Hey—we've moved. Visit
The Keyword
for all the latest news and stories from Google
Official Blog
Insights from Googlers into our products, technology, and the Google culture
An eye for detail: Zoom through 1,000 artworks thanks to the new Art Camera from the Google Cultural Institute
May 17, 2016
So much of the beauty and power of art lives in the details. You can only fully appreciate the genius of artists like Monet or Van Gogh when you stand so close to a masterpiece that your nose almost touches it. As you step back from the brush strokes, you wonder how it all comes together. At the Google Cultural Institute, we know that people love experiencing art in close detail. Millions of people spend time exploring our ultra-high resolution “gigapixel” images, inch by inch—spotting something new every time, like a
hidden signature
or the
individual dabs of paint
that give the impression of shimmering, turbulent waters.
Zooming into these images is the closest thing to walking up to the real thing with a magnifying glass. This is why we’re so excited about our new Art Camera—a custom-built camera ready to travel around the world to bring people more of these ultra-high-resolution images than ever possible before.
The Port of Rotterdam by Paul Signac, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
A gigapixel image is made of over one billion pixels, and can bring out details invisible to the naked eye. So creating digital images in such high resolution is a complex technical challenge. You need time, highly specialized and expensive equipment, and only a few people in the world can do the job. In the first five years of the Google Cultural Institute, we’ve been able to share about 200 gigapixel images. But we want to do much more. That’s why we developed the Art Camera.
The Art Camera is a robotic camera, custom-built to create gigapixel images faster and more easily. A robotic system steers the camera automatically from detail to detail, taking hundreds of high resolution close-ups of the painting. To make sure the focus is right on each brush stroke, it’s equipped with a laser and a sonar that—much like a bat—uses high frequency sound to measure the distance of the artwork. Once each detail is captured, our software takes the thousands of close-up shots and, like a jigsaw, stitches the pieces together into one single image.
Many of the works of our greatest artists are fragile and sensitive to light and humidity. With the Art Camera, museums can share these priceless works with the global public while ensuring they're preserved for future generations. We want to give museums the tools they need to do this important work, so we're sending a fleet of these cameras from museum to museum around the world—for free.
The Art Camera will dramatically increase the scale and depth at which museums are able to provide access to our shared cultural heritage to anyone around the world. For example, if you wanted to see Van Gogh’s six famous portraits of the Roulin family up close, you’d need to travel across the Netherlands then over to LA and New York. Now the Art Camera can travel for you. It’s already captured the
Portrait of Armand Roulin
, which you can explore alongside
the rest of the family
, all in one place.
Today, we’re sharing the first thousand ultra-high resolution images of artworks from artists including
Pissarro
,
Signac
,
Rembrandt
,
Van Gogh
,
Monet
and many more from museums across Australia, India, the Netherlands, Brazil and everywhere in between. As we prepare to celebrate
International Museum Day
and welcome more than 25 new museums on the Google Cultural Institute, we want to thank everyone who worked with us to test the new camera in the recent months. Thanks to their work, today you can start zooming and
explore more art in the details than ever before
!
Posted by Ben St. John, Engineer, Google Cultural Institute
Ben St. John
Engineer
Google Cultural Institute
What makes us Human?
September 11, 2015
Over the past three years, filmmaker and artist Yann Arthus-Bertrand travelled to 60 countries, interviewing more than 2,000 people in dozens of languages, in an attempt to answer the question: What is it that makes us human? The result is
HUMAN
, a documentary film that weaves together a rich collection of stories from freedom fighters in Ukraine, farmers in Mali, death row inmates in the United States, and more—on topics that unite us all: love, justice, family, and the future of our planet.
Now we’re partnering with Arthus-Bertrand, the Goodplanet Foundation and Bettencourt Schueller Foundation, to bring HUMAN to you on Google Play, YouTube and the Google Cultural Institute so we can share this project with the widest audience throughout the world.
Watch an extended version of the film on YouTube and Google Play
We’re making HUMAN available on YouTube starting September 12, and later on Google Play. This “director’s cut”of three 90-minute films will be available in Arabic, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. On YouTube, you can also watch extra footage including interviews with figures like United Nations Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon, animal rights activist Jane Goodall and actress Cameron Diaz, all of whom participated in the film.
Explore HUMAN with the Google Cultural Institute
Over at the
Google Cultural Institute
, you can learn about the origin of the film and listen to anecdotes from the people who brought it to life. You can also meet the characters in and around the movie in their daily lives, with six exhibits of behind the scenes photos and videos that let you explore how HUMAN was made over three years. This includes a collection highlighting how the director shot the aerial views that are a signature of Arthus-Bertrand’s filmmaking.
Exhibitions on Google the Cultural Institute platform
Learn more about this project at
g.co/humanthemovie
or on the
HUMAN Behind The Scenes mobile app
, available on Google Play. With HUMAN, we want to help citizens around the world connect together. So we’d like to hear your answer to the question of what makes us human. Add your voice to the conversation with #WhatMakesUsHUMAN.
