Art Project uses Internet to introduce art to the world

It seems that even art works can't escape as everything is swept up in the current digitalization wave. Since Google launched its high-profile and aptly named "Art Project" three years ago, art work digitalization has developed so fast that it's no longer just an urgent task for museums, but tech giants as well.

On September 4 in Beijing, Google announced that six new Chinese partners would be taking part in its Art Project. With these new additions the Google Art Project now features 13 Chinese museums in total, including public museums such as the Sanxingdui Museum in Sichuan Province, The Museum of Contemporary Art of the China Academy of Art in Zhejiang, as well as private museums such as the Today Art Museum (TAM) in Beijing.

Across the globe, over 200 museums in 40 countries, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, have joined the tech giant's project, offering tens of thousands of artworks that have been uploaded to the latter's website for visitors to browse and admire. A little caught off guard by this looming digital trend, domestic museums haven't had much time to think about their own digital strategies. Some museums insist on building online museums with their own technology, while others choose to cooperate with tech giants like Google.

However, considering the value of their numerous time-honored cultural relics, cooperation with foreign partners has caused many domestic museums to worry how this information will be used. Then there is also the somewhat awkward fact that Google and its services are blocked in the Chinese mainland from time to time. For these reasons, despite domestic museums' various efforts to promote their art works online, fundamental questions like where this digital trend is heading and how local museums should participate have gone largely unresolved.

Far-reaching platform

One of the newest members of Google's Art Project, TAM has selected over 700 art works and 17 exhibitions that will be available on Google's website. As one of China's leading private museums, TAM is well-known for its promotion of contemporary Chinese art. "Besides allowing more visitors to get closer to the museum and these artworks, the Art Project has a special 'compare' function, which visitors can use to compare different art works which otherwise would be too expensive to see any other way," said TAM President Gao Peng.

"This is very helpful for the growth of young curators since they don't have many opportunities in real life to curate such expensive art works," Gao added.

Depending on its core technologies such as Picasa, App Engine and Street View to enable visitors to get a clear view of art works in a simulated environment, Google possesses an incomparable advantage when it comes to displaying high-definition pictures of art works on its site. Additionally, it also offers a series of convenient and practical tools that can be of use to both art lovers and professional curators and researchers.

For example, for an art lover who doesn't have time to visit museums regularly, he can use the "user gallery" section to establish his own virtual museum where he can add his favorite pieces from numerous museums from around the world.

Another added benefit, by linking to the official websites of its museum partners, Google helps increase page views of the latter.

"Data from our official website shows that 300,000 of the visitors our website received last year were transferred from the Google Art Project website," said Qin Qing, vice director of the Publicity Department at the Chengdu Jinsha Site Museum, which joined the Art Project last year.