The Grand Tour: Rubens at large in the streets of London

Posted 28 June 2007 00:50 by Kristof Michiels

This summer, the Grand Tour turns the streets of London into a giant art gallery by hanging life-size replicas of paintings from the National Gallery all across the centre of town. The accompanying website provides a printable map (including a selection of ‘mini-tours’) along with audio downloads and further information about the paintings. They even opened a photo pool at Flickr, where people are encouraged to capture the event and people's reactions to it. At the time of writing 19 members have added 85 photos.

I think it's a wonderful initiative taking art outside the museum walls. It's Banksy in reverse if you will: remember him smuggling street art inside the museum :-) At the same time it puts the National Gallery, until now rather reluctant to embrace new media, firmly on the digital map. Next time however, I would like to see a bit more interactive features embedded into the project, allowing for a genuine conversation with the public. Still, using Flickr is a good start. I'm looking forward to the creative results.

PS: the National Gallery also has podcasts to take with you when visiting the museum.