Google Art Project

Google Art Project

Screenshot of the Art Project website, showing Édouard Manet's In the Conservatory
Developer(s) Google Inc.
Initial release February 1, 2011 (2011-02-01)
Stable release 3 / 20 May 2013
Development status Active
Website www.googleartproject.com

Google Art Project is an online platform through which the public can access high-resolution images of artworks housed in the initiative’s partner museums. The project was launched on 1 February 2011 by Google, in cooperation with 17 international museums, including the Tate Gallery, London; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; and the Uffizi, Florence.[1]

The platform enables users to virtually tour partner museums’ galleries, explore physical and contextual information about artworks, and compile their own virtual collection. The "walk-through" feature of the project uses Google's Street View technology.[2] The images of many of the artworks were reproduced with very high quality, and each partner museum selected one artwork to be captured as a gigapixel image (with over 1 billion pixels).

On April 3, 2012, Google announced a major expansion to the Art Project as it signed partnership agreements with 151 museums from 40 countries. The platform now features more than 32,000 artworks from 46 museums, and the image acquisition process is underway at the remaining partner museums. This expansion includes works from institutions like the Art Gallery of Ontario, the White House, the Australian Rock Art Gallery at Griffith University, the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, and the Hong Kong Museum of Art.[3] Additionally, Google launched a second, improved version of the website with new Google+ features, enhanced search capabilities, and a series of educational tools.[4] Google intended for this second-generation platform to be a global resource; accordingly, the Art Project is now available in 18 languages, including English, Japanese, Indonesian, French, Italian, Polish, and Portuguese.[5]

Site components

Virtual Gallery Tour
Through the Virtual Gallery Tour (aka Gallery View) Users can virtually ‘walk through’ the galleries of each partner museum, using the same controls as Google Street View or by clicking on the gallery’s floorplan.
Artwork View
From the Gallery View (aka Microscope View), users can zoom in on a particular artwork to view the picture in greater detail. As of April 2012, over 32,000 high-quality images are available for view. Microscope view provides users a dynamic image of an artwork, and scholarly and contextual information to enhance their understanding of the work. When examining an artwork, users may also access information detailing the physical characteristics of the image (e.g. size, material(s), artist). Partner museums were offered the option to include Viewing Notes, History of the Artwork, and Artist Information, which users can easily access from the microscope view interface. Each museum was allowed to include as much material as they wanted to contribute, so the level of information varies by museum and by artwork.[6] Using services like Google Scholar and YouTube, Google includes external links for users to explore additional information about an artwork or gallery.
Create an Artwork Collection
Users can log in with their Google Account to create their own collection. Users can compile any number of images from any of the partner museums and save specific views of artworks to create a personalized virtual exhibition. Using Google’s link abbreviator (Goo.gl), users can easily share their artwork collection with others through social media and conventional online communications mechanisms. This feature was so successful upon the Art Project’s launch, that Google had to dedicate additional servers to support it.[7] The second generation Art Project platform seamlessly integrates Google's social media platform Google+, so that site users can upload video and audio content to personalize their gallery, and share their collections through their social media networks.[8]

Features of second-generation Google Art Project

Explore and Discover
In the second launch of the Art Project, Google updated the platform's search capabilities, so that users could more easily and intuitively find artworks. Now, users can find art by filtering their search with several categories, including: artist, museum, type of work, date, and country. The search results are displayed in a slideshow format.[4] This new functionality enables site users to search across numerous collections to find artworks that fit their parameters of interest.
Video and Audio Content
Several partner museums have opted to include guided tour or welcome videos of their galleries. This provides users the option to virtually walk through a museum themselves and listen to an audio guide at certain artworks, or to follow a video tour as an expert guides them through a gallery. For example, Michelle Obama filmed a welcome video for the White House gallery page,[9] and Israel's Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem launched a YouTube channel with 400 hours of original video footage from the trial of Adolf Eichmann, which users can access through the museum's Art Project exhibits.[10]
Education
Google Art Project includes several educational tools and resources for teachers and students. First, Google has created a multitude of educational videos, available through a YouTube channel and embedded on the Google Art Project web page. Next, two pages called "Look Like an Expert" and "DIY" provides several activities for site users, similar to those often found in art galleries. For example, one quiz asks site visitors to match a painting to a particular style; another asks visitors to find a symbol within a specified painting that represents a provided story. Finally, the "What's Next" page provides site visitors with a list of resources and links to various art history timelines, art toolkits, and comparative teaching resources.[11]

