Pulp Ranks: The Best Virtual Museum Tours
By Madeline Goldberger
At this point you’ve probably heard it all. The best things to do at home during quarantine. The best TV shows to binge watch during self-isolation. The easiest arts and crafts to learn when you’re at home every single day of the week.
You might even have read an article or two about the best virtual museums!
So, instead of choosing the most famous museums and galleries, we’ve found the coolest, and most interactive national and international virtual tours that will both knock your socks off and eat up some time in quarantine.
1. ACCESS MARS
I had a look at quite a few virtual tours and this one is by far the best. It’s a literal virtual tour of the planet Mars. Why has no one told me about this before?!
Modelled by NASA, all the terrain is created using real data from the Curiosity rover! So, you’re basically on Mars. You follow the path of the Curiosity, learn the history of the missions to Mars, and see the most important parts of the planet. You don’t even need to be a space nerd to enjoy it.
You can also do virtual tours of some of NASA’s other research centres. That includes a video tour of the International Space Station, hosted by a floating American astronaut. A good watch.
2. Attenborough’s Reef
This one isn’t so much a museum, as it is an interactive tour of the Great Barrier Reef hosted by David Attenborough. I can’t believe this is free.
The tour is almost like a game, with a few chapters which contain videos, and interactive features from the perspective of a fish. It’s cute and informative.
The mantis shrimp animation was so realistic I flinched from my screen. Those things are creepy looking.
3. Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park Tour
The 3D tour is guided by audio from the traditional owners. This comes in the form of short audio clips attached to particular objects, and when you turn away from the object the audio moves to the side, as if you actually turned away!
I’ve never been to Uluru, so I had to stop the tour after a while for fear I was spoiling the real experience. It’s that good.
4. Chavet-Pont d'Arc Cave Virtual Tour
If you, like me, have never heard of the Chavet-Pont d’Arc, it’s a system of caves in Southern France which have some of the best-preserved cave paintings in the world, and evidence of Upper Palaeolithic life. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Like the best 3D virtual tours, you can easily look around, click on certain objects to get more information, and check the cave map to see where you are. You can look at Palaeolithic paintings and depictions of cave bears, a species which are now extinct, but were larger and more solid than a brown bear.
It kind of makes you feel like you’re in the first Ice Age movie. Without that ugly baby, of course.
5. The Dalí Theatre-Museum Virtual Tour
I’m not known for my understanding of art in general, but this museum is incredibly well-curated.
The whole space is filled with Dali’s artworks, so it seems like a really immersive space.
The controls are easy to use, and there are bits of information about most of the pieces, which are really the most important requirements I have for online museums.
6. RijksMuseum Masterpieces Up Close
While most large museums, like the Rijks, have uploaded large portions of their collections for people to view and download, Rijks also has a few other features I like.
The Masterpieces Up Close feature lets you walk through the Hall of Fame, where you can walk up to portraits, and hear some beautiful audio clips about them. And they’re in the Hall of Fame, so they’re the most important ones! That’s a bargain considering entry to the RijksMuseum normally costs so much.
7. National Museum of Australia
Just like the Rijks, the NMA goes beyond a simple search system, and offers random but important themes like ‘David Allen Agricultural Medals’.
They have an awesome audio series with original content as well as other programs about pieces in the museum.
The best feature is the Defining Moments page, which lists the moments that defined Australia. It starts from about 30,000 years ago and comes up to the present with things like Marriage Equality and the first women’s AFL game. Each moment has a page information that’s easy to digest, and it shows you accompanying items from their collection. It’s definitely worth a look.
8. Virtual Tour of Vatican City
This one is the oddest, but also most interesting virtual tours I’ve seen. You start in St. Peters Square in Vatican City. You are glued to a spot, and can look 360 degrees around you, while a floating man explains facts about the area, unprompted. It’s hard to describe.
While it is slightly odd, you can see and learn about St. Peter's Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, Cortille Della Pigna, and Museo Chiaramanti.
If you want to take a virtual tour without a man speaking to you the whole time, you can do a reasonably good quality virtual tour of the Vatican Museums, including the Sistine Chapel.
9. Virtual Tour of the HMAS Endeavour
Just like if you were actually at the Maritime Museum, you can look around the replica of the ship that James Cook sailed to find ‘Terra Australis Incognita.’
It has some good information about the boat, and how it works. You can pretend it’s 1778, and you aren’t stuck at home while you explore the upper and lower decks.
It’s also a good one to look at if you’re missing partying in Darling Harbour and need to remind yourself what it looks like.
10. Nanda/Hobbs Virtual Tour
The Nanda/Hobbs art museum in Chippendale is shut right now, but you can still look around the Chen Ping exhibit. The quality is so good you can almost see the texture of his paintings.
His style of oil painting isn’t as easy as it looks. But seeing these artworks up close might give you inspiration to make some Chen Ping-style home art.
Honourable mentions:
The Museum of Modern Art in New York didn’t make the list because it doesn’t actually have a virtual tour right now. But it does have some cool content, like movie recommendations and playlists inspired by their artworks. There is also a kids audio tour of the MOMA which I would like to un-ironically recommend.
If you’re feeling like a character in Night at the Museum, you might want to walk through the American Natural History Museum. For the most part you can’t read the museum labels, but it’s cool to look at giant whales and assorted skeletons.
Google’s new Arts and Culture site is one of the best resources I found to kill time. It has such a massive collection, that you can take a tour of the SCG, look at London street art, or do one of their home art activities. It also hosts lots of museums, so if you’re looking for somewhere in particular, this is a good place to start. It isn’t a virtual tour in itself so it didn’t make the list. But I highly recommend it!
The National Gallery of Victoria also has a bunch of cool virtual tours, sketching tutorials, and interesting articles or audio guides for certain pieces. Their collection of 75,000 pieces also has a ‘not sure what you’re looking for, let us surprise you’ function which shows you a random piece of art. A very classy way to spend your quarantine, if you ask me.