Google Art Project Takes Tate Britain and National Gallery Online

Google, The Internet colossus has now turned its technical innovation to Art. Their latest offering is called, Art Project, a web portal devoted to putting the world’s great museums online. Collaborating with 17 international Museums and Galleries, including the Metropolitan and MoMA in New York, the Uffizi in Italy , the Hermitage in Russia, as well as London’s the National Gallery and Tate Britain,they have created a staggering archive, which will grow over the next few years. Art Project took 18 months to develop and offers 6,000 “street view” formatted, room panoramas. They are similar to the visuals used by Google street maps and incorporate 1,061 high-resolution artworks. Some samples utilise “Gigapixel Artwork” where images are 7,000-megapixel, a format where you can zoom in and see the brushstrokes and craquelling. This project is something so culturally significant that I can only think the future has arrived. This is nothing short of astounding. Google’s new website has a “Create an Artwork Collection” function, which allows the user to save “views” of artworks into their own favourites. This can then be shared. This project comes days after the online VIP art fair, which has opened up new possibilities for taking visual art into a brave new age. Google Art Project