If you’ve been put-off by ever rising museum entrance fees or have been unable to get to your favorite museum collections, our friends at Google have a fantastic new application just for you. The Google Art Project transcends budgets and geography allowing us to browse the collections of 17 world-class museums, including the Tate, the Uffizi, MOMA, the Metropolitan, the Hermitage ,Reina Sofia Madridand Versailles.

Utilizing Google Street View technology, you can view high resolution images, you can zoom-in on individual works of art or scan galleries. The image quality is amazing, at 7 billionpixels per image, allowing mindboggling close-ups. The project even allow the creation of a personalized virtual collection.

Google Art Project also incorporates valuable videos from museum curators, extensive information on the artists and artworks, and even easy to “wander” museum floor plans. Check out the Google tutorial.