Wednesday, May 21, 2014

345 art collections at your fingertips

The Google Cultural Institute, launched in 2011, continues to expand its offerings, and now offers more than 6 million items: photos, videos and documents. It is "an effort to make important cultural material available and accessible to everyone and to digitally preserve it to educate and inspire future generations."




While the site has much to offer those interested in historical documents, or world heritage sites, art enthusiasts will delight in the "Art Project" section.



Google has partnered with 345 art collections to showcase the work of 8541 artists. Simply click on "Art Project", and then browse through the holdings. Enter an artist's name in the search box to see good-quality images of their work. Click on the "details" option to learn more about the individual piece. Choose several and group them together in order to compare them side-by-side. Or tour the holdings of a single museum. The Isabella Stewart Gardner in Boston, the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, MOMA, the AGO, Montreal's McCord, or the Doge's Palace in Venice: all at your fingertips.

User Galleries allow you to sample curated collections. Curate your own gallery of your favourite portraits of women, or paintings by women artists, or floral still lifes, or... whatever!

Enjoy!


1 comment:

Maggi said...

This is an amazing resource. Combined with the fact that MOMA has just put 400,000 images online may mean some serious browsing willpower!