Daily News New York City. March 29, 2020

50 Sunday,March 29, 2020 DAILY NEWSNYDailyNews.com

C

oronavirus closures may mean

months could pass before you

can stand in front of a muse-

um masterpiece again. If you

have time on your hands and a

deep need for cultural sustenance and

succor, be it for yourself or your chil-

dren, it’s time to get familiar with a

resource so obvious it’s not: Google

Arts & Culture.

This Google project launched

nearly a decade ago, and while you

likely were forgetting about it, the

platform expanded exponentially. It

now features thousands of high-

resolution images from more than

1 ,200 museums globally, including the

National Gallery in London, the

Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid and the

State Hermitage Museum in St. Pe-

tersburg, Russia.

You can visit Google Arts & Culture

as a website on your laptop or desk-

top, but the project is at its immersive

best when engaged via the Google

Arts & Culture app, which you can

download for free on your smart-

phone or tablet. The great joy is its

ability to transport you into the tex-

tural world of a piece of art. Zoom

into brushstrokes, skate across oceans

of color or a tap on a screen and ex-

plore the universe contained in the

blue-green pigment of a single

painted eye.

Images are accompanied by ex-

planatory text, and you can spend

days diving into the collection of any

given partner institution.

Here we’ve rounded up some of

our favorite virtual exhibits on the

platform. It’s also worth noting that

the websites of local institutions like

the Getty Museum, Museum of Con-

temporary Art, Los Angeles County

Museum of Art and the Natural His-

tory Museum of Los Angeles County

promise robust online options to help

us in our coming weeks of collective

isolation.

But for now, here are six ways to let

Google be your global museum.

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam:

Take a virtual trip to the Netherlands

and this museum, which offers one of

1 7 collections of Van Gogh paintings

in the Google project. You can see

amazingly detailed images of more

than 160 artworks, including sunflow-

ers, self-portraits and his famous “The

Bedroom.” You also can click into the

story, “Which Books Did Vincent Van

Gogh Read?”

Scroll through Van Gogh paintings

inspired by the literature he favored,

including “The Vicarage at Nuenen,”

which captures the moody,

windswept home where Van Gogh’s

parents lived and where the young

painter first grew to love the mor-

alistic tales of Charles Dickens.

Uffizi Galleries, Florence:Take a

virtual tour of one of Italy’s most

famous museums, featuring up close

looks at the museum’s interiors and

the stunning masterpieces on its

walls, including Michelangelo’s “Doni

Tondo” and Botticelli’s “The Birth of

Venus.” (The magnification of the

latter is so powerful, you can see

cracks in the paint of her eyelids.)

Wander placid hallways and corri-

dors, and gaze out a window at the

Ponte Vecchio bridge, which straddles

the picturesque Arno River.

Guggenheim Bilbao Museum:Get

upclose and personal with a selection

of modernist triumphs inside the

Frank Gehry-designed landmark in

Spain.

“Masterpieces From the Collec-

tion” has art from the mid-20th cen-

tury to the present: Mark Rothko,

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Yves Klein and

Willem de Kooning, revealed in lumi-

nous layers.

Smithsonian American Art Muse-

um, Washington: You can take a

digital walk through “African Ameri-

can Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil

Rights Era and Beyond,” featuring

work by black artists from the 1920s

through the 2000s.

This exhibition explores the

Harlem-based portrait photography

of James VanDerZee, the lush brush-

strokes of James A. Porter and the

expressionistic folk art of William

Henry Johnson, as well as a trove of

others works relating to race, identity,

politics, culture and family.

Museo Frida Kahlo, Mexico City:

“Appearances Can Be Deceiving:

Frida Kahlo’s Wardrobe” is an inti-

mate study of the fascinating, highly

stylized clothing and accessories that

defined the look of the famous Mexi-

can painter.

Kahlo’s life was forever altered by

abus accident that displaced three

vertebrae and left her in pain for the

rest of her life. Crutches, elaborate

leather corsets, a prosthetic leg in a

gorgeous red-leather boot embroi-

dered with silk thread — they’re all

on digital view, as are a slew of Kah-

lo’s traditional Mexican dresses. Just

as Google’s zoom feature provides a

revelatory look at paintings, the

blown-up photography here can

reveal, say, the tiniest beads adorning

avery Frida blouse. It feels like an

in-person experience.

Art Zoom: Thank Google not only

for all of those interactive exhibitions

but also for Art Zoom videos that play

like mini documentaries, zeroed in on

tiny details of famous canvases and

narrated by famous musicians in-

cluding Jarvis Cocker and Maggie

Rogers.

Aprime example: Pieter Bruegel

the Elder’s “Tower of Babel” as exam-

ined by Feist. The Canadian singer-

songwriter takes us inside her inter-

pretation of one of Bruegel’s most

famous works, which she notes

stands 5 feet, 1 inch high — almost as

tall as the singer herself.

Vincent Van Gogh’s “Undergrowth with Two Figures” is part of the Cincinnati Art Museum’s collection on Google Arts & Culture. The Google project, which was launched nearly a

decade ago, also offers 17 collections of Van Gogh’s paintings.

CINCINNATI ART MUSEUM

Cultural healing

These Google art discoveries can

satisfy museum lovers’ fix during

coronavirus quarantine

BY JESSICA GELT

LOS ANGELES TIMES