Five digital museum tours to tide you over

Thanks to Tom Gridley for this contribution!


MUSEUMS

5 digital museum tours to tide you over

Florence, Italy's Uffizi Gallery has an excellent exhibition tracking “disease and divine intervention” in Renaissance art. Featured works include this 15th-century altarpiece by Fra Angelico titled "The Healing of Justinian by Saint Cosmas and Damian."
Florence, Italy's Uffizi Gallery has an excellent exhibition tracking “disease and divine intervention” in Renaissance art. Featured works include this 15th-century altarpiece by Fra Angelico titled "The Healing of Justinian by Saint Cosmas and Damian."DE AGOSTINI VIA GETTY IMAGES
Museum-going has been a virtual trip during the pandemic, with exhibitions feeling more or less the same whether they’re a few miles or half a world away. That’s about to change in New England, with museums all over the region aiming to reopen in mid-July, and some even in late June (the dates aren’t universal; be sure to check before heading out). In the meantime, let’s hope this is the last of our global cultural couch surfs, with five of the best onscreen museum experiences from around the globe.
Tate Modern (London): In what has to be a record for shortest run of a major retrospective, the Tate opened its omnibus Andy Warhol show March 12, only to shut down over pandemic concerns on March 17. The museum rallied to produce a video tour of the exhibition room-by-room — all 12 of them — by curators Gregor Muir and Fiontán Moran. The show is scheduled to run through September, though the museum has yet to set a reopening date. www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/andy-warhol/exhibition-guide
At the Tate Modern, a gallery assistant posed with Andy Warhol's "Self Portrait, 1986" in early March.
At the Tate Modern, a gallery assistant posed with Andy Warhol's "Self Portrait, 1986" in early March.JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES/FILE
Museum of New and Old Art (Tasmania, Australia): “When we first opened,” a disclaimer on the front page of MONA’s website reads, “we called our general collection ‘Monanism,’ which has turned out to be less than a brilliant idea, because people can get a bit confused.” That’s bound to happen with a millionaire’s vanity project, in this case a subterranean showcase of whatever David Walsh, the museum’s eccentric founder, thought was interesting. The collection runs from fascinating to foul (Belgian artist Wim Delvoye’s “Cloaca Machine,” which synthesizes the human digestive tract with disturbing verisimilitude right before your eyes, is the star attraction), from neolithic to of-the-moment contemporary. The founder’s guiding ethos has shifted since the museum opened in 2001, the museum promises, “possibly because David has become less of a meany-pants.” Scrolling through pictures of its best-of’s is train-wreck transfixing. mona.net.au/museum/introduction

Emma Amos's "Gold Face Type," from 1966.
Emma Amos's "Gold Face Type," from 1966. EMMA AMOS/VAGA AT ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY
Picasso Museum (Barcelona): Sure, Picasso’s a big deal — a pillar of Modernism as we know it — but his eponymous museum has a lot more to offer than pictures on the wall. Housed in a medieval stone palace, the museum’s virtual tour is transporting — across a century of art history, and a millennia of humanity itself. courtyard.museupicassobcn.org/
Miraculous Healings at the Uffizi Gallery (Florence): An unintentionally timely exhibition at this temple of Renaissance art — in the place where it was born — has the age-old Uffizi embracing 21st-century technology with aplomb: Dozens of images in glorious, eye-pleasing resolution (the museum is experimenting with HD image technology) track the significance of “disease and divine intervention” in Renaissance art. Spectacular, explicative, and clear-minded, it’s a model for what online excursions ought to be. www.uffizi.it/en/online-exhibitions/miracolous-healings
Murray Whyte can be reached at murray.whyte@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @TheMurrayWhyte

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