Thanks to technology, it’s easier than ever to visit museums around the world, even when you’re staying closer to home. Here are five awesome art museums that you can check out from the comfort of your couch.
5 Art Museums to Visit Virtually
Guggenheim Museum, New York
The Guggenheim Museum, located in New York City, was designed by famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright and is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This world-renown art museum has an ever-expanding collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern and contemporary art dating as far back as the 1800s. Through Google’s Street View feature, you can explore all six levels of the museum.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
The National Gallery of Art, which is located in the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was established in 1937 and is considered to be one of the best museums in the country. It ranks second in the nation and 10th in the world for its number of annual visitors, and unlike other museums of its class, it has free admission. It has a huge collection of drawings, paintings, prints, photographs, medals and sculptures dating back from the Middle Ages to present-day. Google lets you see two of these exhibits online, including Fashioning a Nation, which shows how clothing in America evolved between 1740 and 1895, and Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting.
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul
South Korea’s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, also known as the Gwacheon Contemporary Art Museum, has over 290,000 square feet spread over six floors, three of which are underground. The main museum has an internationally recognized collection of over 7,000 artworks, including pieces by Andy Warhol, Nikki de Saint-Phalle and Jonathan Borofsky. Virtual visitors can check out exhibits on the ground, second and third floors.
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
As you probably guessed from the name, the Van Gogh Museum, which is located at the Museum Square in Amsterdam South, is dedicated to the works of Vincent van Gogh, a famous Dutch painter who lived in the mid-1800s. This museum has the largest collection of van Gogh works in the world, featuring 200 paintings, 400 drawings and 700 letters, and arranges them according to the various phases of van Gogh’s life as an artist. Along with this huge collection of van Goghs, the museum also has pieces from some of his contemporaries. If you happen to be in the neighborhood, you can enjoy exploring this museum for free, but if a trip to Amsterdam isn’t on your calendar, you can wander all three floors virtually.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, known simply as “the Met,” is the nation’s largest art museum and the fourth most visited art museum in the world. Its permanent collection has over 2 million works spanning thousands of years, including artifacts from ancient Egypt, sculptures from virtually every European master, antique armor and weapons from around the world and collections from Africa, Oceania and the Americas. Virtual visitors can explore two stories of this beautiful museum.
While there’s no substitute for seeing works of art in person, technology gives you the opportunity to virtually visit some of the coolest museums in the world.
