Just as the world’s precious artworks and monuments need a touch-up to look their best, the home we’ve built to host the world’s cultural treasures online needs a lick of paint every now and then. We’re ready to pull off the dust sheets and introduce the new Google Arts & Culture website and app, by the Google Cultural Institute.
Our new tools will help you discover works and artifacts, allowing you to become immersed in cultural experiences across art, history and wonders from India and the world—from more than a thousand museums across 70 countries:
- Search for anything, from the history of the Nalanda University, India’s newest World Heritage Site, to panoramic imagery of its excavation.
- Scroll through art by time - discover artworks by Abanindranath Tagore, one of the founders of modern Indian painting.
- Browse by color and learn about how Amrita Sher-Gil’s palette changed through her journeys between India and Europe.
- Find a new fascinating story to discover every day - today it’s 9 powerful men in heels
With a virtual reality viewer like Google Cardboard, you can use the Google Arts & Culture app on iOS and Android to take a virtual tour of the Sanskriti Museum which was established in 1978, and is home to one of the largest collections of Indian arts and crafts. You can also subscribe to the new Google Arts & Culture YouTube channel, where you’ll find original content dedicated to culture, hosted by YouTubers.
We’re sure you’ll want to see some of the artworks in real life too—and the Google Arts & Culture app is there to help. Click “Visit” on a museum’s page to get opening times, find out what’s on that day and navigate there in one click. We’ve also been experimenting with a new feature. The Art Recognizer is now available in London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery, Sydney’s Art Gallery of New South Wales and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Just pull up the app, point your phone’s camera to a painting on display and find all the information you want to know about the artwork. We’re planning to roll this out to museums around the world and in India—so stay tuned.
Posted by Duncan Osborn, Product Manager, Google Cultural Institute