Virtual Museum Tours

Hi Art Friends! 

While you are home you can still travel to someplace new. While you are there take on the role of an art buyer and make some choices! Use this handout to reflect on the museum you visit. You can print, fill out, and then send me a pic of your work (You will need to log-in to Office 365 to access the handout).

1.  A Walk Inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Touring the iconic New York City museum, this short 2 minute video is set to soft music and shows many famous works of art. Although the art pieces and artists are not labeled this video so great offers children a chance to quiz themselves. They can search in art reference books for the pictures they see in the video to confirm their guesses. Or they can select their favorite image and research it or the artist further.  

2. The Frick Museum in New York City

The Frick Museum in New York City is known for the collection of Old Master paintings.  The Frick’s virtual gallery tour not only shows images of various rooms but also allows viewers to click on items for an up close view and historical details.  All this while listening to a docent led tour.  It’s pretty awesome.  

3. Musee Du Louvre

Does it get any more iconic than the Louvre Museum.  The largest museum in the world, situated in Paris, France, has three virtual gallery tours.  You can visit their collection of Egyptian antiquites, the remains of the Louvre moat, or the recently restored Galerie d’ Apollon.  

4. In Our Time: The Museum of Modern Art

This hour-long episode of Great Museums explores the artwork found in New York City’s modern art museum. I love this video because it looks at how history chooses, remembers, and picks famous artists versus those who were popular in their own time. It also covers a lot of modern day artists and their works—something we don’t often find in our books.

5. Florence Italy: The Uffizi Gallery

This short 5 minute video follows Rick Steves as he tours this famous Italian gallery. He talks about some of the famous works of art on display there both by name and by artist with lots of close up videography so no details are lost.

6. Masterpieces from the National Gallery London

The National Gallery of London  houses the national collection of paintings in the Western European tradition from the thirteenth through the nineteenth centuries.  This museum offers a virtual tour of 18 rooms and the collections they hold.

7. Hermitage Museum

This short 12-minute video of the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia actually does not show many close up works of art, but the building and architecture itself is amazing to see.  

8. Musee D’Orsay

In this short 5-minute video, Rick Steves takes the viewer through this Parisian museum, highlighting works of art from the Idealists through the Realists and right to the Impressionist movement. There is abundant close detail of the actual brushstrokes of the Impressionist painters.

9. Van Gogh Museum

This concise, 4-minute recording tours the Amsterdam museum, highlighting as many as 30 or more works of art. Most of the artwork is labeled with the name and date in which it was painted too. It’s a comprehensive look at Van Gogh’s masterpieces.

10. The Dali Museum

This short, 5-minute video by Travel Through History examines the life of this master painter and explains a few pieces of work that are on display at the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.