Visitors unable to travel to New York can now explore the famous interior architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum thanks to Google Street View.
As part of a collaboration between the museum and the Google Cultural Institute, anyone with an internet connection can take
a 360-degree look at the building’s famous circular galleries, spiralling ramps and oculus. In addition, 127 artworks from the museum’s collection are also being made accessible online. Viewers can click on the exhibits in Street View to access information about each piece and its creator.
Currently, pieces from the
Storylines: Contemporary Art at the Guggenheim exhibition are free to view, including Maurizio Cattelan’s
Daddy, Daddy (2008) – a sculpture of Walt Disney’s Pinocchio floating facedown in the museum's fountain.
A statement posted on the Guggenheim’s website said: “By partnering with this Google Art Project to present work to audiences that may not be able to see it in person, this project furthers the Guggenheim’s goal to bring the art of today to an expanded, global audience.”
Wright’s world-famous modernist shell was built in 1939, and has displayed a growing collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern and contemporary art ever since.
The Guggenheim collection is shared with sister museums in Bilbao and Venice. An extension of the museum is planned
for a Foster + Partners-designed venue in Abu Dhabi and last year French architecture firm Moreau Kusunoki
won a design competition to create a museum bearing the Guggenheim name in Helsinki, Finland.
