3 of 100: Interactive art

Yesterday I referenced a very pleasing interpretative analysis of the W. H. Auden poem "Musée des Beaux Arts," from the New York Times. Turns out, it is part of a whole series of such "Close Reads" of a few poems, a lot of paintings, a photograph, and a 15th-century book of hours. Only sixteen works are covered, and the last entry was from last August, so that may be it. But I will be exploring each of those sixteen. The series is very nicely done.

That, of course, got me wondering—about other interactive/online features on art. And I found a couple, which I haven't looked at beyond the splash page, but I will.

The Met 360° Project, an "award-winning series of six short videos invites viewers around the world to virtually visit The Met's art and architecture in a fresh, immersive way. Created using spherical 360° technology, it allows viewers to explore some of the Museum's iconic spaces as never before." It includes the Great Hall, the Cloisters, the Temple of Dendur, the Met Breuer, the Charles Engelhard Court, and the Arms and Armor Galleries.

The National Gallery of Art has three online exhibits with an interactive sort of interface, courtesy of Google Arts & Culture:  Before the Mona Lisa: Leonardo’s Captivating Ginevra de’ Benci, Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting, and Fashioning a Nation: Drawings from the Index of American Design. 

The Musée d'Orsay—one of my favorite museums—has a similarly constructed online exhibit, From Station to the Renovated Musée d'Orsay. As does the Van Gogh Museum, featuring the books Vincent read, his love life (or lack thereof), and his beloved brother Theo.

You can get a pretty good look at the Sistine Chapel through its virtual tour.

The Smithsonian features an Online Exhibitions page—or rather, dozens of them, each listing dozens of exhibits: a ridiculous wealth of culture, science, art, innovation, and history.

There: there's a start. The Smithsonian alone could keep one happily occupied for months.

And finally, and completely by coincidence, today I stumbled on an article, published yesterday in the New York Times, about Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and the "Ode to Joy" that certainly counts as interactive, even if only aurally: "Why We Still Want to Hear the 'Ode to Joy, '200 Years Later." It's worth a listen.