also walk through the museum using Google’s street view.
Here are 12 museums you can visit virtually today:
Guggenheim Museum, New York
See online exhibitions like But a The Fullness of Color: 1960s Painting and Away from the Easel: Jackson Pollock’s Mural and virtually tour the building here.
British Museum, London
Tour the museum’s virtual “Museum of the World” page and navigate through a timeline of its various works of art here.
Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Get a close look at the works of Monet, Cézanne, Gauguin, and hundreds of other French painters here.
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Walk among Vermeer, Rembrandt, and many more masters from the Dutch Golden Age here.
Pergamon Museum, Berlin
The Pergamon is one of Germany’s largest museums and is home for the Ishtar Gate of Babylon and the Greek Pergamon Altar. Visit it here.
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul
Catch up on the best of contemporary art from Korea here.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Explore an exhibition of American fashion from 1740 to 1895 and a collection of Vermeer paintings here.
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Here is where you can find the largest collection of artworks by van Gogh, including more than 200 paintings, 500 drawings, and over 750 personal letters.
Louvre, Paris
Unlike other museums who rely on Google Arts and Culture to conduct virtual tours of their collections, the Louvre doesn’t need Google to create online tours for itself. It has its own virtual tours.
MASP, São Paulo
The Museu de Arte de São Paulo is Brazil’s first modern art museum. You can visit it here.
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Travel back in time to the 8th century with this collection of European paintings, drawings, sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, decorative arts, and European, Asian, and American photographs.
Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Italy was hit hardest by the virus in Europe. Show some solidarity and pay this magnificent gallery a visit.
For more info on virtual museums, the Museum Computer Network has made the ultimate guide to virtual museum resources, e-learning, and online collections.
Bishara, Hakim. “2,500 Museums You Can Now Visit Virtually.” Hyperallergic, 17 Mar. 2020, hyperallergic.com/547919/2500-virtual-museum-tours-google-arts-culture/.