While art galleries around the world may have had to close their doors for the time being, thanks to twenty-first-century technology we don't have to miss out on their wonders within.
Top-tier institutions around the world have vast online archives and are embracing online tours and exhibitions as a way of keeping their virtual doors open to allow the public continued access to their collections across the globe.
Many of the world's leading museums and art galleries are offering online tours that share their treasures with the world at large; from the 19th-century grandeur of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam to striking contemporary art in the MoMA alongside Renaissance art classics in the Uffizi and Contemporary Korean art in MMCA, Seoul.
So, why not consider some artistic solace in these challenging times? We've brought together our top picks from around the globe so you can take this opportunity to virtually travel the world, exploring breathtaking collections and artworks from the comfort of your own home...
Guggenheim, Bilbao
(Image: Guggenheim Bilbao)
The famed, sculptured building designed by Frank Gehry is one of the world’s most distinctive art spaces.
The Google Arts & Culture interactive tour guides you around its collection of postwar American and European painting and sculpture – Rothko, Holzer, Koons, Kapoor – and even down between the weathered steel curves of Serra’s Matter of Time (turn left at the entrance).
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
This grand museum has a vast collection of art and historical objects across 80 galleries. A 10-year renovation project was completed in 2013, transforming the space and combining elements of 19th-century grandeur with modern lighting and a new glass-roofed atrium.
The Google Arts & Culture interactive tour allows you get up close to every brushstroke by Vermeer, Rembrandt and other Dutch masters while exploring the Great Hall and beyond.
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
(Image: NGV/Tom Ross)
Stay connected and inspired with highlights from The National Gallery of Victoria channel including the stories behind their Collection works, virtual exhibition tours, essays, interviews and more. More than 68,000 works in the NGV Collection can be also be viewed online.
In an unprecedented, world premiere exhibition, the NGV currently has on show the work of two of the most significant and influential artists of the late twentieth century - Keith Haring | Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossing Lines.
Exclusive to Melbourne, this exhibition offers new and fascinating insights into their unique visual languages and reveals, for the first time, the many intersections between their lives, practices and ideas. This exhibition is now available as a free virtual tour led by the curator.
Musée d’Orsay, Paris
(Image: EQRoy / Shutterstock.com)
This grand museum holds the largest collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist works in the world.
The Google Arts & Culture Musée d’Orsay virtual tour allows you to explore the very best among them with interactive galleries featuring van Gogh, Cézanne, Degas and more.
Uffizi Gallery, Florence
(Image: visitflorence.com)
You can scroll through more than 300,000 works in the digital archives of the Uffizi, Florence’s treasure chest of Renaissance art where you'll find all the greats including Botticelli, Titian and Canaletto.
Explore their 360-degree new arrangement of 16th-century paintings, view their collections online and click on the HyperVisions tab for thoughtfully curated tours around themes such as angels, epiphany and ‘intercultural vision’.
Tate Modern, London
(Image: Andrew Dunkley / Time Out)
The Andy Warhol retrospective opened at Tate Modern on 12 March, before swiftly closing on 17 March thanks to lockdown measures. Now, you can join Tate curators Gregor Muir and Fiontán Moran for an online tour as they discuss Warhol through the lens of the immigrant story, his LGBTQI identity and concerns with death and religion.
This major retrospective is the first Warhol exhibition at Tate Modern for almost 20 years. As well as his iconic pop images of Marilyn Monroe, Coca-Cola and Campbell’s soup cans, it includes works never seen before in the UK. Twenty-five works from his Ladies and Gentlemen series – portraits of black and Latinx drag queens and trans women – are shown for the first time in 30 years.
Museum of Modern Art, New York
(Image: Erika Cross / Shutterstock.com)
You can view 129 artworks from MoMA’s collection on the Google Arts & Culture virtual tour, including van Gogh’s ‘The Starry Night’, Paul Cézanne’s ‘Still Life with Apples’ and Rousseau’s ‘The Sleeping Gypsy’.This tour is also grouped into categories such as contemporary art, Modernist art and Cubism – making for fun, easy and informative browsing.
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul
(Image: MMCA)
Since opening its door in 1969, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Korea has lived through the history of Korean art and in the process, established itself as a representative institution of Korean modern art.
Their online art museum shares behind the scenes insight alongside lectures and documentaries while the Google Arts & Culture virtual tour guides you through six floors of Contemporary Korean as well as international art.
MASP, São Paulo
(Image: cidadedesaopaulo.com)
The Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) is a private not-for-profit museum founded in 1947 by business mogul and patron of the arts, Assis Chateaubriand (1892–1968), and was the first modern museum in the country.
With the most important collection of European art in the southern hemisphere, the Google Arts & Culture virtual tour showcases a selection of MASP’s some 11,000 artworks, including paintings, sculptures, objects, photographs, videos and pieces of clothing from various periods, from Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas.
The Broad, Los Angeles
(Image: Michael Juliano)
Ordinarily, you would only be allocated forty-five seconds to immerse yourself in Yayoi Kusama’s ‘Infinite Mirrored Room’ at the Broad. But now you can spend as much time with its signature piece as you’d like – virtually, at least.
As part of its Broad from Home initiative, you can take a virtual tour of Kusama’s artwork. Featuring celebrated musicians and sound artists from Los Angeles and beyond, the Infinite Drone series presents a new, contemplative way of experiencing The Broad’s most popular artwork.