CareerTech Testing Center: Google Art Project...In a Gigapixel? AMAZING!

All I can say is UNBELIEVABLE! Whether you like art or history, you will absolutely enjoy the Google Art Project!!!

In collaboration with seventeen of the world’s great museums, Google has which takes it's Street View indoors and allows you to visit more than 400 rooms, examine the work of over 385 artists, and view and compare more than 1000 works of art.

Here’s an introduction from Google developer Amit Sood and Sir Nicholas Serota of the Tate:

So, the word amazing is probably the most overused word in the English language and I try to avoid it, but the Google Art Project is AMAZING.

We can now take deep peeks into the collections of the following institutions:

Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany
Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian, Washington D.C.
Frick Collection, New York
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid
Museo Thyssen – Bornemisza, Madrid,Spain
Museum Kampa, Prague
National Gallery, London
Palace of Versailles, France
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
Tate Britain, London
Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

And there’s more. These seventeen museums each chose one masterpiece to be photographed in 7 billion pixels or gigapixel version.

The Frick Collection St Francis in the Desert, Giovanni Bellini
Gemäldegalerie The Merchant Georg Gisze, Hans Holbein the Younger
Museum Kampa The Cathedral, František Kupka
The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Harvesters, Pieter Bruegel the Elder
MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art The Starry Night, Vincent van Gogh
Museo Reina Sofia The Bottle of Anís del Mono, Juan Gris
Museo Thyssen – Bornemisza Young Knight in a Landscape, Vittore Capaccio
National Gallery The Ambassadors, Hans Holbein the Younger
Palace of Versailles Marie-Antoinette de Lorraine-Habsbourg, Queen of France, and her children, Louise Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun
Rijksmuseum Night Watch, Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn
State Hermitage Museum Return of the Prodigal Son, Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn
State Tretyakov Gallery Apparition of Christ to the People (The Apparition of the Messiah), Aleksander Ivanov
Tate Britain No Woman, No Cry, Chris Ofili
Uffizi Gallery Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli
Van Gogh Museum The Bedroom, Vincent van Gogh

According to the Google Blog, visitors to the Google Art Project can now do all of the following:

Dive into brushstroke-level detail: On top of the 1,000+ other images, each of the 17 museums selected one artwork to be photographed in extraordinary detail using super high resolution or “gigapixel” photo-capturing technology. Each of these images contains around 7 billion pixels—that’s that’s around 1,000 times more detailed than your average digital camera—and a specially-built “microscope view” uses Picasa to deliver these images at amazingly high resolution. You can zoom in to see Van Gogh’s famous brushwork or watch how previously hard to-see elements of an artwork suddenly become clear—such as the tiny Latin couplet which appears in Hans Holbein the Younger’s “The Merchant Georg Gisze.”

The bedroom, Vincent van Gogh (Van Gogh Museum)

Explore inside the museums: the Street View team designed a brand-new vehicle called the “trolley” to take 360-degree images of the interior of selected galleries. These were then stitched together and mapped to their location, enabling smooth navigation of more than 385 rooms within the museums. We also created a new clickable annotation feature, so you can jump from being inside a museum one moment to viewing a particular artwork the next. Once inside an image, an info panel lets you read more about an artwork, find more works by that artist and watch related YouTube videos. Gallery interiors can also be explored directly from within Street View in Google Maps.

Marie-Antoinette de Lorraine-Habsbourg, Queen of France, and her children, Louise Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun (Mars Salon, Palace of Versailles)

Create your own collection: With the “Create an Artwork Collection” feature, you can save specific views of any of the artworks and build your own personalized collection. Comments can be added to each painting and the whole collection can then be shared with friends, family or on the web using the integrated goo.gl URL shortener.