When a friend raved about Google Arts & Culture, I nodded evasively. The awful truth was I only vaguely knew about this platform—I had heard of it, but had never used it. I wasn’t alone. As I began to explore, I came across a recent piece by Washington POST chief art critic Philip Kennicott where he admitted, “Before the pandemic shut down, I almost never visited the vast trove compiled by Google’s Art & Culture platform. I wrote about it when … it was announced in 2011 and then never paid it a second thought. Today, I find myself slinking back and enjoying parts of it thoroughly.”  (Kennicott, WashPOST, 5/29/2020)

Google Arts & Culture was the brainchild of Amit Sood.  He imagined it while engaged in one of Google’s “20% Projects” that allows employees to explore innovative ideas that interest them. Sood’s passion for art began when he was working in New York in 1999–the city’s art museums overwhelmed him.  Realizing that great art could only be experienced in person, he spent several years thinking about how to make the museum experience accessible to everyone.

His eureka moment came when he saw that access to great art was actually a continuation of Google’s mission—“to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”  In 2009 Google executives gave Sood the go-ahead to create a platform that harnessed browsing technology to images of great art.  The Google Art Project was launched two years later with 17 museums from nine countries, including the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate, and the Uffizi.  As Sood had envisioned, the platform’s purpose was to make great art accessible to everyone.  (Amit Sood email to AH, 5/20/2020.  See his 2011 TED talk on YouTube.)

The Google Art Project provided users with high-resolution images drawn from the collections of great museums. Instead of pre-selected virtual tours, users  explore museum collections on their own to create a personalized experience.  The essential point—accessibility—means that an artistic experience once determined by museum curators was now available to everyone.  People could create their own artistic experience. Egad—the elite art world was being democratized!

Nik Apostolides, Deputy CEO of the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, first explored the Google Art Project when he was Associate Director of the National Portrait Gallery. Before 2011, Google had basically functioned as a web browser, but Sood’s giant leap of imagination elevated it to another sphere altogether.  At the Capitol, Nik has worked with Google to create a platform for storytelling. The process aimed to be a joyful experience in itself:  virtual visitors create their own stories and are inspired by a sense of “fun” as they explore the Capitol on their own.  The idea was for them to understand the Capitol as a historic place, but also to engage them in what Sood likes to call “a magical experience.” The magic happens when people feel the wonder and excitement of creating something on their own. Anyone can now click on Google Arts & Culture and create their own virtual tour of the U.S. Capitol.  This partnership is a prime example of Sood’s belief in democratizing cultural heritage through accessibility.  (Interview with Nik Apostolides, 5/25/2020.)

As the platform developed, the Google Art Project was renamed Google Arts & Culture. It now encompasses not only great art, but performing arts, natural history, world monuments, and historic sites. By embracing the entirety of “cultural heritage,” the platform makes that heritage accessible to all.

Amit Sood has been joined in the past six years by Simon Delacroix, who directs Google Arts & Culture for North America.  In a phone interview from London, Delacroix told me how the platform is continually expanding to bring access to an ever-widening audience.  He spends much of his time working with Arts & Culture partners, helping organizations share content and providing ways to enhance the ‘magic’ by using such cutting edge technologies as virtual reality and augmented reality.

Today, Google’s original partnership with 17 museums has grown exponentially to include over 2,000 museums. There are more than 6 million photos, videos, manuscripts, and other art/culture/history documents accessible on the platform, including over 5,000 ultra-high resolution images of art around the world and 7,000 digital exhibitions.

Google gives institutions the tools to create online stories using these images on a platform that has universal access.  Delacroix says virtual storytelling injects a sense of fun and experimentation into the museum experience—people can create “Selfies” by inserting their own image onto a famous portrait like the Mona Lisa, or they can navigate a particular museum gallery, zeroing in on a painting’s brushstrokes or immersing themselves in a 360-degree virtual tour.

Google Arts & Culture is constantly changing as unanticipated new technologies—and unforeseen circumstances—arise.  One new resource Google has sent to its partners is called “Connected to Culture,” a digital toolkit to help organizations function during the disruption of the pandemic. Suggestions are offered in such sections as “Reach Your Audience,”  “Reimagine Live Events,” “Make the Most of Your Digital Archive,” “Create Content Remotely,” and “Seek Inspiration.”  (Phone interview with Simon Delacroix 5/27/2020; emails 5/29/2020 and 6/15/2020.)

The range of Google Arts & Culture is boggling.  A partnership with the National Park Service allows users to tour “The Hidden Worlds” of such parks as Bryce Canyon in Utah, volcanoes in Hawaii, and Kenai Fjords in Alaska. Another site, and a personal favorite of mine, tells the story of the “Machine de Marly”—an enormous 17^th century wooden contraption invented to haul water from the Seine to fill the fountains at Versailles populated by Greek gods, dragons, frogs, and turtles for King Louis XIV’s amusement.

Google Arts & Culture emphasizes that its virtual experience is intended to be “supplemental” to the real thing.  But during months of pandemic life, virtual tours have been the only experience available, and web traffic has exploded. How will visitors accustomed to creating their own experience adjust to having someone else curate it for them?

The “new normal” will be a process of reimagining and discovery. Whatever emerges, Simon Delacroix says Google will continue “to make arts and culture accessible to anyone, anywhere.”

By Amy Henderson, Contributing Writer

Tour some Google Arts & Culture sites in ‘Augmented Reality’:

Bryce Canyon National Park: https://artsandculture.google.com/streetview/bryce-canyon-national-park/lQHakBHEZHMudA?sv_lng=-112.1655901328826&sv_lat=37.62283837224097&sv_h=108.72471130979783&sv_p=-4.544394721875619&sv_pid=BAmZfxYsNe0Bv5W8xX7wWA&sv_z=0.2510048314355805

Sargent’s ‘Madam X’ at the Met

https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/madame-x-madame-pierre-gautreau/XQFBdVEh0NHo0A?hl=en&ms=%7B%22x%22%3A0.5%2C%22y%22%3A0.5%2C%22z%22%3A8.285814754126593%2C%22size%22%3A%7B%22width%22%3A5.119557010296524%2C%22height%22%3A1.2375413499880206%7D%7D

Van Gogh’s Starry Night at MoMA:

https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/the-starry-night/bgEuwDxel93-Pg?hl=en

Versailles:  17th c. Machine de Marly:

https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/vue-de-la-machine-de-marly-gilles-demortain-%C3%A9diteur/5gH0y_scaKwKxQ?ms=%7B%22x%22%3A0.5%2C%22y%22%3A0.5%2C%22z%22%3A9.159120794587404%2C%22size%22%3A%7B%22width%22%3A2.1379731249316616%2C%22height%22%3A1.2375158518038645%7D%7D

Walker Evans Capitol Dome: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/imperial-washington/7AGoK6m8DUyhwQ?ms=%7B%22x%22%3A0.5%2C%22y%22%3A0.5%2C%22z%22%3A9.063982041686339%2C%22size%22%3A%7B%22width%22%3A2.458058035714285%2C%22height%22%3A1.2374999999999996%7D%7D