Take a virtual, online tour of George Eastman House’s classic photo collection
posted Tuesday, July 9, 2013 at 4:59 PM EST
Have you always wanted to visit the George Eastman House to view its collection of classic photos but haven't found the time to get to Rochester, NY yet? Well, now you can take a virtual tour of the the world's oldest museum for photography thanks to the Google Cultural Institute program.
Haven't heard of Google Cultural Institute? Neither had I until a friend tipped me off to it. While lots of museums have websites where you can view some of the art online, Google Cultural Institute offers an easy and elegant way to look at crisp, high-resolution images and get background information online. The service was launched as a way to digitize the Dead Sea Scrolls for the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and has expanded to include many other cultural centers such as the British Museum in London, The Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar, and the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.
The George Eastman House site contains only a portion of what's inside the actual museum, which houses one of the world's oldest film archives. But it's a nice sampler, including everything from Alexander Gardner's image of the execution of the conspirators behind the Lincoln assassination from 1863, to a striking image of Dr. Martin Luther King flanked by Dr. Benjamin Spock and Monsignor Rice at a march in Pittsburgh, captured in 1967 by Benedict Fernandez. There are easy ways to save the images you like, compare shots side by side, and share them share them on Facebook, Google+ (of course), and other social networking sites.
Check out the Eastman House Google Cultural Institute site out here.
(Via Andrew Darlow's Twitter feed)
