Google Street View now covers some museums (attractions, cities, person)

[tvdxer]

Google Street View now covers the interior of many museums (the Prado in Madrid, the MoMA and Met in NYC, etc.), as well as some famous tourist attractions (the White House). For some of the paintings in the museums, Google uses "Gigapxl" images which give brushstroke-level detail.

Now that you're able to tour the museums from your own home, and look at paintings in all their detail, will these museums continue to be tourist attractions, or attract people to cities they otherwise wouldn't visit? How about you? Will you decline to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art when you're in NYC or El Prado when you're in Madrid simply because you can do it from home? Will it be less exciting?

[intelfan11315]

It wouldn't be less exciting. Why would people still go to art museums if they can see everything in books or on google images? Why would people travel to other parts of the world when they can be seen in pictures?

[EnricoV]

To answer seriously, of course not.

But I think it's an interesting quandary. I think that anyone who would be satisfied looking at fine art on a computer screen, and by-pass seeing the real thing ... is not the kind of a person who would go looking at fine-art on a computer screen. They may visit that museum in person, just because they know of the museum as a tourist destination. But they're not really going to see the art. And anyone who is going to see the art, knows that seeing a reproduction (in whatever the medium) in no way compares to the seeing original.

Let's put it this way .... would you not go to a football game because you can watch it on television? No concerts because you can buy the cd? Never enter a movie theater because you can watch it on your computer screen?

It's just not the same. It's not true of everything, but many works of art ... I didn't really appreciate until I saw them in person. The Mona Lisa? Yeah, it's nice. But in person ... it's luminous. (and so small!!!!)