The most famous museum in the world, The Louvre, have officially put their entire collection up for digital viewing, for free. This marks the first time the iconic art institution has done such a thing, uploading more than 480,000 historic works to a new platform so anyone around the world can visit The Louvre online.
The scope of The Louvre online is almost too vast to comprehend, including everything on display in the museum, whether it’s part of the permanent collection, on loan, or in storage. As such, expect to stumble across some rarities and lesser-known masterpieces aside from the usual crowd-pleasures like ‘Venus de Milo’, ‘Mona Lisa’, and ‘Liberty Leading the People’.
Announced last Friday, the most visited museum in the world has created this online platform so art lovers and researchers alike can still access the expansive collection without having to set foot in that singular glass and metal pyramid.
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The online platform can now be accessed from any device and is made up to all eight of The Louvre’s departments, running through history and crossing cultures, from Renaissance sculptures to Islamic art and Egyptian antiques.
Anyone visiting The Louvre online can search through the museum’s collections with either a special interactive map, which allows anyone to explore to museum room by room, or by searching themed albums and curatorial department. Either way, the website is very user-friendly and makes sifting through The Louvre’s sometimes overwhelming collection that much easier.
Various museum experts have committed to regular updates of the online platform in line with The Louvre’s ongoing collection, which is always steadily expanding – especially now that the museum itself is currently undergoing some long-planned renovations.
Although you’ll need more than just a few hours to make it through every single piece of The Louvre online, at least it’ll fill that art-loving void until we can visit Paris once again.
After something a bit closer to home that you can actually visit? Melbourne Museum are bringing over a huge chunk of London’s famous Natural History Museum for a new Treasures of the Natural World exhibition.
