Google Arts & Culture

All of these museums have an adapted version of Google Street View designed to photograph building interiors.

Technology used

The team leveraged existing technologies, including Google Street View and Picasa, and built new tools specifically for the platform.

They created an indoor-version of the 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. This technology allowed excellent attention to detail and the 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. The largest image, Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov's The Apparition of Christ to the People, is over 12 gigapixels. To maximize image quality, the team coordinated with partner museums' lighting technicians and photography teams. For example, at Tate Britain, they collaborated to capture a gigapixel image of No Woman No Cry in both natural light and in the dark. Tate suggested this method to 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 Tate, from the site, one can view the painting in both light settings.

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, so that users can seamlessly transition to it from Google Maps, looking inside the partner museums' galleries. Street View was also integrated with Picasa, for a seamless transition from gallery view to microscope view.

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. Additionally, the microscope view of artworks incorporates other resources—including Google Scholar, Google Docs and YouTube—so users can link to external content to learn more about the work. Finally, the platform incorporates Google's URL compacter (Goo.gl), so that users can save and easily share their personal collections.

Criticism

Eurocentrism: During its initial launch, many critics argued that Google Arts & Culture provided a Western-biased representation of art. Most museums included in the first phase of the Project were from Western Europe, Washington, D.C., and New York, N.Y. According to Diana Skaar, head of partnerships for the platform, Google responded: "After the launch of round one, we got an overwhelming response from museums worldwide. So for round two, we really wanted to balance regional museums with those that are more nationally or globally recognized." Now, the platform's expanded repository includes graffiti works, dot paintings, rock art, and indigenous artworks. However, the study of the project's coverage as of 2019 found that its collection is dominated by images from a few Western countries, capital cities, and 20-th century art. Many countries have no provider institutions, and Kazakstan in particular was mostly represented through NASA photos.

Selection of content: Although Google Arts & Culture partners with more than a hundred museums, some critics believe it still may present a skewed representation of art and art history. An art critic Alastair Sooke, writing for The Daily Telegraph in 2011, points out omissions of notable works and museums from the collection. Google and the partner museums are able to decide what information to include, and what artworks they will make available (and at what level of quality); Sooke believes this is counter-intuitive to the website's seemingly democratic objective. For example, in the White House virtual collection, one photo of a former First Lady does not include a key piece of information to understand the context of the image. Grace Coolidge often wore brightly colored clothes. In her White House portrait, she was dressed in a red sleeveless flapper dress and stood next to a large white dog. There are two versions of this picture: one showing Coolidge on a white background with softer lines, and one showing her on the White House lawn. The Google Arts & Culture description leaves out the reason for why there are two images. President Coolidge preferred his wife to wear a white dress. The artist, however, wanted the dress to contrast with the white dog. President Coolidge then retorted, "Dye the dog!" While perhaps not crucial to understanding the exhibit, this and other examples show that Google Arts & Culture and partner museums are in a position of power to curate the content and educational information of the virtual exhibition.

Audience: Some critics have expressed concern over the intended audience of the platform, as this should shape the type of content available through the platform. For example, Director of the Center for the Future of Museums, Elizabeth Merritt, described the project as an "interesting experiment" but was skeptical as to its intended audience.

Possible security risks: Some critics have raised the question of how Arts & Culture visitors might maliciously use the Street View images. For example, using highly detailed images of galleries, people could use this platform to map out museum security systems, and then be able to circumvent these protective measures during a break-in.