Virtual Art Exhibit
Using Google Street view you can virtually visit the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The same way you would walk down the street virtual on google maps, they created a virtual street view of the inside of the Guggenheim Museum. By clicking around you can wind down the staircases and click on different images to pull up high-resolution photos of the work. It’s not quite the same as it would be to visit in person, and clicking around can be a little clumsy. But you still get the chance to feel like you’re really moving through the museum.
When thinking about how this digital exhibition was designed, the people at Google and the Guggenheim had to consider what works when using Google street view and where does the software fall short for a museum. I think they recognized it offers autonomy to the user, they can click around, explore, and be curious– similar to how you can act in a physical space. But where it falls short is the viewing up-close experience. It’s hard to grasp the feeling of a large art piece through you’re 13-inch laptop screen. In an attempt to rectify this, they created a feature where you can click on the image in the lower left-hand corner of the screen and it brings you to a new screen with images you can zoom in and out of to get a better sense of the artwork. I think this is only a semi-successful solution. While you can get a better look at the image this way, it’s a little clumsy moving back into street view, and it removes the artwork from the context of the museum.
Google street view’s wayfinding is pretty straightforward, the cursor turns into an arrow in the direction you wish to move, and the floor is populated with an “x” where you will be standing. On the side of the screen, it provides numbers that represent the floor you’re on so you can jump between floors instead of going all the way down the spiral. Ufortantually you can’t see very well the actual wayfinding of the museum since it becomes too low resolution, though the Guggenheim is unique in its spiral layout so there are not many directions you can go.
I think for such an iconic cultural institution this is no replacement, but it does give you a sense of what it would be like to visit the museum. It made me want to go, even more, its such a beautiful space and you get that sense using the virtual tour. I think google street view in museums is a really cool learning opportunity for taking kids who wouldn’t be exposed to museums like the Guggenheim due to financial limitations or distance, the opportunity to gain an appreciation for the arts. It helps open the art world up to more people, breaking down the elitism of paying to go into a museum. Art should be available to everyone, and this helps do that in a very accessible way.