Posted by Raphael Goumain, Head of Consumer Marketing, France
Celebrating inspiring women around the world
March 8, 2014
Picture the women in your life—the women you admire. Your grandma. Your daughter.
Toni Morrison
.
Maria Klawe
.
Temple Grandin
.
Malala
.
Somaly Mam
. International Women's Day is an opportunity to celebrate these phenomenal women and all the others around the world—to recognize their impact on society, and to focus on what still needs to be done to achieve gender equality. Today, Google is joining in and showcasing inspiring women of the past and present through a series of events, new content on the Cultural Institute and—of course—a doodle. Join us in celebrating women worldwide!
Celebrating technical women on stage at global Women Techmakers events
To help increase visibility, community and resources for technical women, we’re launching a series of 100+
Women Techmakers
events in 52 countries to celebrate and support passionate techmakers around the world. Starting today and throughout March, the event series will feature panel discussions with talented female technology leaders, hands-on career planning workshops, networking opportunities and more. To learn more about the program and find an event near you, visit
g.co/womentechmakers
.
Shining a light on women in history and their collective impact
The
Google Cultural Institute
is launching
Women in Culture
,
a new channel featuring exhibits that tell stories of women—some familiar and some lesser-known—and their impact on the world. Starting today, you can browse
18 new exhibits
, from both new and existing Cultural Institute partners, including:
Showcasing Great Women
by The National Women’s Hall of Fame
Makers
by WETA (Makers.com: the largest video collection of women’s stories ever)
Frida Kahlo: ¡Viva la vida!
by Museo Dolores Olmedo
Pioneering Musicians: Women Superstars of the Early Gramophone Era
by Archive of Indian Music
Pathways to Equality
by the National Women’s History Museum
The Struggle for Suffrage
by English Heritage
Profiles for Peace
by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security
This Mad, Wicked Folly: Victorian American Women
by the Meserve-Kunhardt Foundation
World Changing Women
by Vital Voices
The painting
Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico / Out Back of Marie’s II
contributed by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
Since history has so often been biased, leaving out or sidelining contributions from women, the channel is also integrated with the rest of the Cultural Institute collections, making it easier for people to discover even more amazing stories about women throughout history.
A homepage homage
Women have been underrepresented in the history-telling of almost all fields: science, school curricula, business, politics—and, sadly, doodles. In addition to our
continued effort
for doodle diversity and inclusion, today’s truly International Women’s Day doodle features a host of more than 100 inspiring women from around the world, including the
President of Lithuania
,
a brave Pakistani education activist
,
the most recorded artist in music history
,
an ever-curious explorer
and
dozens more
.
Happy International Women’s Day!
Posted by Kyle Ewing, People Operations
See all five copies of Lincoln’s handwritten Gettysburg Address on the Google Cultural Institute
November 18, 2013
Not quite four score and seven years ago, I was an elementary school student, staring at a classroom map, gripped by the (mistaken) deduction that since Los Angeles was in the southern half of the country, Civil War battles must have clattered on the ground outside my home. While a teacher eventually helped me understand that California wasn’t in the Confederacy, the moment led me to understand the weight of history and that it has shaped the world into what it is today.
Today, on the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, we’re helping make the past come a little bit more alive.
Three new exhibits
now available on the Google Cultural Institute focus on President Lincoln and the 272 words that shaped a nation’s understanding of its identity. Thanks to our friends at the White House, the Lincoln Library, Cornell University, Dickinson College and the Library of Congress, you can browse high-resolution digital versions of all five Lincoln-handwritten copies of the address. You can also:
Learn why there are five different versions, and
explore how they differ
See
the copy
that hangs in the White House’s Lincoln Bedroom
Enjoy multimedia exhibits
written by Lincoln experts for interpretation of and context around the speech
Read the 272-word reflections of our contemporaries like former President
Jimmy Carter
, former chairman of the NAACP
Julian Bond
, and our very own
Eric Schmidt
on the legacy of Lincoln and his address
Comparing two copies,
side by side
You can also contribute your own version of the Gettysburg Address to
Learn the Address
, a project by documentarian Ken Burns, who has also been reaching schoolchildren across the U.S. with
Google+ Connected Classrooms
.
Most of us will never stand in the Lincoln Bedroom and see the handwritten draft exhibited there. But now anyone with access to an Internet connection can explore all these artifacts from this defining moment in history—perhaps a bit more accurately than when I gazed at that map.
Posted by Amrit Dhir, Partner Development Manager
Learn about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the Google Cultural Institute
August 19, 2013
This August marks the 68th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. Working together with the
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum
and the
Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum
, we’ve launched seven new online exhibits on the
Google Cultural Institute
that help tell the story of the two cities and their tragic fate.
