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Explore museums from around the world, discover and view hundreds of artworks at incredible zoom levels, and even create and share your own collection of masterpieces. The Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli at Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy in the Google Art Project. Source: the Google Art Project

Mountain View, Calif., USA - February 01, 2011

Posted by Amit Sood, Head of Google Art Project

One of the things I love about working at Google is that you can come up with an idea one day and the next day start getting to work to make it a reality.
That's what happened with the Art Project - a new tool we're announcing today which puts more than 1,000 works of art at your fingertips, in extraordinary detail.


How do I get started? Simply select a museum from the homepage and then either chose ‘Explore the museum’ or ‘View Artwork’. Once you are in the main site use the drop-down menus or the side info bar to navigate between artworks and museums. Finally create and share your own collections online. Source: the Google Art Project

It started when a small group of us who were passionate about art got together to think about how we might use our technology to help museums make their art more accessible - not just to regular museum-goers or those fortunate to have great galleries on their doorsteps, but to a whole new set of people who might otherwise never get to see the real thing up close.


Explore museums from around the world, discover and view hundreds of artworks at incredible zoom levels, and even create and share your own collection of masterpieces. Palace of Versailles / Marie-Antoinette de Lorraine-Habsbourg, Queen of France, and her children Louise Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun. Source: the Google Art Project

We're also lucky here to have access to technology like Picasa and App Engine and to have colleagues who love a challenge - like building brand-new technology to enable Street View to go indoors!


Officer and Laughing Girl, Johannes Vermeer (The Frick Collection, New York - U.S.) Source: the Google Art Project

Thanks to this, and our unique collaboration with museums around the world, we were able to turn our 20% project into something you can try out for yourself today at

www.googleartproject.com

You’ll find a selection of super high-resolution images of famous works of art as well as more than a thousand other images, by more than 400 artists - all in one place.


The Merchant Georg Gisze, Hans Holbein the Younger. Source: the Google Art Project

And with Street View technology, you can take a virtual tour inside 17 of the world’s most acclaimed art museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA in New York, The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Tate Britain & The National Gallery in London, Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

http://www.googleartproject.com/museums/frick/officer-and-laughing-girl-6

Here are a few things you can do:

Dive into brushstroke-level detail:

On top of the 1,000+ other images, each of the 17 museums selected one artwork to be photographed in extraordinary detail using super high resolution or “gigapixel” photo-capturing technology.


The bedroom, Vincent van Gogh (Van Gogh Museum) Source: the Google Art Project

Each of these images contains around 7 billion pixels - that's that’s around 1,000 times more detailed than your average digital camera - and a specially-built “microscope view” uses Picasa to deliver these images at amazingly high resolution.


The bedroom, Vincent van Gogh (Van Gogh Museum) Source: the Google Art Project

You can zoom in to see Van Gogh’s famous brushwork or watch how previously hard to-see elements of an artwork suddenly become clear - such as the tiny Latin couplet which appears in Hans Holbein the Younger’s “The Merchant Georg Gisze.”

http://www.googleartproject.com/museums/gemaldegalerie/the-merchant-georg-gisze

http://www.googleartproject.com/museums/vangogh/the-bedroom

Explore inside the museums:

the Street View team designed a brand-new vehicle called the “trolley” to take 360-degree images of the interior of selected galleries.


Gallery interiors can also be explored directly from within Street View in Google Maps. Source: the Google Art Project

These were then stitched together and mapped to their location, enabling smooth navigation of more than 385 rooms within the museums.


Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy - with a view on Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus”. Source: the Google Art Project

We also created a new clickable annotation feature, so you can jump from being inside a museum one moment to viewing a particular artwork the next.


The Google Art Project. Behind the scenes footage of the Street View. Source: the Google Art Project

Once inside an image, an info panel lets you read more about an artwork, find more works by that artist and watch related YouTube videos.

