Google Art Project: Touring the Tate between Science and Recess

Thanks to Google’s new website, Google Art Project, students (and anyone with Internet access) can visit some of the world’s greatest art museums without leaving the classroom—a brilliant example of using technology to connect and engage millions with art. The site uses Google Street View to offer virtual tours of 17 museums, including the Tate Britain in London, Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA in New York and Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

Visitors can view 360-degree images of the galleries, zoom into a painting using high-resolution technology to see the minutest of details, click on an icon to learn more about the artist, find more works by that artist and watch related YouTube videos.

A “Create an Artwork Collection” feature allows guests to save specific views of any of the artworks, build their own personalized collections, add comments and share their collections with friends on the web.