Launched earlier this year, Google’s Art Project website (www.googleartproject.com) features seventeen of the world’s finest art museums and showcases an impressive collection of over a thousand pieces of art from more than four hundred artists. The Art Project website, using the same technology that drives their Street View functionality on Google Maps, gives visitors the ability to take a virtual walk through many of the galleries at each of the seventeen museum locations. Additionally, you can view individual pieces of art from each museum’s collection.

Each piece of featured art has an information panel that provides details about the selected piece along with links to media files and museum information. Some of the pieces you might recognize include Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy, and Edward Hopper’s Hotel Room from the Museo Thyssen – Bornemisza in Madrid, Spain to name just a few.

And while the collection of art on display through this website is impressive, it is not what makes this site truly amazing. What really makes this a site worth visiting is the level of detail in which you can view each of the featured pieces of art. The use of extremely high-resolution photography along with a number of powerful web technologies combine to give the user an unprecedented look at these pieces of art. When you select a piece of art for viewing, the web page containing the chosen piece of art places a view controller on the lower right corner of the page. This controller gives you the ability to navigate around a piece of art and zoom in on any part of the artwork you desire. As you zoom in, you will begin to see the individual brush strokes, then, on some of the older pieces, as you zoom in a little closer, you will start to see the cracks in the paint that have developed over time, and on many pieces you can even see the weave of the canvas.

Whether you are a casual art fan or a seasoned art connoisseur, the ability to explore such renowned museums, and the opportunity to see such incredible pieces of art up-close and personal, can be both a learning experience and a fun time of exploration.