Gallery interiors can also be explored directly from within Street View in Google Maps.

http://maps.google.com/maps?ftr=sv.museums&utm_campaign=en&utm_medium=van&utm_source=en-van-na-us-gns-svn&utm_term=museums

http://www.googleartproject.com/museums/uffizi

http://www.googleartproject.com/museums/uffizi/the-birth-of-venus

Create your own collection:

With the “Create an Artwork Collection” feature, you can save specific views of any of the artworks and build your own personalized collection.


The Google Art Project. Behind the scenes footage of the Street View. Source: the Google Art Project

Comments can be added to each painting and the whole collection can then be shared with friends, family or on the web using the integrated goo.gl URL shortener.

http://goo.gl/

We’re incredibly excited about this project - it’s our first step toward making great art more accessible, and we hope to add more museums and works of art in time.

So whether you’re a student, an aspiring artist or a casual museum-goer, we hope the Google Art Project gives you a fun and unusual way to interact with art - and hopefully inspires you to visit the real thing.

http://www.googleartproject.com/

Amit Sood, Head of Google Art Project

SOURCE: The Official Google Blog

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/explore-museums-and-great-works-of-art.html

How do I get started?

Simply select a museum from the homepage and then either chose ‘Explore the museum’ or ‘View Artwork’.

Once you are in the main site use the drop-down menus or the side info bar to navigate between artworks and museums.

Finally create and share your own collections online.

Video
Art Project - Visitor Guide

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GThNZH5Q1yY&feature

Video
Art Project - Behind the Scenes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYXdEUB0VgQ&feature

Check out more videos on the Art Project’s YouTube Channel.

http://www.youtube.com/googleartproject

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the ‘Art Project’?

A unique collaboration with some of the world’s most acclaimed art museums to enable people to discover and view more than a thousand artworks online in extraordinary detail.

• Explore museums with Street View technology: virtually move around the museum’s galleries, selecting works of art that interest you, navigate though interactive floor plans and learn more about the museum and you explore.

• Artwork View: discover featured artworks at high resolution and use the custom viewer to zoom into paintings. Expanding the info panel allows you to read more about an artwork, find more works by that artist and watch related YouTube videos.

• Create your own collection: the ‘Create an Artwork Collection’ feature allows you to save specific views of any of the 1000+ artworks and build your own personalised collection. Comments can be added to each painting and the whole collection can then be shared with friends and family.

Why is there a difference between the museums in terms of the number of galleries, artworks and related information?

Google approached the museum partners without any curatorial direction, and each museum was able to chose the number of galleries, artwork and information they wanted to include, based on reasons specific to them. All content in the information panel pertaining to individual artworks was also provided by the museums.

Why are some areas or specific paintings in the museum Street View imagery blurred?

Some of the paintings and features captured with Street View were required to be blurred by the museums for reasons pertaining to copyrights.

Are the images on the Art Project site copyright protected?

Yes. The high resolution imagery of artworks featured on the art project site are owned by the museums, and these images are protected by copyright laws around the world.
The Street View imagery is owned by Google.
All of the imagery on this site is provided for the sole purpose of enabling you to use and enjoy the benefit of the art project site, in the manner permitted by Google’s Terms of Service.

http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS

The normal Google Terms of Service apply to your use of the entire site.

Our partners:

For now the following museums are included in the project:

• Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin – Germany

• Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian, Washington DC – USA

• The Frick Collection, NYC – USA

• Gemäldegalerie, Berlin – Germany

• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC – USA

• MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, NYC – USA

• Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid – Spain

• Museo Thyssen - Bornemisza, Madrid – Spain

• Museum Kampa, Prague - Czech Republic

• National Gallery, London – UK

• Palace of Versailles – France

• Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam - The Netherlands

• The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg – Russia

• State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow – Russia

• Tate Britain, London – UK

• Uffizi Gallery, Florence – Italy

• Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam - The Netherlands

How can I get my museum added to the project?

Please check back here for more news soon on new museums being added to the project.

SOURCE: the Google Art Project

http://www.googleartproject.com/c/faq

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