Google’s New Museum Street View

The Daily Beast

Museums can offer one thing no one else can: intimate, in-person encounters with great works of art, no bells or whistles necessary.
This week, Google and 17 great museums trumpeted a new initiative, The Art Project, which takes Google Maps’ Street View technology and brings it indoors. Instead of exploring a cityscape, the project lets you take a virtual stroll through rooms in great museums. Instead of zooming in on a dry cleaner or restaurant, you zoom in on fine paintings and sculptures. Sometimes, you can keep zooming until you’re at a sub-brushstroke level. This new innovation allows us, maybe even encourages us, to look at art as it was never meant to be seen.