Development

The Art Project emerged as a result of Google’s “20-percent time” policy, by which employees are encouraged to spend 20% of their time working on an innovative project of interest.[12] A small team of employees created the concept for the Art Project after a discussion on how to use Google technology to make museums’ artwork more accessible.[13] The Art Project concept fits Google's mission "to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful."[14] Accordingly, in mid-2009, Google executives agreed to support the project, and they engaged online curators of numerous museums to commit to the initiative.[15]

The Google Street View Camera captures 360 degree images as it moves through the location. Usually, the camera sits atop a car to capture Street View images, but the Art Project camera was installed on an indoor trolley.
Video showing the technology and processes used to capture images of the White House for the Google Art Project

Technology used

To move from concept to reality, the Google team leveraged existing technologies, including Google Street View and Picasa, and built new tools specifically for the Art Project.

The team created an indoor-version of the Google Street View 360-degree camera system to capture gallery images by pushing the camera 'trolley' through a museum. It also used professional panoramic heads CLAUSS RODEON VR Head HD and CLAUSS VR Head ST to take high resolution photos of the artworks within a gallery. Only this technology allowed to achieve the excellent attention to detail and this highest image resolution. Each partner museum selected one artwork to be captured at ultra-high resolution with approximately 1,000 times more detail than the average digital camera.[6] The largest image, Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov's The Apparition of Christ to the People, is over 12 gigapixels. To further maximize image quality, the Google team coordinated with partner museums’ lighting technicians and photography teams. For example, at the Tate Britain, the Google team and Tate representatives collaborated to capture the Tate's gigapixel image No Woman No Cry in both natural light and in the dark. The Tate suggested this method, so that the Art Project could capture the painting's hidden phosphorescent image, which glows in the dark. The Google camera team had to adapt their method, and keep the camera shutter open for 8 seconds in the dark to capture a distinct enough image. Now, unlike at the Tate, Google Art Project visitors can view the painting in both light settings.[16]

Once the images were captured, the team used Google Street View software and GPS data to seamlessly stitch the images and connect them to museum floor plans. Each image was mapped according to longitude and latitude within Google Street View, so that users can seamlessly transition from Google Maps, to Google Street View, to looking inside the partner museums’ galleries. Street View was also integrated with Picasa, to enable seamless transition from gallery view to microscope view.[13]

The user interface lets site visitors virtually ‘walk through’ galleries with Google Street View, and look at artworks with Picasa, which provides the microscope view to zoom in to images for greater detail than is visible to the naked eye.[6] Additionally, the microscope view of artworks incorporates some of Google’s scholarly resources—including Google Scholar, Google Docs and YouTube—so users can link to external content to learn more about that particular work.[17] Finally, the platform incorporates Google’s URL abbreviator (Goo.gl), so that users can save and easily share their personal collections.[17]

The Art Project has been integrated with Google's social media platform (Google+) to enable users to share their personal collections with their networks. This integration also lets site visitors use Google+ Hangouts for more interactive purposes. These situations might include: a professor giving an online lecture to students, engaging in video and shared-screen discussions about a collection, or an expert leading a virtual tour of a distant museum to remote attendees.[8]

The resulting Google Art Project platform is a Java-based Google App Engine Web application, which exists on Google’s infrastructure.[17]

Hans Holbein the Younger's The Ambassadors

Technology limitations

Luc Vincent, director of engineering at Google and head of the team responsible for Street View for the Art Project, stated concern over the quality of panorama cameras his team used to capture gallery and artwork images. In particular, he believes that improved aperture control would enable more consistent quality of gallery images.[6]

Some artworks were particularly difficult to capture and re-present accurately as virtual, two-dimensional images. For example, Google described the inclusion of Hans Holbein the Younger's The Ambassadors as "tough." This was due to the anamorphic techniques distorting the image of a skull in the foreground of the painting. When looking at the original painting at the National Gallery in London, the depiction of the skull appears distorted until the viewer physically steps to the side of the painting. Once the viewer is looking at the shape from the intended vantage point, the lifelike depiction of the skull materializes. Google stated that the effect was still apparent in the gigapixel version of the painting, but was less pronounced in the "walk-through" function.[2]

As New York Times art reviewer Roberta Smith said: “[Google Art Project] is very much a work in progress, full of bugs and information gaps, and sometimes blurry, careering virtual tours.”[6] Though the second generation platform solved some technological issues, Google plans to continue developing additional enhancements for the site. Future improvements currently under consideration include: upgrading panorama cameras, more detailed web metrics, and improved searchability through metatagging and user-generated metatagging.[7] Google is also considering the addition of an experimental page to the platform, to highlight emerging technologies that artists are using to showcase their works.[18]

