Google launches indoor maps for museums

A museum might be an unlikely location to take out your smartphone and start looking for directions but Google can now tell you exactly where your favorite painting should be.

A museum might be an unlikely location to take out your smartphone and start looking for directions but Google can now tell you exactly where your favorite painting should be.

"Google Maps for Android has got wayfinding inside your favorite museums down to a science," revealed Cedric Dupont, from the Google Maps for Mobile team in a post on the company's Lat Long Blog. "With indoor maps and walking directions for U.S. museums now available on your Android phone or tablet, you can plan your route from exhibit to exhibit, identifying points of interest along the way, including between floors."

Indoor maps are now available for more than 20 US museums including the de Young Museum in San Francisco, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cincinnati Museum Center, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History and 17 Smithsonian museums.

The expanding list (which will soon include SFMOMA, The Phillips Collection, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the National WWII Museum in New Orleans) joins the more than 10,000 venues with indoor maps listed in Google Maps.

Google has been partnering with museums and cultural institutions all over the globe to bring their collections online through the Google Art Project. Art institutes are also embracing the digital age through innovative apps and social media.

Smartphone owners can start finding their way through museums in the US by downloading the latest version of Google Maps for Android from the Google Play store.