Tag Archives: Museums

Dive into Diwali at home with Google Arts & Culture

Every autumn, millions of people around the world come together for firework displays, feasts, prayer, and festivities in celebration of Diwali -- the festival of lights. Millions of clay lamps illuminate homes and public spaces. Floors are covered with cheerful rangolis to bring good luck. With the food, family and festivities, Diwali is all about the experience of coming together, and the vibrant spectacle of color and light, but the global pandemic changes how we celebrate this year. Google Arts & Culture has created a virtual Diwali experience that everyone can be a part of, wherever you are in the world.


Festive lights in Augmented Reality

To recreate some festival fervor, try out a new Augmented Reality experience. Decorate your space virtually with diyas (lamps), detonate virtual anar (firecrackers), for some explosive, playful fun, and to learn more about these important cultural traditions.

Dive into Diwali from home

Google Arts & Culture has partnered with over 20 cultural heritage organisations to launch Diwali @ Home. Striking images and immersive online stories weave a journey through the festival of lights, its legends and folklore, and dive into the sights, sounds and smells of an iconic festival.


Month of Kartika from the collection of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya

Dokra Diya from the collection of Banglanatak

Radha and Krishna Watching Fireworks in the Sky from the collection of National Museum, New Delhi


The color, food, festivities and nostalgia of Diwali are shared through new online exhibitions from partner institutions including Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Indian Museum, National Museum and many more.

Interactive art coloring book for family fun

There’s also plenty of hands-on fun for families with interactive coloring books -- in artworks inspired by traditional Indian paintings in a specially developed coloring book! Find it with Google Search, simply by searching for “Diwali” on your phone.

Lady Lighting a Lamp from the collection of Salar Jung Museum, and a page from the interactive Diwali art coloring book

Finally, watch a video conversation between Amish Tripathi, author and Director of The Nehru Centre, and art historian broadcaster and former museum director Neil MacGregor on Diwali and why it’s particularly special this year.

So, with the help of a little Google magic, we hope our Diwali @ Home experience adds to your festive cheer as you celebrate in your own way this year, on the Google Arts & Culture app for iOS and Android.

Posted by Simon Rein, Program Manager, Google Arts & Culture

Dive into Diwali at home with Google Arts & Culture

Every autumn, millions of people around the world come together for firework displays, feasts, prayer, and festivities in celebration of Diwali -- the festival of lights. Millions of clay lamps illuminate homes and public spaces. Floors are covered with cheerful rangolis to bring good luck. With the food, family and festivities, Diwali is all about the experience of coming together, and the vibrant spectacle of color and light, but the global pandemic changes how we celebrate this year. Google Arts & Culture has created a virtual Diwali experience that everyone can be a part of, wherever you are in the world.


Festive lights in Augmented Reality

To recreate some festival fervor, try out a new Augmented Reality experience. Decorate your space virtually with diyas (lamps), detonate virtual anar (firecrackers), for some explosive, playful fun, and to learn more about these important cultural traditions.

Dive into Diwali from home

Google Arts & Culture has partnered with over 20 cultural heritage organisations to launch Diwali @ Home. Striking images and immersive online stories weave a journey through the festival of lights, its legends and folklore, and dive into the sights, sounds and smells of an iconic festival.


Month of Kartika from the collection of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya

Dokra Diya from the collection of Banglanatak

Radha and Krishna Watching Fireworks in the Sky from the collection of National Museum, New Delhi


The color, food, festivities and nostalgia of Diwali are shared through new online exhibitions from partner institutions including Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Indian Museum, National Museum and many more.

Interactive art coloring book for family fun

There’s also plenty of hands-on fun for families with interactive coloring books -- in artworks inspired by traditional Indian paintings in a specially developed coloring book! Find it with Google Search, simply by searching for “Diwali” on your phone.

Lady Lighting a Lamp from the collection of Salar Jung Museum, and a page from the interactive Diwali art coloring book

Finally, watch a video conversation between Amish Tripathi, author and Director of The Nehru Centre, and art historian broadcaster and former museum director Neil MacGregor on Diwali and why it’s particularly special this year.

So, with the help of a little Google magic, we hope our Diwali @ Home experience adds to your festive cheer as you celebrate in your own way this year, on the Google Arts & Culture app for iOS and Android.

Posted by Simon Rein, Program Manager, Google Arts & Culture

Dive into Diwali at home with Google Arts & Culture

Every autumn, millions of people around the world come together for firework displays, feasts, prayer, and festivities in celebration of Diwali -- the festival of lights. Millions of clay lamps illuminate homes and public spaces. Floors are covered with cheerful rangolis to bring good luck. With the food, family and festivities, Diwali is all about the experience of coming together, and the vibrant spectacle of color and light, but the global pandemic changes how we celebrate this year. Google Arts & Culture has created a virtual Diwali experience that everyone can be a part of, wherever you are in the world.


Festive lights in Augmented Reality

To recreate some festival fervor, try out a new Augmented Reality experience. Decorate your space virtually with diyas (lamps), detonate virtual anar (firecrackers), for some explosive, playful fun, and to learn more about these important cultural traditions.

Dive into Diwali from home

Google Arts & Culture has partnered with over 20 cultural heritage organisations to launch Diwali @ Home. Striking images and immersive online stories weave a journey through the festival of lights, its legends and folklore, and dive into the sights, sounds and smells of an iconic festival.


