GOOGLE CULTURAL INSTITUTE

Google teams up with hundreds of museums and cultural institutions, to make their archives available on-line. End of last year, the Google Cultural Institute was linked to 400 museums in 50 countries worldwide

è Google Cultural Institute on youtube Google Cultural Institute 

Very recently Google opened a new lab in its Paris based HQ. The idea is to help artists and museums to digitize their art. Laurent Gaveau, previously 5 years responsible for all digital and multimedia plans at the Palace of Versailles, had the ideal profile for this job. Amongst other things, he made Versailles virtually accessible, using Google’s  streetview technology.

Versailles in 3D 

On a giant interactive screen - one of the largest in the world - small paintings are projected meters wide and extremely sharp. A tablet lets you zoom in and out, so that you can watch every corner of a painting in detail.

How it works (without a tablet), is shown on this website about the ‘Mystic Lamb’ by Van Eyck:

Closer to Van Eyck

Gaveau is clear: the more paintings and buildings are  made available online, the more active you get on social media and the more people feel the need for the real experience, instead of the virtual impression.

Virtuality complements and deepens the confrontation with reality. The Cultural Institute and the Lab - which has a staff of 20 engineers – must live up to this ambition.

Since 2 years now,  series of paintings by e.g. Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Botticelli are captured  to the smallest detail with gigapixel cameras and can be viewed online.

Google Art Project 

The lab also features a device to create 3D images of art objects and a 3D printer plus laser cutter.

Fort he moment, this million € project, is in a prototype stage.

Young artists are regularly invited to the lab to come and work for several months.

The question remains why Google is doing this? The company has no ‘stainless’ reputation in the field of privacy and copyright. And ultimately wants Google to make money…

Yet Gaveau stresses that there is no commercial purpose. There is no advertising associated with the artworks, and the project  has no other revenue streams.

Because the goal is clear - art digital access - the number of partnerships between Google and top museums continues to grow.

Address: Google Cultural Institute, rue de Londres 8, 75009 Paris

+ 33 (0)1 42 68 53 00

IN FIGURES (dec. 2013)

400	partners collaborate with the Cultural Institute
57.000	art works are on-line on the website of the Art Project Google Art Project
74	paintings can be view in extra high resolution
93	is the number of museums where you can take a virtual tour, based on streetview technology.
430.000	Internauts already created their personal art gallery on Google.
1	minute on average is the time that surfers spend watching a painting on-line (vs 20 seconds averagely when visiting a museum)