Get out of the house and go exploring some of the world’s most famous art museums with virtual tours. Museums around the world are sharing their masterpieces on virtual tours that send visitors roaming through grand old galleries and modern architectural wonders. Many museums can be seen at Google Arts & Culture available on the collection’s website. Other museums offer exhibits on their own websites. The Guggenheim Museum in New York City may have best expressed our need for art now.
“In uncertain times such as these, art can provide both solace and inspiration,” says the Guggenheim website. Here’s how you can go even while staying at home to beat the coronavirus.
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles the Virtual Tour
Now is the perfect time to revel in the Iris of Vincent van Gogh at The J. Paul Getty Museum. Along with this masterpiece of the Dutch post-Impressionist painter, you’ll be able to view European artworks from as far back as the 8th Century in this California art museum. Go from Van Gogh’s Irises and Renoir’s La Promenade to Neolithic clay figures as you discover more than 6,000 years’ worth of creative paintings, drawings, sculptures, manuscripts, and photographs.
The Louvre Virtual Tours
This museum is home to masterpieces such as the Venus de Milo and Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. More than 9 million visitors flock each year to the Louvre, one of the world’s largest museums and one of the most historic monuments of Paris. This museum is housed in a large fortress on the banks of the Seine River. Virtual tourists can walk through the Egyptian antiquities wing and view works by Michelangelo as well as the Louvre moat, which was built in 1190 to protect the city.
British Museum, London Virtual Tour
This iconic museum in the heart of London allows visitors to see hundreds of online items that include Egyptian mummies, the ancient Rosetta Stone and other ancient wonders. London’s British Museum counts 8 million artifacts among its total collection. A virtual tour offers a 360-degree view of the magnificent Great Court’s domed ceiling with its no-two-alike 3,212 panes of glass.
The Vatican Museums Virtual Tour
The Vatican Museums rank among Italy’s finest cultural institutions. A virtual tour takes visitors around the museum grounds and gives a peek at world-famous exhibits of important art and classical sculptures curated by the Popes over many centuries. The extensive collection of 70,000 artifacts spanning centuries includes Michelangelo’s Last Judgment fresco in the Sistine Chapel ceiling as well as Renaissance artist Raphael’s School of Athens. The sprawling complex includes the Niccoline Chapel, the Pio Clementino Museum and the Room of the Chiaroscuri.
MASP, São Paulo Virtual Tour
The Museu de Arte de São Paulo is Brazil’s first modern museum. Here paintings appear to float in midair on clear Perspex panels that the museum calls “crystal easels”. The museum has one of the world’s broadest historical collections with artwork spanning from the 14th to 20th centuries. Visitors entering the glass and red-beam building beside the statement red staircase will find a temporary retrospective exhibition by Brazilian pop artist Teresinha Soares.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Virtual Tour.
Virtual tourists can discover incredible works of art from the Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary eras in this famous New York City museum. The building itself, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, is an architectural masterpiece. Tour the Guggenheim’s famous spiral staircase without ever leaving home. People who want to sample works from Jeff Koons, Pablo Picasso Franz Marc and Piet Mondrian can visit some of the collections online.
Musée d’Orsay, Paris Virtual Tour
A 453-foot-long gallery beneath a curved glass roof is home to the largest collection of impressionist and post-Impressionist works in the world. Located in a former Paris railway station and hotel, the musée exhibits famous works from French artists who worked and lived between 1848 and 1914. Check out the art of Monet, Cézanne, and Gauguin and others.
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul Virtual Tour
This virtual tour roams through six floors of modern and contemporary art from Korea and around the world. This museum opened its doors in 2013 and now counts several sites including the main gallery in Gwacheon and branches in Deoksugung, Seoul and Cheongju. The collection includes an international lineup of established and emerging artists along with contemporary Korean artworks.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Online Exhibits
This museum has showcased famous American art since 1937. Today the National Galley makes two exhibits available to virtual visitors. One is a collection of American fashion from 1740 to 1895 that highlights clothes from the colonial and Revolutionary eras. Another is an exhibit of works from Dutch Baroque painter Johannes Vermeer.
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Virtual Tour
This museum combines elements of 19th-century grandeur with modern lighting and a new glass-roofed atrium. Virtual visitors can explore masterworks from the Dutch Golden Age. Get up close with every brush stroke in Rembrandt’s The Night Watch and view works by Vermeer and other Dutch masters while roaming the Great Hall and beyond.