Based on materials from fastcodesign.com
Google never stops improving at making literally everything in our world searchable. A new app from the search giant allows you to both find out the opening hours of a particular museum and remember, 'and who wrote that masterpiece in the Impressionist style in purple tones that I saw in the Louvre a few years ago.'
The app is called Google Arts & Culture and, as Google writes on its blog, allows you to search for works of art “from over a thousand museums in 70 countries.” And this is not just an online presentation of masterpieces, it makes you want to understand the subject, to immerse yourself in that special world of visual culture, which you rarely meet outside of real museum buildings.
For example, you can find all of Vincent Van Gogh's works arranged chronologically to see how his palette has evolved over time. Or sort Monet's paintings by color to appreciate the subtle nuances of gray he uses.
You can get acquainted with daily stories – for example, about masterpieces stolen by the Nazis or the Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel. Articles are sourced from over 1000 partner museums around the world and processed by Google's algorithms, so the presentation is bright, crisp and full of beautiful full color images.
Another cool Arts & Culture feature is the ability to use Google Street View functionality to 'go' to a museum while at your computer and admire a painting or statue in real life. You can watch Mona Lisa or Monet's Water Lilies displayed in the museum hall, and it gives that sense of physical presence, a scale that is often lacking for those who scrutinize works of art on the Internet. There is even support for Google Cardboard.
For art lovers, Arts & Culture is the place to spend hours discovering for the first time or rediscovering famous artists, museums and masterpieces. And all this literally without getting up from the couch.
Download at Android
Online version