Thanks to the Google Cultural Institute, art patrons can now take a look inside Manhattan's famed Guggenheim Museum without booking a plane ticket to New York City! All you need is Google's Street View, apparently.
According to ArchDaily, the Google Cultural Institute "have teamed up" with the iconic Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum - designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and completed in 1959 - to open its doors on Google's Street View.
Not only that, but the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation has also selected 120 artworks from its entire museum collection available for online viewing as well.
"Using Street View technology, it will now be possible to tour the museum's distinctive spiral ramps from anywhere online," the Foundation said.
Furthermore, the Foundation said, "The Guggenheim's architecture presented unique challenges for Google's engineers and Street View team. Drone, tripod, and Street View 'troll' images were stitched together to provide a 360 degree experience of the building's rotunda galleries that online visitors can freely navigate. Street View makes it possible to move from ramp to ramp; to gaze at the building's oculus above; and to examine works on view in the 2015 special exhibition 'Storylines: Contemporary Art at the Guggenheim.'"
So how does it work? Well, the Foundation says that users can simply click on artworks to learn more about work and the artists.
They even recommended taking a look at Juliana Huxtable's Untitled in the Rage (Nibiru Cataclysm), a self-portrait wherein the artist tackles gender norms and portrayals of femininity.
Viewers on Google's platform will also be able to see Maurizio Cattelan's Daddy, Daddy (2008), a sculpture of Walt Disney's Pinocchio floating facedown in the fountain on the ground floor of the Guggenheim rotunda.
Take a look at some screenshots of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on Google Street view in the slideshow here.
