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I've always wanted to see Botticelli's Birth of Venus in person at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and now, thanks to Google, I can. Launched today, Google Art Project is like a google maps tour of the inside of 17 of the world's most respected museums including the Tate Britain (London), State Hermitage (St. Petersburg), Palace of Versailles and hometown favorites the Metropolitan Musuem and the Museum of Modern Art. Each museum allows navigation through specific galleries through interactive floorplans. There is even a piece of work available as a 1GB download for each museum. In the example below, the detail view of Chris Ofili's No Woman No Cry is accompanied by the backstory about working with the artist.

We were fortunate that Chris Ofili was keen to participate in this project. He came to the Gigapixel capture session and advised the technical and editorial staff about some of the fascinating and complex aspects of the painting. With the artist's encouragement a plan was improvised to photograph an ultra high resolution image of the phosphorescent paint glowing in the dark. This proved a serious technical challenge, but was duly met by an enthusiastic team and some creative use of lighting. The session ended near dawn, with the team proud of their work and deeply appreciative of both the artist's efforts on the canvas, and of the meanings generated by them.

Art Project allows for users to create their own "art collection" by saving specific views of any of the pieces within the project database and learn more about featured works through high-res views and links to related content on youtube. Amazingly, the whole project was built using google tools that are open to the public such as App Engine. Check out some of the behind-the-scenes of the project here.

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