There’s a very good chance that you’ve already heard about Google’s new tool: Art Project. But if you were buried under snow last Tuesday morning—as many people were—you might have not had power and therefore missed the announcement and the ensuing excitement of the Internet. So this one’s for you!
Google Art Project is a partnership between the search giant and seventeen of the world’s premier museums including New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and The Metropolitan Museum of Art; London’s National Gallery and Tate Britain; Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum; St. Petersburg’s The State Hermitage Museum; and many more. For each of these museums, Art Project offers three different opportunities:
- Explore the Museum with Street View: Google has brought Street View, which we all first encountered on Google Maps to the museums. In each museum, there are select galleries in which where you can virtually move about. You can turn in full circles and not only see the art but see each artwork in its context: where “context” can be read as its frame, the museum’s architecture, and the other works of art that surround it.
- Get Up Close and Personal with the Artwork: In addition to Google’s own 360-degree views, the museums have provided Google with digital images of select works of art. But these aren’t just any old images—they’re very high quality, allowing the viewer to get much closer to the art than you could ever get in real life. And in the case of 17 images (one from each institution), the museum has provided gigapixel (i.e., 7,000 megapixel) versions of an artwork. The detail of something like Van Gogh’s The Starry Night has to be seen to be believed. In addition to the amazing scans, Art Project provides catalog details, viewing notes, links to other works by the artist in Art Project, and links to relevant YouTube videos about the work.
- Build Your Own Collection: Art Project also allows users to curate their own collections. Once you’ve logged in to Art Project using a Google Account (such as Gmail), you can save specific views of an art work—either the full object or a zoomed in detail. You can add your comments to that particular view, and then you can save and share your collection. For an example, take a look at the Van Gogh collection that I assembled in less than 5 minutes.
So Google offers you the chance to see the museum, see the art works, and share them with others…all for free. No wonder everyone was talking about this last week! It didn’t hurt that—as always—Google had a great video explaining the service:
Of course, there are a few caveats that bear mentioning in relation to Art Project. First, the list of museums is far from exhaustive. To name just two, The Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay are not currently represented. Second, for the 17 museums that are included you cannot see every work of art they hold. For example, MoMA only has one gallery and its main lobby available for touring. The Van Gogh Museum only has two galleries that can be perused. Third, only works that are out of copyright are available to be zoomed in on. (At least, my exploration thus far suggests it’s only these works that are available.) This being said, it is encouraging to note that the works that are available include more than just the famous works and artists that people already know they should know. And the art includes more than just paintings: material culture is definitely a part of the Project.
I don’t teach art history, but I’m already thinking about how I could make use of these images and galleries in some of my classes: especially the surveys, where I try to situate literature in terms of its broader cultural context. As I suggested in a quick post on Art Project’s launch day, I’d certainly use Art Project when I teach Walter Benjamin. What are your thoughts about Art Project? How will it affect your teaching and/or your research?
[Lead image by Flickr user DRB62 / Creative Commons licensed]
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9 Responses to Getting Started with Google Art Project
swerner - February 8, 2011 at 8:55 am
One of the things that playing with Google’s Art Project made me think about is what I’d like digital tools to do with books: reproduction has its value, but what I like about this is that it lets you do things with paintings that you couldn’t normally do when they’re displayed in a museum. You can see things that you can’t typically get close enough to see, and you can see things that you could otherwise only see with a magnifying lens. I’d love to get more up-close-and-personal views of rare books, materials that can’t stand up to heavy handling. Surrogation is a tricky thing, but there are some things that surrogates can do that the “real” cannot. I’m anticipating that using Google Art Project will be useful for teaching about rare materials and digitization: in other words, I don’t teach or study art but I do teach and study issues of display and restricted access and material objects, for which this raises wonderful questions.
On the copyright issues, see Roberta Smith’s piece on the project in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/arts/design/07google.html). Her take is that some of the museums are waiting to see whether it will be worth their while to deal with the hassles and costs of negotiating reproduction rights with artists and their estates.
briancroxall - February 8, 2011 at 11:02 am
Thanks for this perspective, swerner. And I think you’ve hit on what is actually a bigger story, which I failed to really think through in this post: what does this technology suggest for those of us in fields that are not art history? How could literary studies, architecture, psychology, or biology be changed by sufficiently detailed digital surrogates? When discussing poetry, one of my advisers would regularly tell his students to think about why something had to be a poem rather than just a piece of prose. It was that difference of form that mattered and was frequently the most interesting thing to contemplate when writing about the poems. So the question for these tools should inevitably be, “Why does it matter that it’s digital? What new things can I do that I couldn’t do with the original?”
copyrightcenter - February 9, 2011 at 10:51 am
I am in the middle of a research study regarding copyright law, art, and museum policies. The Google Art Project stirs a host of issues, and I look forward to commenting at greater length soon. Meanwhile, anyone interested in the issues can find a preliminary paper and data sets of terms from museum policies by searching my name at: http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/. Copyright often leaves even giant players–powerful artists, influential museums, and indeed Google–in a conundrum.
Kenneth Crews
Columbia University
janawoo - February 9, 2011 at 1:37 pm
I wish it had been called the Google Art Museum Project — there’s so much art out there that’s not in museums. I was initially excited but was let down by the limited scope. It’s a really great tool for taking a virtual tour of a museum though.
wisernow - March 15, 2012 at 3:04 pm
Has anyone had a finance administrator attempt to reduce the initial salary offer? I had an administrator try. I assured her: I understood that she needed the money badly. I understood that she did not agree with the dean’s offer, and I would ignore all else that she said. I won. Quite an experience negotiation-wise.
I’ve heard that other faculty, especially women, have had this done, and they did not retain their initial offer. Some people said this happened a lot in California? Any truth to it?
johnbarnes - March 16, 2012 at 8:19 am
“Scientific eyes” were obviously useful but you might also have done well to have a father who was a professional gambler, an arms negotiator,a private investigator, a buyer for a used car lot, or perhaps a district attorney. Actually maybe all of them, as uncles or aunts.
jmur9468 - March 16, 2012 at 11:54 pm
There was a recent article by someone who went back on a signed contract to take another job. This should be a counterexample. Everyone does – and should do - what is best for them.
fairnessforall - March 22, 2012 at 3:06 pm
An “offer letter.” I’ve never heard of one before. Can you tell me a little more about an “offer letter”? Is it something the new hire writes or the college? Should every new faculty hire expect an “offer letter”?
johnbarnes - March 26, 2012 at 2:27 pm
A letter that offers you the job and spells out the opening proposal from the hirer. (“We would like to offer you the post of Assistant Professor of Taurofecamancy, and we are proposing an initial salary of $67 per annum, for which you will teach eleven courses and be allowed to use any space you can find at a table in the student union for office hours. You will serve on the Curriculum Committee, the Buildings and Grounds Committee, and the Washing the Dean’s Car Committee in your first year. Your healthcare will be provided by your Department Chair, who earned a merit badge in First Aid …”)