Month of Kartika from the collection of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya

Dokra Diya from the collection of Banglanatak

Radha and Krishna Watching Fireworks in the Sky from the collection of National Museum, New Delhi


The color, food, festivities and nostalgia of Diwali are shared through new online exhibitions from partner institutions including Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Indian Museum, National Museum and many more.

Interactive art coloring book for family fun

There’s also plenty of hands-on fun for families with interactive coloring books -- in artworks inspired by traditional Indian paintings in a specially developed coloring book! Find it with Google Search, simply by searching for “Diwali” on your phone.

Lady Lighting a Lamp from the collection of Salar Jung Museum, and a page from the interactive Diwali art coloring book

Finally, watch a video conversation between Amish Tripathi, author and Director of The Nehru Centre, and art historian broadcaster and former museum director Neil MacGregor on Diwali and why it’s particularly special this year.

So, with the help of a little Google magic, we hope our Diwali @ Home experience adds to your festive cheer as you celebrate in your own way this year, on the Google Arts & Culture app for iOS and Android.

Posted by Simon Rein, Program Manager, Google Arts & Culture

Explore millennia of human inventions in one exhibition

https://img.youtube.com/vi/ud5eq2A-Lmc/maxresdefault.jpg Simon Rein Program Manager Google Arts & Culture
New inventions have fueled fantasies and shaped human society — from the first stone tools to robotic arms, the steam engine to jet propulsion, pieces of paper to the internet, hieroglyphics to emoji. Take the telescope, for example. Today, the Hubble Space Telescope orbits 340 miles above the Earth, capturing crisp images of 10,000 galaxies that are up to 13 billion years old. The idea for the telescope was born in 1608 from Dutch spectacle-maker Hans Lippershey's idea, and Galileo Galileo later improved the design, then pointed it at the sky. Several decades and conceptual explorations later, Govind Swarup built two of the world’s largest radio-telescopes near Ooty and Pune.


Today, we’re celebrating the objects and ideas dreamt up and created by inventors, scientists and dreamers. Thanks to over 110 institutions, including National Council of Science Museums and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research from India, as well as dedicated curators and archivists from 23 countries around the world, you can explore a millennia of human progress in Once Upon a Try, now available on Google Arts & Culture. With over 400 interactive collections, it’s the largest online exhibition about inventions, discoveries, and innovations ever created.



Watch a documentary about Govind Swarup’s inspiring journey of building the largest radio-telescopes in India

See a collection of  100 digitised notes from Albert Einstein via Académie des sciences




Chewang Norphel, the man single-handedly combating climate change with artificial glaciers, a story by Unsung Foundation

Kalpana Chawla, the first Indian woman to go to space, via NASA




Join the journey of chess becoming a global game with Salar Jung Museum

Revisit the story of the first electronic computer developed and commissioned in India with Tata Institute of Fundamental Research




Explore the origins of Ayurveda, the Indian contributions to the field of medicine with National Council of Science Museums

Explore CERN’s 27 km long Large Hadron Collider in a virtual tour

In addition to the exhibition, you can download a “Big Bang” augmented reality app, which we developed in collaboration with CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. In the app, you’ll embark on an epic 360-degree journey through the birth and evolution of the universe. With Tilda Swinton as your guide, witness the formation of the very first stars and watch planet Earth take shape in the palm of your hand. Using Google’s machine learning, you can also explore NASA's vast archive of 127,000 historic images with a new tool called NASA's Visual Universe. See the history of discoveries and missions, or search for a term to learn more about the space agency. You can also tour Space Shuttle Discovery — based in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum — in 360 degrees, with the astronauts who once called it home as your hosts.




Within the Once Upon a Try exhibition, you can dive into virtual walkthroughs to tour the sites of great discoveries, from the deep underground of CERN to the high-in-the-sky International Space Station. Zoom into 200,000 artifacts in high definition, like the first map of the Americas and Saturn and its 62 moons. Get the lowdown on big inventions (from zero to emoji to the toilet) or hear five inspirational scientists talk about superpowers — like shapeshifting — that are being created through science. Meet the Einsteins and Curies, or learn more about champions behind-the-scenes — like Chewang Norphel, the man single-handedly combating climate change with artificial glaciers, or Rajnish Jain, who found a method to harness electricity from pine needles, or Mary Anning, the pioneering female paleontologist who discovered the pterodactyl.
Woven through the exhibition are tales of lucky accidents, epic fails and even people who died for their projects — like Röntgen’s fluke discovery of x-rays, Isaac Peral’s ingenious electric submarine that never launched and Marie Curie’s quest to find polonium, which led to her own death from radioactive poisoning. Despite these setbacks, human endeavour is a never-ending journey — and you can imagine that only a few things are as exhilarating as that “eureka” moment when everything falls into place. Get all the tips you need to become and inventor, and learn why it’s important to embrace failure through the stories of pioneers like Ada Lovelace, Mae Jemison and Chien-Shiung Wu.


We hope this tribute to human discovery inspires a new generation of creators to be curious, to seek what lies beyond the known and to try something new. Explore “Once Upon a Try” on Google Arts & Culture or via our iOS or Android app and join the conversation on #OnceUponaTry.

Simon Rein, Program Manager Google Arts & Culture