museums

Virtual Museum Tours: The Benaki Museum

Virtual Museum Tours: The Benaki Museum

“Virtual museum tours” was the second most common Google search in 2020. Since the Covid-19 pandemic began, virtual museum tours have grown in popularity, and now many museums are wondering what role they will play post-pandemic. As an international example, this review looks at the Benaki Museum’s tour from Athens, Greece.

Audience Engagement Outside of The Museum: Camera Function in Google Arts & Culture App

Audience Engagement Outside of The Museum: Camera Function in Google Arts & Culture App

When considering how technology can improve and increase audience engagement with art, many immediately think of technology can be applied in house to create a more participatory experience. Yet, audience engagement can continue even when the audience is not in the museum. How can an arts organization engage with visitors even when they are not physically in the institution?

An Ode To The Metropolitan Museum of Art's New App Function

An Ode To The Metropolitan Museum of Art's New App Function

Have you ever wandered around the Metropolitan Museum of Art and wondered where you were or if an exhibition was still showing? Well, the Met as a treat for you. In the newest update of their mobile app, they incorporated an interactive detailed map that shows you the floor plan of the entire museum, exhibit location and artwork. With specific information about upcoming and current exhibitions, including their exact location in the museum, this app has become much more useful since its sans-map days last year. Read the full review here.

An Ode to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s New App Function

An Ode to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s New App Function

Have you ever wandered around the Metropolitan Museum of Art and wondered where you were or if an exhibition was still showing? Well, the Met as a treat for you. In the newest update of their mobile app, they incorporated an interactive detailed map that shows you the floor plan of the entire museum, exhibit location and artwork. With specific information about upcoming and current exhibitions, including their exact location in the museum, this app has become much more useful since its sans-map days last year.

How Google Art Project Benefits the Public

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How many of you have ever imagined being able to see artwork in the greatest museums around the world without leaving your chair? Driven by his passion for art, Amit Sood developed Art Project to let people do just that. The Google Art Project includes various museums from nine different countries, which provides people an access to artworks worldwide. It’s not uncommon, many people and organizations began to think about “online museums” years ago. However, I found two important features, which I rarely notice on other similar websites, that differentiate Google Art Project from others-----the extremely high pixels (10 billion) and the collection button.

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(Image 1)

Some people wondering what could we get from 10 billion pixels? Google Art Project’s pursuit for an extremely high pixel count for each piece ensures audiences have a high level of exploration experience for artworks. For instance, the Harvesters, painted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in 1565, gives you a general view on the artwork at the first glance (Image 1). Gradually, you will probably be curious about several detailed part of the paintings. What are people doing in the triangle 1 and triangle 2 areas (Image 1)? As you zoom in triangle 1 area, you will clearly see expressions on each person’s face (Image 2).  Then you will really want to look deeply. As you start playing around, you will find something going on over there in triangle 2 area.  As you zoom into the triangle 2 area, you will find that the artist depicted a scene of kids beating something (Image 3). Apparently, it seems to be a quite popular game. After I did a little research on Google, I found this was a game called score which involves in beating the goose with sticks. You see, I learned something from the exploration process for the painting.

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(Image 2)

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(Image 3)

This high standard of pixels also enables people to observe the details about brush strokes and to see how an artist actually creates the masterpiece. As I deeply go to the favorite part of the painting Starry Night painted by Van Gogh. Interestingly, as I zoomed in, the cracks noticed seemly closer the distance between Van Gogh and me. I've never gone into the Starry Night like this before.

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Another amazing feature of this project is the collection button. This button enables any one of us to create our own museums online by creating our own collections out of all these images. Moreover, you can introduce your museum to your friends via sending an email and really get a conversation about what your feeling is when going to these masterpieces.

Additionally, we also see some potential values of this project for the arts education field. This could be a great tool for arts teachers to better get to the interpretations of interesting details of the masterpiece in class. For now, the Google Art Project seemingly performs well at a technical level. However, from a management perspective, some people doubt its problematic execution. Another concern is if the implication of Google Art Project is that in the future there will no longer be any need to visit a museum. This is not our focus of this post, but we are curious about your opinion about this project. Leave a comment below!

SFMOMA Families App Drives Away Gallery Fatigue

“When I’m walking around an art gallery, rooms full of paintings, after 15 or 20 minutes, I really am not thinking about the painting, I’m not connecting to them. Instead, I’m thinking about a cup of coffee that I desperately need to wake me up. I believe somebody put the painting on the wall because they think it is good enough to be there. But I don’t see it. I feel unhappy and guilt about my stupidity.”  Said Tracy Chevalierin her TED speech about “Finding the story inside the painting” How many of you also suffer from gallery fatigue?