Musee d'Orsay: Virtual Visit

While there has been some controversy about the success of the museum's 1986 renovation of the Gare d'Orsay train station, there is no dispute over the splendors of the impressionist-centered collection housed there, and this CD-ROM does it full justice. The program's at-a-glance interface beautifully dissects and displays the artistic movements that led to and departed from impressionism, then entices you to explore each stylistic era deeply. Run your cursor over one of the dozen categories, and you'll see a sample of its style in the center window; click to enter the gallery itself, and you'll see all the paintings at once, with a concise description of the period set against powerful theme-setting music. (The "Symbolism" collection, for example, features a crisp sound clip of Debussy's La Mer.) The most famous face in the whole collection is Manet's tide-turning Olympia; there are also strong examples of the particular artistry of Ingres, Delacroix, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Monet, Cezanne, Rodin, van Gogh, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, and more. (Heads up, parents: Courbet's luminous, long-hidden The Origin of the World--a close-up of female genitalia--is displayed here, too.) The full collection depicts works from 1835-1920.

The chance to blow up areas of the painting--and thus alter your spatial relationship to the work--makes this a much more three-dimensional, museum-going experience than is possible with an art book or video. No matter how many reproductions you've seen of Monet's water lilies or van Gogh's portraits, you'll see them differently on this CD-ROM. --Jean Lenihan

The exciting "virtual visit" section of this program is pretty much a useless gimic. The screen size they give you is tiny, at least compared to my laptop's 14 inch screen. You can tell this program was created when computer screens were smaller.

Yes, you can walk (click, actually) around the Musee d'Orsay and zoom in on artwork, but everything is so small that the quality is terribly muddy when you do zoom in. Forget about seeing much of the work in the museum. Only the featured works, with narration, are worth zooming in on, since the designers included high quality, larger stills of these.

The program is redeemed by the more conventional methods of viewing the information. You can search by artist, title, or browse the provided set of collections. The narration of selected works and artist biographical information are not so enlightening, and you can probably find similar info. in an encyclopedia. It's sufficient, but not mind-blowing. They do get points for having professional-sounding voices do the narration.

Unfortunately, the designers don't include many examples of each artist's work. Manet, for example, has seven works represented, more than most of the artists. I understand they are presenting the collection in the museum, but for my money, I would have prefered more paintings taken from various museums rather than sticking to the single museum theme. If the designers did this to keep it a "virtual visit," they made a mistake, given the poor quality of the virtual tour. I just wish the content were a little greater.

I recommend this CD-ROM with some reservations. Unless you are an art historian, you will learn something and get to look at some great art . . . if you can get past the confusing, outdated interface.


Rewarding and enjoyable virtual tours   March 18, 2001
George Zee (www.frzee.org, Hong Kong)
How wonderful it is to be able to make a virtual visit, which is so informative and enjoyable. You have different choices in approaching such a treasure of art works from 1841 to the 20th century. You can always go to Summary and pick a certain period or movement. You can also follow chronology, or the index in alphabetical order. Always come back to Navigation and make your selection. All the works carry narrated comments. Many have "scale" (indicating the proportion of any part of the painting, "magnify" for seeing any part in greater details,"reviews" and the very interesting "animation" that relates the work of art to its background and other paintings. Some also have thematic narratives, such as "Ideal nudes and stripped bodies", "Outdoors", "Salons and exhibitions"... You can click "light" for sculptures and different areas will become brighter. (This function does not seem to be so useful.) A tabulated list of available features for each item, including the topics for "narratives" would be helpful. Use Visit to get a physical sense of the Museum or to prepare for actually visiting the Museum. The music selection is pleasing. Overall, this is a very rewarding CD.


Musee d'Orsay Virtual Tour   June 19, 2000
Rennie Cacciola (Sydney, Australia)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful

This virtual tour gives the user an idea of the art contained in the Musee d'Orsay. There are varieties of artists including Manet, Monet and Van Gogh. Some of the features included are commentaries on the works presented, an idea of the scale of the work (blissfully in metric), sometimes descriptions of the techniques employed by the various artists and occassionally commentaries by critics in the period of the artist.

The most dissappointing aspect was my difficulty in setting a Windows 98 operating system to work with this tour. The QTW.INI file required modifications not listed in the README file. In order to make this work on my computer, I had to change the line for OPTIMIZE to equal BMP. This was most frustating.

However, when I finally got this to work the results were fantastic. Perhaps the developers should make a DVD version as with the Louvre.


A Visit Worth Taking...   June 19, 2000
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

A visit with the CD-ROM "Musee d'Orsay: Virtual Visit" is the next best thing to being at the museum itself. As you meander through the well-photographed, detail-laden rooms, a moving dot on a small floor plan to the side of the large photographed image allows you to keep your bearings. You may also chose to situate yourself in a room by manipulating the dot on the floorplan. Either way, a notation tells you the room number and name of the collection presented. Zooming in on a particular work gives you a closeup and spoken narration.

This CD-ROM has many features such as animations, timelines and artist biographies, which enable one to easily find and study a particular work, artist, genre, or time period. In addition, you can create your own album of favorites and add your own notes. As well, you can send email postcards of many of the works.

Overall, this CD-ROM is an excellent way to gain admittance to one of the most beautiful museums in Paris.