Museums and galleries provide visitors with exquisite art, cultural enlightenment and historical understanding, but you don’t have to travel to Europe or America tosee amazing artwork.
Whether you’re an art aficionado, a history buff or just want to be amused, virtual museums allow you explore the world’s best museums without leaving the comfort of your home.
With a diverse online collection, the British Museum’s virtual museum includes works that span history across the globe. From 2 million years of African history to an array of relics from the British Isles, this collection has a number of exquisite artefacts to impress just about anyone.
New York City’s Guggenheim Museum offers online visitors access tonearly 1600 of the gallery’s 7000 artworks, spanning from the late 19th century through to the present day. At the virtual museum, you can browse by artist, date, artwork type and movement. Visitors receive extensive background information on all works and more than 575 featured artists.
Visited by more than 9.26 million people last year, the Louvre is perhaps the world’s most famous museum, and is home to tens of thousands of works spanning human history, including the likes of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. The digital museum offers a searchable database, hosting around 35,000 artworks, including comprehensive information about each piece.You can also take a virtual tour of the museum’s many collections, including the Egyptian Antiquities and the Galerie d’Apollon
The Google Cultural Institute brings together millions of artefacts from multiple institutions, linking them to stories that bring them to life.The virtual museum is a collection begun by the team at Google Street View, who are mapping the insides of the world’s museums. Visitors can ‘walk’ through 46 different locations and click through to Google Art Project for a close, sharp look at individual pieces, complete with informative descriptions.
From an interactive exhibition that explores the world of nuclear science, medicine and nuclear power, to a collection of shoes that have been made or worn by celebrities throughout history, Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum offers visitors access to hundreds of permanent and temporary collections, ranging back through history to the present day.
Have you visited a great virtual museum that you’d like you tell us about?
