Virtual spaces that bring art to your home

It's been almost a year since we walked the corridors of crowded museums, a year since we stopped queuing to see the Mona Lisa at the Louvre or Las Meninas at the Prado. From one day to the next, museums have ceased to be what they used to be and have become rooms with reduced seating capacity, and some have even had to close their doors.

However, the act of viewing art is not dead, as many institutions and exhibition halls have put painting, sculpture and photography in our hands in a virtual way. Many will say that it is not the same thing, and they are right, because the sensation caused by a work of art perceived directly by our eyes is different to the one we feel when we see it through a tiny screen.

But we can't get stuck in this belief and stop enjoying art. That is why we will talk about some of the online exhibitions that you can enjoy from home, without putting your health or that of others at risk.

Google Arts and Culture opens the way for us in its space so that we can enjoy art collections in detail, in which you are the one who chooses what you want to see and can explore the paintings by getting as close to them as possible.

At the end of 2013 Google created this project to discover virtual exhibitions, collections and archives of museums around the world. This gives the possibility to explore all art and culture in great detail. 

This project started in 2008 with works from the Prado Museum and videos about some exhibitions. Later the Louvre and the National Gallery joined in, and a large number of other museums and institutions followed.  

MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, is probably a bit far away, and to get rid of the impatience to visit it and discover the pieces it houses, we don't have to worry about it. Entering a museum has never been easier, we choose the order and what to see, from Van Gogh's Starry Night of 1889 to the most recent works of the 21st century. 

PeopleArt Factory gives you the power to create a virtual room or browse multiple rooms where you feel like you are practically there. This platform created in Murcia, Spain was created so that any artist can develop a presentation of their work in a 3D room. 

It allows you to walk through the space in a scaled gallery, in which you decide which wall to see, what to focus on, getting closer to the work and reading the textual information, just like in a real gallery. In addition, the exhibitors can add background images, colours, wall textures and texts.  

Here we can find exhibitions of all kinds and totally independent, from people who want to exhibit their art and put it in the hands of everyone for free. In these times, it is the best way to get to know the new artists of this century. 

The National Portrait Gallery also allows us to visit its American galleries from Spain. On their website we can find a long series of exhibitions, especially the one that most caught our attention is "All eyes are on me: First Ladies of the United States". 

This exhibition aims to fill the gap in the history of America's first ladies and give them the importance they deserve. It includes photographs, drawings, silhouettes, paintings and sculptures of the wives of U.S. presidents. With good image quality, we find from First Lady Martha Washington to the latest, Melania Trump, accompanied by brief biographies and podcasts. 

Julia Gardiner was the first to marry a president in office and a letter written to her mother saying "I know very well that all eyes are on me, my dear mother, and I will behave accordingly" inspired the title of the exhibition.

Because of the pandemic, the Middle East Institute offers online exhibitions including painting, sculpture, photography and every kind of work imaginable created by artists from the Middle East.

"Art in Isolation: Creativity in the Time of COVID-19" is the exhibition that pays tribute to the experiences and reflections of artists from the Middle East and its diaspora during the period of crisis caused by the pandemic. We found 54 works by 39 emerging artists as a result of MEI Art Gallery's invitation to regional artists to submit works revolving around the theme. 

The advantage that the Internet and technology has given us is the power to see finished exhibitions that we can no longer enjoy in person. That is why at the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) we can see its past exhibitions.

Using multimedia tools, we enter into different galleries presented by MOLAA, especially the most recent one. "Oaxacalifornia: through the experience of the Tlacolulokos duo" an exhibition by the Oaxacan artistic duo Tlacolulokos, Dario Canul and Cosijoesa Cernas, shows the murals that participated in the Visualizing Language project organised by The Library Foundation of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Public Library for the PST LA: LA project that took place in 2017.

Oaxacan migration has had a great impact on local culture. As a result, it is said that California is also Oaxacalifornia. Therefore, these works consider the relationship between the US city of Los Angeles and the Zapotec communities of Oaxaca and California through visual arts, education, social activism and literature. 

Missing museums is a reality, but a good alternative is the one we have just seen. Others not mentioned, such as the Instituto Cervantes in Madrid, the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and many others, offer exquisite online exhibitions so that we do not stop enjoying art. 

We would also dare to say that all this has a great advantage that in-person visits do not have: we can visit dozens of museums in a matter of hours and days, so the wind sometimes blows in our favour.