Political paintings and pick-me-up posters spotted during lockdown

The virtues of virtual touring

Just as the world locked down, some of its most highly acclaimed cultural spaces opened up online, allowing us to absorb the wonders of the world from our living rooms. Millie Bruce-Wattexplores...

Although lockdown physically confined us to the four walls of our homes, technology broadened our horizons like never before. Thanks to interactive, 360-degree videos and full ‘walk around’ tours, we were able to visit all corners of the globe without leaving the sofa. We were given the opportunity to visit first-class exhibitions and nose around the world’s most famous cultural spaces while sipping our morning coffee at the kitchen table.

The announcement of the free virtual tours was unquestionably one of the few saving graces of lockdown. From the Natural History Museum in London and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam to the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in South Korea, artistic talent from around the globe was at our fingertips. These virtual tours offered us an escape during the lowest points of isolation. They could disconnect us from our phones, stop us from endless vacant searching and scrolling on the web and remove us from earshot of the news, if only for a second.

With over 6,000 years’ worth of creative treasures at the J Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, virtual visitors are able to bounce from Neolithic clay figures to Van Gogh’s Irises in one fell swoop. A few Google searches later, you could be walking through the rich sites of the Vatican, revelling in the wonders of the Sistine Chapel, and then enjoying lunch in Bilbao, exploring the Guggenheim’s collection of post-war American and European paintings and sculptures – Rothko, Holzer, Koons and Kapoor all featuring in the gallery.

The tours also allow us to explore the spaces in minute detail, a luxury that is rarely available even when we’ve paid to be there in person. The Mona Lisa is very often viewed from a distance and over a crowd of bobbing heads. But now, thanks to the powers that be –namely Zoom – we’re able to visit the Musée du Louvre and explore with friends that are sitting hundreds of miles away, something that in real life would not be financially plausible or physically possible.

The Museu de Arte de São Paulo in Brazil also has one of the broadest historical collections available in its virtual gallery, with works spanning the 14th to the 20th centuries. The paintings have been suspended in the air around the open-plan space so that we feel as though we are standing in one of the museum’s great halls.

Closer to home, our much-loved and much-missed museums, galleries and festivals also supplied us with sorely needed entertainment during quarantine. We could wander through the University of Bristol Botanical Garden, marvel at We The Curious’s interactive exhibits, and traverse the streets of Bristol on a Banksy trail. The city’s brilliant art organisations also came together to produce the Bristol Arts Channel and thanks to Colston Hall, Watershed, St George’s and Bristol Old Vic, to name just a few, we have been able to stay connected to the unique arts scene that we are so fortunate to have.