Google Art Project Launched in India

Google has come up with its new Art project in an attempt to bring the world of arts reach out to millions online. The search engine giant has extended its Google Art Project to India by joining hands with two institutions under the Ministry of Culture, namely National Museum and National Gallery of Modern Art, to provide a unique online platform for museums around the world to present their art work.

This project gifts artist a chance to bring their work closer to the masses. The viewers get to experience the world of art by simply logging in to googleartproject.com. They can move around the gallery virtually to see the collections of some of the top museums of the world.

The high resolution images enable the viewer to see even the finer details of an art that would not have been visible to the naked eye.  The Google+, social networking site by Google, enable users to create personalised galleries. Comments can be added to each painting and then be shared online.

It also provides Street View Technology, a 360 degree interior virtual tour of the museum. The site also features 'Explore and Discover' as the user can search for artworks by artist's name, the artwork, the type of art, the museum, the country, collections and the time period.

The Minister of Culture and Minister for Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, Smt. Kumari Selja and DR. Vijay Madan, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Culture inaugurated the project on Tuesday.

"The partnership is not just about bringing people to the museums but taking the National Museum and the NGMA to people across the globe. From a child accessing the web from an internet cafe in Mumbai to a student in New York looking for inspiration for a thesis, the project will connect a cross section of art enthusiasts," said Culture Minister Kumari Selja.

"We have a rich heritage of artefacts and art and we need to share them with the world. We are considering along with the Google team a number of other projects and we are confident of quick progress. We will be able to dedicate them to the public within months if not weeks," she added.

 "NGMA houses and showcases masterpieces from Indian art spanning from more than 150 years, and it is the first time that such a sophisticated technology is used to make the collection available online to users across the globe", said Rajeev Lochan, director of NGMA.

The project will showcase more than 30,000 high resolution art works over 46 museums. Out of these 200 art works are from NGMA and 142 are from National Museum including Raja Ravi Varma's oil paintings from the 1890 to Jamini Roy's fusion of tribal and folk culture.

Amit Sood, head of Google Art project said that the project is not just a visual treat but an online art learning, where one can read up about the artworks, gather information and create one's own private collection 

Other collections in Google's Art Project include the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery in London, the Palace of Versailles in France, and the White House in Washington DC.