More good­ness out of Google­plex. Today, Google is rolling out a new tool called “Art Project,” which gives you access to more than 1,000 works of art appear­ing in 17 great muse­ums across the world. Using Google’s Street View tech­nol­o­gy, you can now tour col­lec­tions at the MoMA and Met in New York City, the Uffizi Gallery in Flo­rence, the Her­mitage in St. Peters­burg, the Van Gogh Muse­um and Rijksmu­se­um in Ams­ter­dam, the Nation­al Gallery in Lon­don – just to name a few muse­ums now vir­tu­al­ly open to you. And you can vis­it count­less paint­ings, some ren­dered in super high res­o­lu­tion. (We’re talk­ing 7 bil­lion pix­els!) Take for exam­ple, Ver­meer’s Offi­cer and Laugh­ing Girl (see above) or Van Gogh’s The Bed­room. When you view Van Gogh’s paint­ing, make sure you zoom in and look at the brush­work.

Although you won’t have access to the entire­ty of every muse­um (actu­al­ly the selec­tions are rather lim­it­ed in many cas­es), Google’s Art Project does put 385 rooms on dis­play. Not a bad start.  You can read more about the new ini­tia­tive on Google’s blog here. H/T to @eugenphoto