“ Real museums are those places where Time turns into Space.”
Orhan Pamuk
Can art be therapeutic? The answer is yes. In fact, in Canada, as a support to normal therapies, doctors advise patients affected with chronic diseases or severe stress and depression to go to museums and art exhibitions. The reason for this is very simple, as Dr. Hélene Boyer, vicepresident of the MFDC association says, “When looking at a work of art, our attention is absorbed by the work and we forget our sufferings and anxieties”, thereby dedicating ourselves to contemplation and reflection.
If you’re an art lover, you definitely don’t need a prescription to go to a museum, you’ll be used to the benefits that an art exhibition conveys changing our mood and psyche. Generally, for art lovers everywhere, Sunday is the perfect day to get your fill of art and culture but what happens if by chance we can’t move from home?
Fear not! Being forced to stay indoors won’t be an obstacle to our wish to get a daily intake of art and beauty. New technologies allow us to explore art through virtual tours, allowing us to immerse ourselves in the works of art (thanks to high definition resolution) from the comfort of our own home. Not sure where to start? Here are some ideas.
1 | Google Arts & Culture
Google Arts & Culture is an online platform designed and created to promote the digitalization of art collections and the versatile use of them from around the globe. This platform – which came to be in 2011 as the Google Art Project – offers many functions: through it, with the use of virtuals tours it’s possible to visit many museums, and thanks to a recent update of the official App you can also search for your work of art look-alike, using the Art Selfie function. The platform also offers insights, specific subject matter sections and high quality images of the art works.
To start exploring the vast world of Google Arts & Culture here are two different ways to enjoy it through a simple click:
2 | Virtual Tours: not just museums
Art is not always to be found simply in museums; think of the Roman Fountains, the Byzantine Basilicas, the countless wonders hidden along many Italian streets. This is where Italy Art comes to hand, it offers a virtual tour of many of the beauties scattered around this wondrous country. Thanks to 360° panoramic photographs, you will be able to admire Piazza San Marco, the Trevi Fountain, the Baths of Caracalla and much much more.
Another website, using the same method, is 360Visio: it offers full immersions of art and nature around the world. Keeping pace with new technologies even the Musei Vaticani, on their official website, offer a section dedicated entirely to the discovery of the museum through digital: explore the rooms, consult the catalogue of their exhibited works of art and find out opening hours and ticket prices.
3 | Haltadefinizione: enter works of art through HD
If what fascinates you is getting inside the work of art, Google Arts & Culture offers a way, through the Art Camera section, to consult a large catalogue and rich insights on selected works. We also want to mention, in this section, another online reality which specializes in HD images.
Haltadeifinizione is an image bank dedicated entirely to works of art. Since 2005 it has been making and collecting high quality photographs. It’s a service used by the publishing, advertising and research world for the enhancement and promotion of Italian artistic and cultural heritage. There are more than 500 works of art (available in gigapixels) allowing the user to navigate the deepest dimension of each paintings, and discovering within it every minute detail. The image bank is available for online consultation and can be explored in a very simple manner. One of the latest works made available is Raphael’s Fornarina, an extraordinary work that has combined several digital imaging technologies, which was made available on the anniversary of the 500 years since the death of the master from Urbino.
Photo Credits:
Ph. Uffizi Museum – Michelle Maria
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Translated by Ludovica Sarti