Institutions and works

Seventeen partner museums were included in the launch of the project. The original 1,061 high-resolution images (by 486 different artists) are shown in 385 virtual gallery rooms, with 6,000 Street View-style panoramas.[2][19]

Below is a list of the original seventeen partner museums at the time of the Art Project’s launch. All images shown are actual images from Google Art Project:

Partner Museum Gigapixel artwork Title Artist Date
Alte Nationalgalerie
Berlin, Germany		 In the Conservatory Édouard Manet 1878–1879
Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian
Washington, DC, USA		 The Princess from the Land of Porcelain James McNeill Whistler 1863–1865
Frick Collection
New York, USA		 St Francis in the Desert Giovanni Bellini c. 1480
Gemäldegalerie
Berlin, Germany 		The Merchant Georg Gisze Hans Holbein the Younger 1497–1562
Museum Kampa
Prague, Czech Republic		 The Cathedral (Katedrála) František Kupka 1912–1913
Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York, USA		 The Harvesters Pieter Bruegel the Elder 1565
Museum of Modern Art
New York, USA		 The Starry Night Vincent van Gogh 1889
Museo Reina Sofia
Madrid, Spain		 The Bottle of Anís del Mono Juan Gris 1914
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum
Madrid, Spain		 Young Knight in a Landscape Vittore Carpaccio 1510
National Gallery
London, UK		 The Ambassadors Hans Holbein the Younger 1533
Palace of Versailles
Versailles, France		 Marie-Antoinette de Lorraine-Habsbourg, Queen of France, and her children Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun 1787
Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
Amsterdam, Netherlands		 Night Watch Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn 1642
State Hermitage Museum
St. Petersburg, Russia		 The Return of the Prodigal Son Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn 1663–1665
State Tretyakov Gallery
Moscow, Russia		 The Apparition of Christ to the People (The Apparition of the Messiah) Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov 1837–1857
Tate Britain
London, UK		 No Woman No Cry Chris Ofili 1998
Uffizi
Florence, Italy		 The Birth of Venus Sandro Botticelli 1483–1485
Capitoline Museums
Rome, Italy		 Capitoline Wolf 500 BC–480 BC
Van Gogh Museum
Amsterdam, Netherlands		 The Bedroom Vincent van Gogh 1888

On April 3, 2012, Google announced the expansion of the Art Project to include 151 museums. At the time of the announcement, 46 of those museums and their works are available on the website. Like the original 17 partners, each of the new partners has a gigapixel image of one of their works on the Art Project platform.[4]

Google has been dedicated to making the Art Project a more global project, so it sought to expand its partnerships with local, regional and national museums from 40 countries.[5] The Art Project now also offers galleries the option to submit a form and apply for partnership with Google.

Influences

As early as the late-1980s, art museum personnel began to consider how they could exploit the Internet to achieve their institutions' missions through online platforms. For example, in 1994 Elizabeth Broun, Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, spoke to the Smithsonian Commission on the future of art, stating: "We need to put our institutional energy behind the idea of getting the Smithsonian hooked up to the people and schools of America." She then outlined the museum's objective to conserve, protect, present, and interpret exhibits, explaining how electronic media could help achieve these goals.[20] Over 15 years later, museum personnel are still grappling with how their institutions can best utilize the internet.

Simultaneous to these discussions, Google has grown from a small research project to a dominant Internet and software corporation.

The Art Project emerged at the intersection of Google's expansion as an information resource and art museums' challenge to move online. These situations and corresponding trends shaped the development of the Art Project.[2][21]

Contemporary Google initiatives

The Toledo Museum of Art worked with Google to remove 21 artworks from their virtual exhibition because the artists (or their heirs) still hold the copyright to the images.

As noted above, Google made use of several existing solutions to help meet technology needs of the Art Project.

