Paris' Louvre Museum Puts More Than 480,000 Artworks Online For Free
Life amid a global pandemic means all plans on travel remain at halt. However, there is nothing that the Internet can't do—over the past few months, well-known museums around the globe opened their gates online.
Of course, Paris' Louvre will not be late in the game. The museum just put its entire collection on the web and you can browse them for free in your own safe space and time.
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Home to Mona Lisa, the most emblematic portrait in the history of art, the Louvre announced that it has digitised more than 480,000 sheer bulk of art.
It added that pieces from the Musée National Eugène-Delacroix and sculptures from the Tuileries and Carrousel gardens will also be seen in the collection.
The virtual museum, which spans paintings, sketches, sculptures, and engravings across the museum's galleries can be viewed through an interactive map with the help of advanced search tools like the 'full-text search engine' and 'search results filter' that will let viewers find entries according to the date of creation, collection the work belongs to, where the work is located, and category of work.
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According to Louvre President Jean-Luc Martinez, the online collection will not only feature world-famous paintings. "Today, the Louvre is dusting off its treasures, even the least-known."
"For the first time, anyone can access the entire collection of works from a computer or smartphone for free, whether they are on display in the museum, on loan, even long-term, or in storage," he said in a statement.
"The Louvre's stunning cultural heritage is all now just a click away. I am sure that this digital content is going to further inspire people to come to the Louvre to discover the collections in person," he added.
In a bid to contain COVID-19 the French government banned gatherings of more than 100 people forcing the Louvre, which had 9.6 million visitors last year, to close its doors "until further notice."
In an interview with the Associated Press, Laurent le Guedart, the Louvre's Architectural Heritage and Gardens Director, said that a major renovation will take place while the museum is closed. "We are re taking advantage of the museum's closure to carry out a number of major works, speed up maintenance operations, and start repair works that are difficult to schedule when the museum is operating normally."
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