Museums to visit online

Just because the museums are closed doesn’t mean you have to stop learning from them! In this e-age museums across the world have risen to the challenge of the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic and done the impossible: they’ve gone online.

Google has partnered with over 500 museums and galleries worldwide to create “Google Arts and Culture,” an online platform which allows you to browse museum collections online and even use Google’s interior Street View to walk the gallery halls (virtually) yourself. We’ve put together a list of our favorite picks, but you can also explore museums beyond the Google collection by searching Instagram under the hashtag #MuseumFromHome for informative posts and collection insights.

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

One of the advantages of e-collections is that you can visit museums beyond your hometown or country from the comfort of your home. Now is finally your chance to check out the famous Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam with Google Arts and Culture. The Van Gogh Museum houses the largest collection of artworks by Vincent van Gogh in the world, with over 200 hundred of the artist’s letters, 500 drawings and more than 750 letters in its permanent collection as well as collections focusing more generally on 19th-century art history. The Google Arts and Culture page for this museum offers two online exhibits, “Which Books did Vincent van Gogh Read?” and “Vincent van Gosh's love life” as well as several collections of digital images under categories which include “Post-Impressionism” and “Neo-impressionism”, among others. You can even step virtually into the museum itself, with the ability to explore the interior of the gallery via Street View. 

MoMa, NYC

New York’s Museum of Modern Art has a page on Google Arts and Culture, too. Founded in 1929, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) was the first museum devoted to the modern era, offering a varied collection spanning modern and contemporary art, with over 150,000 paintings, scultures, drawings, prints, photographs, architectural models and drawings as well as today's film and performance art. You can find everything from Monet’s “Water Lilies” to Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d'Avignon” to works by Andy Warhol in this celebrated museum, which you can now access online. On Google Arts and Culture, MoMa is currently holding the free online exhibit on Sophie Taeuber-Arp as well as several paid exhibits and events, plus you can explore a range of digital collections, including those on “Installation art” and “Sculpture.”

Musée d’Orsay, Paris

Musée d’Orsay is one of Paris’ leading art galleries, built for the Universal Exhibition of 1900 in the former Orsay railway station. This impressive museum displays art from 1848 to 1914, so why not browse their online collections and walk the halls themselves (virtually) through the “museum view” feature and digital collections available on Google Arts and Culture? The online exhibit, "From Station to the Renovated Musée d’Orsay", will educate you on the history of the museum while the extensive image collections will broaden your mind with everything from oil paint to canvas to Impressionism collections on display.

National Gallery, London

London’s National Gallery is home to over 2,300 artworks, with paintings from all major traditions of Westwern Europe from late medieval artists to those of Renaissance Italy to the French Impressionists. Their collections also include many famous works, such as van Eyck’s “Arnolfini Portrait,” Turner’s “Fighting Temeraire” and Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers.” Offering an incredible 12 online exhibitions at the moment, the current focus is on Monet, with exhibits including "Monet's Rouen painting series", "Monet: The Water Lily Pond" and "Monet's Paris" as well as a range of digital image collections spanning painting across oil, canvas and wood, which focus on the Renaissance.

There are many more museums and galleries to explore beyond this. In fact, Google Arts and Culture has a wide database which you can search by location using the map or for artworks themselves by historical era or by artist. So now more than ever is the perfect time to (art) work from home!