Another Google initiative—Google Books—affected the development of the Art Project from a non-technological perspective. Google recently faced a six-year-long court case relating to several issues with copyright infringement. Google Books catalogued full digital copies of texts, including those still protected by copyright, though Google claimed it was permissible under the fair use clause. Google ended up paying $125 million to copyright-holders of the protected books, though the settlement agreement was modified and debated several times before it was ultimately rejected by federal courts. In his decision, Judge Denny Chin stated the settlement agreement would "give Google a significant advantage over competitors, rewarding it for engaging in wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission," and could lead to antitrust issues. Judge Chin said in future open-access initiatives, Google should use an "opt-in" method, rather than providing copyright owners the option to "opt out" of an arrangement.[22]

After this controversy, Google took a different approach on intellectual property rights for the Google Art Project. The Art Project's intellectual property policy is:

The high resolution imagery of artworks featured on the art project site are owned by the museums, and these images may be subject to copyright laws around the world. The Street View imagery is owned by Google. All of the imagery on this site is provided for the sole purpose of enabling you to use and enjoy the benefit of the art project site, in the manner permitted by Google’s Terms of Service . The normal Google Terms of Service apply to your use of the entire site.[18]

The Google team was sensitive to copyright issues of artworks, and partner museum staff were able to ask Google to blur out the images of certain works, which are still protected by copyrights. In a few cases, museums wanted to include artworks by modern and contemporary artists, many of whom still hold the copyright to their work. For example, the Tate Britain approached Chris Ofili to get his permission to capture and reproduce his works on the Art Project.[16]

However, since the project expanded in April 2012, Google has faced a few intellectual property issues. Some of the works added to the online exhibitions are still protected by copyright, as the artist or his or her heirs holds the right to the image for 70 years. As a result, the Toledo Museum of Art asked Google to remove 21 artworks from the website, including works by Henri Matisse and other modern artists.[23]

By December 2013, the contents of the project were accessible from Google Cultural Institute, a site that works similarly. It features digitized objects from archives, libraries and a wider array of museums not strictly devoted to art.

Reception

The Google Art Project stirred up debate among scholars, museum personnel, art critics, and news writers. Since its initial launch, the Google Art Project has received fairly consistent positive feedback, and a variety of criticisms. With the second generation platform, Google appears to have responded to some earlier criticisms.

Praise

Positive feedback about the Art Project has centered on an increased audience gaining access to art, the marketing externality for museums, and the potential for future development of the initiative.

The Google Art Project is, according to some, a democratic initiative.[28] It aims to give more people access to art by removing barriers like cost and location. Some art or cultural exhibits have been limited to a small group of viewers (e.g. PhD students, academic researchers) due to deteriorating condition of a work, lack of available wall space in a museum, or other similar factors. Digitized reproductions, however, can be accessible to anyone from any location. This type of online resource can transform research and academia by opening access to previously exclusive art works, enabling multidisciplinary and multi-institutional learning.[29] It provides people the opportunity to experience art individually, and a platform to become involved in conversation.[7] For example, the Google Art Project now lets users contribute their own content, adding their insight to the public collection of knowledge.

Many scholars have argued that we are experiencing a breakdown of the canon of high art,[20] and the Google Art Project is beginning to reflect this. When it just included the Grand Masters of Western Art, the Google Art Project faced strong criticism. As a result of this outburst, the website now includes some indigenous and graffiti artworks. This platform also provides a new context through which people encounter art, ultimately reflecting this shift away from the canon of high art.[7]

Criticism

A few initial criticisms of the Art Project — including skewed representation of artworks — have lost some validity with the launch of the second generation platform.

Although Google may have responded to this issue, there are other neglected criticisms:

