The 21st century has left many living through their electronics rather than in real time. Since the Internet is now a person’s go-to advisor on most matters, why not take the physical world of art to the digital?
In 2011, Google Cultural Institute initiated its Art Project platform to digitize the world’s art and make it available to anyone with an Internet connection. The collection features more than 40,000 images of different types of artwork taken from more than 40 countries.
A notable feature of the project is its lack of fees and charges. Many museums, like the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, charge patrons upwards of $20 for a look around their institution. With its Art Project, Google has made fine art affordable.
If you do not have the luxury of visiting the Palais Garnier in Paris to gaze awestruck at Marc Chagall’s magnificent work then you’re in luck — Google has brought Chagall’s work to the digital world in never-before-seen detail. Online viewers can zoom in on the work to see brush stroke texture and, most impressively, Chagall’s signature.
The Google Cultural Institute also allows users to curate their own galleries, save favorite works to their accounts, share works or collections with other individuals via the web and compare various pieces to each other with side-by-side visuals and zoom capabilities. Google’s digitization of the art world is leading not only to a greater cultural knowledge base, but also greater autonomy and creativity for those who browse the site.
And much to my surprise, the digitization of various works has actually brought museums into the spotlight and led to an increase in museum patrons, the New Yorker reported.
The project has an enormous capacity for global reach and independent curating projects. The platform allows museums to share online exhibitions and promote their institutions, which has in turn led to even smaller museums gaining the same global attention that much larger museums receive, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Google’s Cultural Institute Art Project has thus far only enhanced access to the realm of art, boosted knowledge of museums and given the average person the privilege of creative independence at the click of a button.
Google is far from the only company journeying to the world of art digitization. Dartmouth’s own Hood Museum of Art completed its Dartmouth Digital Orozco website this summer and has been working to digitize its Native American collection. As of July, there were 2,000 objects photographed and available for online viewing. Hood senior curator Katherine Hart said in July that she expects the project to be completed by next summer.
The digitized Native American art collection includes video excerpts of art virtuosos showing off their expertise in front of the pieces, adding another layer of academic potential to the project. Student work involving the Orozco murals is available on the digital Orozco website. Student essays describe most panels of the mural.
We now live in a world where we have instant access not only to an answer for every question we type into a search engine, but also to the beauty of a museum available in our very own living room — complete with a cup of tea and pajamas probably not suited for public.
