In the beginning there were 17 museums: from the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid to the “Met” in New York, from the National Gallery in London to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and also two Italian institutions, the Capitoline Museums in Rome and the Uffizi in Florence. It was 2011, when a group of pioneering museums joined the Google project dedicated to the experimental dialogue between culture and technology, opening up to a combination that is still unpublished for many.
In its first form, Google Art Project (at first it was called like this), was developed by a group of Google employees, who in their “20% time” dedicated to collateral projects, had imagined a platform dedicated to the reproduction of digitized images. in high resolution and virtual visits to museums and galleries. Google Arts & Culture is ten years later an immense project, a technological platform that involves over 2,000 cultural institutions from 80 countries around the world.
If the initial idea was mostly linked to digitization – to date there are 6 million digitized artifacts including photos, videos and manuscripts and 400,000 works of art – testimony of its progress were the terms of the involvement of partner institutions , from collaboration to a real shared production. Just think of the latest project “Klimt vs. Klimt”, created with the scientific contribution of one of the leading experts of the Austrian artist, the art critic Franz Smola: over 30 partners and institutions from 12 countries, including the Galerie Belvedere in Vienna, the Klimt Foundation, the Neue Galerie New York but also the National Gallery of Rome and the Gallery of Modern Art of Ca ‘Pesaro, have contributed to creating a virtual exhibition that collects over 120 most famous masterpieces of the father of Viennese secession.
But there is more: using the opportunities offered by the machine learning the Google Arts & Culture Lab team has reconstructed the colors and structures that Klimt may have used for the so-called “Faculty’s Paintings”, created on behalf of the University of Vienna, rejected by the latter for being excessively critical of the science and then lost in a fire. A deductive creative process triggered by the black and white photographs taken at the beginning of the 1900s, so that “technology allows us to give life to ideas that have always been only hypothetical”, as Franz Smola, proud of the project, underlines: more than 120 focuses dedicated to Klimt’s art and his personality, a virtual tour of his studio, zoom in augmented reality and 3D and or over 60 masterpieces, including “The Kiss”, captured in very high resolution with Google’s Art Camera, to magnify the details beyond measure. “To cultural institutions, foundations, archives and museums wishing to become partners, we offer free technological tools, from digitization to storytelling up to the most advanced ones, in order to support their online presence”, underlines Luisella Mazza , Director of global operations, Google Arts & Culture. Italy with over 200 companies involved is the protagonist of a record: it is the country with the most partners in Europe, in the world second only after the United States: “In the last period we have been experiencing years of acceleration on the digital front – underlines Luisella Mazza – the methods of use have certainly expanded and in Italy culture is arriving online with great enthusiasm”. From the Valley of the Temples to the Doge’s Palace in Venice, up to the Civic Galleries of Turin: a diversified cultural panorama that is now declined in a digital key. “Among the many important projects in Italy – continues Luisella Mazza – there is undoubtedly the one created in collaboration with the Teatro La Scala, which featured a technological exploration on several fronts, from the first live performance performed in lockdown, the digitization of archives, up to virtual visits to hidden or inaccessible areas. Furthermore, the Parma Capital of Culture project, extended until 2021, which involved 33 cultural institutions for thematic itineraries related to art, music, food and crafts and that in collaboration with the National Gallery of Rome “. With the latter, Google Arts carries on the “Women Up” program, thanks to which users can explore the contents of the feminist archive of Carla Lonzi online, discovering over seventy artists, from photographer and painter Dora Maar to Vanessa Beecroft with his living pictures.
The digital thus represents a new form of expression of the artistic experience, a vehicle of contents that document its existence and whose versatility is offered multiple.
Through Google Arts & Culture you can admire Monet’s water lilies down to the last gigapixel, you can wander in the most distant and unthinkable territories, from Mayan temples to Indian railways, you can turn into virtual pilgrims along the routes of the Camino de Santiago, you can bring back to life dinosaurs or disappeared sea creatures, you can venture into virtual trips dedicated to students and teachers, you can interpret the works of art through the gaze of social creators with the series on Youtube “Art Zoom”.
Thanks to the light and dynamic tools offered by the free app for Android and IoS, it is possible to associate artists, works and colors through Visual Crosswords, change the tone and vocalization of sopranos and tenors through “Blob Opera”, associate your profile with some timeless masterpiece according to the “Art filter”. Nothing stands as an alternative to face-to-face visits: “The project, which is free and will remain so – concludes Luisella Mazza – tries to respond to the most varied preferences, from training to play to research. Digital enhances the memory or allows you to arrive more informed on the spot. It certainly expands the observation space “.
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