Similar initiatives

Banner for Wiki Loves Art Nouveau[34] Exhibition on Europeana.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Waters, Florence (1 February 2011). "The best online culture archives". The Telegraph. Retrieved 2 February 2011.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Kennicott, Philip (1 February 2011). "National Treasures: Google Art Project unlocks riches of world's galleries". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2 February 2011.
  3. ↑ Ngak, Chenda. "Google Art Project features White House, the Met, National Gallery". CBS News. Retrieved April 15, 2012.
  4. 1 2 3 Valvo, Michael. "Google Goes Global with Expanded Art Project". Press Release. Google Art Project. Retrieved 6 April 2012.
  5. 1 2 3 Finkel, Jori (2 April 2012). "LACMA, Getty among 134 museums joining Google's art site". LA Times. Retrieved 6 April 2012.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 Pack, Thomas (May 2011). "The Google Art Project is a Sight to Behold". Information Today 28 (5).
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 Proctor, Nancy (April 2011). "The Google Art Project: A new Generation of Museums on the Web?". Curator: the Museum Journal 52 (2).
  8. 1 2 3 Stanislawski, Piotr (3 April 2012). "Polska Sztuka w Google Art Project". Gazeta. Retrieved 8 April 2012.
  9. 1 2 Keyes, Alexa (3 April 2012). "Google Art Project and White House Launch 360 Tour of 'People's House'". ABC News. Retrieved 6 April 2012.
  10. ↑ Heller, Aron (3 April 2012). "Israel Museum showcased in Google Art Project". Gainesville Times/Associated Press. Retrieved 6 April 2012.
  11. ↑ "Education". Google Art Project. Google. Retrieved 6 April 2012.
  12. ↑ Knowles, Jemillah. "Google's Art Project grows larger with 151 museums online across 140 countries". TNW Google Blog. The Next Web. Retrieved 6 April 2012.
  13. 1 2 Sood, Amit. "Explore museums and great works of art in the Google Art Project". Google Official Blog. Google. Retrieved 22 March 2012.
  14. ↑ "About Google". Google. Retrieved 25 March 2012.
  15. 1 2 Berwick, Carly (April 2011). "Up Close and Personal with Google Art Project". Art in America 99 (4).
  16. 1 2 Davis, James. "Google Art Project: Behind the Scenes". Tate Blogs. Tate Britain. Retrieved 24 March 2012.
  17. 1 2 3 Mediati, Nick (April 2011). "An extension of Google Street View enables interactive, Web-based virtual museum tours". PC World 29 (4).
  18. 1 2 "FAQs". Google Art Project. Google. Retrieved 10 April 2012.
  19. ↑ "Google and museums around the world unveil Art Project". Press Release. Google Art Project. Retrieved 1 February 2011.
  20. 1 2 Broun, Elizabeth (Summer 1994). "The Future of Art at the Smithsonian". American Art 8 (3/4): 2–7. doi:10.1086/424219. JSTOR 3109168.(registration required)
  21. ↑ Proctor, N (2011). "The Google Art Project: A New Generation of Museums on the Web?". Curator: the Museum Journal 54 (2): 215–221. doi:10.1111/j.2151-6952.2011.00083.x.
  22. ↑ Efrati, Amir. "Judge Rejects Google Books Settlement". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 9 April 2012.
  23. ↑ Cohen, Patricia (24 April 2012). "Art is Long; Copyrights Can Be Even Longer". The New York Times. Retrieved 26 April 2012.
  24. ↑ Ionescu, Daniel. "Google's Art Project Extended Worldwide". PC World Blogs. PC World. Archived from the original on 2013-11-04. Retrieved 6 April 2012.
  25. 1 2 Bararia, Khushboo. "Promotion of Virtual Tourism through Google Art Projects". Masters Thesis. Christ University. Retrieved 6 April 2012.
  26. ↑ Sood, Amit. "Amit Sood: Technologist". Speakers. TED. Retrieved 24 March 2012.
  27. ↑ Sanger, Larry. "Who Says We Know: On the New Politics of Knowledge". Edge: The Third Culture. Retrieved 26 April 2012.
  28. ↑ Inanoglu, Zeynep. "Google Art Project: Democratizing Art" (PDF). Retrieved 8 April 2012.
  29. ↑ Guerlac, Suzanne (Fall 2011). "Humanities 2.0: E-Learning in the Digital World". Representations. The Humanities and the Crisis of the Public University 116 (1): 102–127. doi:10.1525/rep.2011.116.1.102.
  30. ↑ Anonymous (3 February 2011). "Getting in close and impersonal". The Economist. Retrieved 6 April 2012.
  31. ↑ Hayward, Andrea (4 April 2012). "ARTS: Global artworks now a click away". Australian Associated Press Pty Limited. Retrieved 6 April 2012.
  32. 1 2 Sooke, Alistair (1 February 2011). "The Problem With Google's Art Project". The Telegraph. Retrieved 6 April 2012.
  33. ↑ Nonnenmacher, Peter (8 February 2011). "Virtuelle Tiefenschärfe". Wiener Zeitung. Retrieved 6 April 2012.
  34. ↑ Andy MacLean. "Wiki Loves Art Nouveau". europeana.eu.
  35. ↑ McKenn, Brian (April 2011). "Europeana Stretches as Google Expands". Information Today 28 (4): 14–15. Retrieved 2012-05-15.
  36. 1 2 "Images for the Future". Imagesforthefuture.com. Retrieved 2012-04-19.
  37. ↑ Ovidiu Sopa @ office@sibiul.ro. "Muzeul National de Istorie Naturala Grigore Antipa #48". Antipa.ro. Retrieved 2012-04-19.
  38. ↑ "Tur Virtual – Muzeul Taranului Roman". Tour.muzeultaranuluiroman.ro. Retrieved 2012-04-19.
  39. ↑ "Theosianama.com Website".

Sources

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