Google Offers Virtual Tours of 17 of the Top Museums Using Street View Technology

February 2, 2011 by All Art News
Filed under Education & Research, Featured

Leave a Comment

LONDON (REUTERS).- Google aims to bring the world’s great art galleries into the home with a new website that offers virtual tours using Street View technology, the ability to build private collections and ultra-high resolution images.

While most big galleries have been busy making their works accessible online for years, experts told a launch at London’s Tate Britain gallery on Tuesday that Google’s site was looking to take the online art experience to a new level.

“It could be the game changer,” said Julian Raby of the Freer Gallery of Art, part of the Smithsonian in Washington DC, which is one of 17 galleries taking part in the project.

Each of the 17 museums involved also chose one artwork to be photographed using “gigapixel” photo capturing technology, resulting in an image on the computer containing seven billion pixels and providing detail not visible to the naked eye.

And so by zooming in on a broken string on the instrument in Hans Holbein the Younger’s “The Ambassadors,” from London’s National Gallery, the viewer not only sees the string clearly but also where each new brushstroke has been applied.

Art News

Embossing on Metal

The process of embossing is the technique of creating designs in the metal through stamping, piercing, folding or hammering. Copper, brass and aluminum sheets are a common choice for embossing because it is malleable and not as expensive as other metals, such as gold or silver.

The technique of embossing also is also called "tooling" or "repousse" (pronounced rep-o-zay). These sheets of metal usually have a thickness of 5 millimeters. Thicker sheets may be used, but they cannot be easily cut with scissors, and require greater force when hammering or stamping.

This is a 3D work done by an 11^th grader who is taking Art as her HL IB Option, she based her design in Art Nouveau movement, and created this original piece of work.

“Each time I do an artwork I try to make it look different and original, this is the reason I chose to do my work with the metal embossing technique. In this work I have decided to express the freedom, the peacefulness and beauty of nature as a whole. I have always like drawing butterflies this is because my name in Greek means butterfly. The butterflies are like in 3D because I have decided to emphasize them, the flowers are components of nature and this is why I have included them.” Vanessa Durán .11^th grade – IB Visual Art