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It's a big day in the world of New York City art: today marks the 151st anniversary of the founding of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Google is celebrating the best way it knows how: with a special Doodle.
Head to the search engine's homepage and you'll notice an animation created by Google artist Erich Nagler featuring 18 objects from the Met's own collection. The Doodle is viewable in over 20 countries.
"I actually began working on this Doodle last year, to celebrate the Met’s 150th anniversary, but had to postpone due to the pandemic," writes Nagler in a post accompanying the Doodle. "I haven’t yet been able to visit the museum since then, so my goal for the Doodle was to try and recreate the feeling of visiting the museum from numerous past visits. Now that many museums are re-opening with safety precautions in mind, it feels like the right moment to celebrate one of the world's most iconic art institutions."
Among the works on "display," you'll notice Vincent van Gogh's Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat (1887), an Egyptian sarcophagus (1000 - 945 B.C.E.), the portrait of the Comtesse de la Châtre by Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (1789), a Lakota/Teton Sioux dress from around 1870 and a sculpture of a dancer from China (second century B.C.E.). Clearly, the pieces on showcase span genre, time frame and geographic location. Want to see them in person? Follow the lines that connect each one to the galleries you can find them in within the museum.
If the Doodle just begins to scratch your itch for some art, pivot your attention to the Met's Open Access program, where you can browse through 400,000 photos of objects from the museum's collections. Head's up, though: you've got until 11:59pm tonight to play around with Google's offering, so you might want to spend some time doing that right about now.
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