Musement has put together a (non-exhaustive!) list of museums and art collections that you can access virtually during confinement.
Why not explore museums around the world from your living room if you can’t make there in person? If the digital age has taught us anything, it’s that nothing is inaccessible so long as we give ourselves the means. Over the years, museums and institutions have made their collections available digitally, and with regular advances in technology, the experience constantly improves and grows more immersive.
Musement has put together a list of eight museums to satisfy your curiosity and enrich your artistic culture without leaving your couch.
1. The Met, New York
Long before the quarantine, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York produced a series of six videos entitled the Met 360° Project which offers a virtual tour of the museum. From its emblematic spaces to perspectives inaccessible to the public, the Met reveals itself from every angle.
Have five hours? (That’s rhetorical, we know you do.) Then you can decide to watch the long version of NymphomaniacLes Misérables by Raymond Bernard or, like us, the five-hour-and-20-minute video shot by Apple at St. Petersburg’s incomparable Hermitage Museum. To demonstrate the impressive autonomy and high visual quality of its iPhone 11, Apple filmed (in one take!) 588 works of art, through 45 galleries of the museum—not bad, right?
A digital collection of the New York Guggenheim, through which it is possible to discover more than 1,700 works of art, is available on the museum’s website. This also includes works from the Peggy Guggenheim in Venice and the Guggenheim in Bilbao. The online collection is regularly enriched to provide an even more accurate representation of the permanent collection’s immense scope and diversity, which comprises approximately 8,000 works of art.
Super active on the social networks, the Louvre never disappoints. In addition to its Instagram account, which is a must-see, the museum also has a quality Youtube channel, which has been active for several years. On the museum’s official website, you can explore the “Online Media” section, which currently features 380 videos and podcasts, listen to the L’œuvre en scènelectures held in the auditorium, during which work is analyzed and deciphered by a specialist, and find a selection of the museum’s must-see masterpieces, educational dossiers, stories and anecdotes for children, including a whole selection of online visits.
Already in 2016, London’s National Gallery, in collaboration with Google Street View, made part of the museum available for us to contemplate Renaissance masterpieces from our sofa. But that’s not all, the gallery also commissioned the American company Oculus to create an immersive virtual reality tour of the Sainsbury’s Wing using a Matterport 3D camera.
Through the superb “HyperVisions” initiative, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence has posted a rich series of virtual tours online. Discover its masterpieces and their history via a bank of high definition images.
On MoMA’s official website, you can access an audio guide for part of the museum’s collection and exhibitions. Users can view a selection of works online while listening to interesting, well-structured commentary by artists, curators, and other specialists. There is even a special section for children.
Like the Louvre, the Centre Pompidou knows how to use new technologies and has given itself over to digital technology to keep in touch with its visitors. Online courses, masterclasses, podcasts, web-series for children, the site is packed with all kinds of content. Hats off to the “live” section which allows you to see or review the exhibitions from your sofa.