Explore four collections from the
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum
that illustrate the bombing from different perspectives: a pocketwatch stopped at the exact time of the detonation, diaries of young women cut off abruptly on August 6, and panoramic photos of the hauntingly barren city center days after. While most of the materials document the harrowing devastation of the bomb and its aftermath, the gallery “Recalling the Lost Neighborhoods” helps archive the old Hiroshima that vanished off the map.
Pocketwatch showing 8:15, the time of the atomic bomb drop (from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum)
The
Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum
meanwhile curated photos, videos, and drawings in three exhibitions. One collection focuses on the famed Urakami Cathedral—the largest cathedral in East Asia where 15,000 Japanese Catholics once worshipped. The church completely collapsed after the bombing, but thanks to a post-war reconstruction effort, the Urakami Cathedral now stands triumphant as a symbol of the city’s rebirth.
Urakami Cathedral exhibition (from the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum)
Speaking at an unveiling ceremony for the exhibits in Hiroshima today, Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui said, “Through the Google Cultural Institute exhibitions, we hope that people around the world would learn about the terrible experiences of the
Hibakusha
, or A-bomb survivors, and wish for peace.”
The Cultural Institute was created to help preserve the world's history and heritage. Given the average age of the
Hibakusha
is now past 78, we're honored that our digital exhibit can help keep the memories from both cities alive for the future.
Posted by Toru Kawamura, New Business Development Senior Manager, Google Japan
Scaling the heights of the Eiffel Tower
July 16, 2013
Since its construction in 1889, more than 250 million people have visited Paris’ iconic
Eiffel Tower
. The highest monument in the world for more than 40 years (today that title is held by
Burj Khalifa
in Dubai), the Eiffel Tower remains the most visited monument globally. But not everyone has been or can hope to go—until now. If you’ve ever wondered what the view is like from above the City of Light or wanted to learn more about the Tower’s history, now’s your chance to find out.
The
Google Cultural Institute
and the Eiffel Tower Operating Company have teamed up to create three immersive online exhibitions which blend fascinating historical material with a sprinkling of technological magic. In order to capture the imagery, the Street View team followed in the footsteps of 7 million annual visitors and ascended multiple floors of the Tower. Using the Street View
Trolley
(designed especially for monuments and museums) they filmed 360-degree views of the monument’s architecture and its views over Paris.
These
modern-day Street View panoramas
sit alongside nearly
50 archival images, plans, engravings and photos
telling the story of the Eiffel Tower’s development and social impact in the 19th century. Some of the archive material is quite rare and precious such as a
recording of Gustave Eiffel’s voice by Thomas Edison
.
The first exhibition presents
the birth of the Eiffel Tower
from the initial idea until its realization. You can then follow
the construction
of the monument step-by-step through photos and sketches. Details on
the inauguration and the first visitors
lie in the third exhibition, with photos of
people admiring the Paris vista
on the opening day leading into today’s Street View imagery from the top floor. Did you know that during the Tower’s inauguration for the Universal Exhibition of 1889, the elevators were not yet in service but 12,000 people per day rushed to climb the 1710 steps leading to the top?
As a product manager and designer, it’s been awe-inspiring to get to see the spectacular vision and the detailed architectural capabilities exemplified by the plans more than 100 years ago. It required tremendous knowledge of special planning and physics to ensure that 18,000 separately made pieces would come together as one. So if you’ve never visited the Eiffel Tower before, want to get insider knowledge or simply want to re-discover it in a new way, visit our
site
and immerse yourself in one of the most well-known attractions on the planet.
Posted by Mark Yoshitake, Head of Product & User Experience, Google Cultural Institute
From Sutton Hoo to the soccer pitch: culture with a click
June 25, 2013
Museums, libraries and galleries are a tourist staple of the summer holiday season. Often they’re the first place we head to when visiting a new city or town in order to learn about the heritage of that country. Though only a lucky few have the chance to travel to see these treasures first-hand, the Internet is helping to bring access to culture even when you can’t visit in person.
At the
Google Cultural Institute
, we’ve been busy working with our
partners
to add a range of new online exhibitions to our existing collection. With more than 6 million photos, videos and documents, the diversity and range of subject matter is large—a reflection of the fact that culture means different things to different people. What the exhibitions have in common is that they tell stories; objects are one thing but it’s the people and places they link to that make them fascinating.
The British Museum
is the U.K.’s most popular visitor attraction and the 4th most visited museum in the world. It’s well known for housing one of the most spectacular archaeological discoveries ever made—the 1,400 year old Anglo-Saxon burial from Sutton Hoo, untouched until its discovery in 1939. Their online exhibition “
Sutton Hoo: Anglo-Saxon ship burial
” explores the discovery of the ship, featuring videos of the excavation and photos of the
iconic helmet
and a solid gold
belt buckle
. All this tells the story of how the burial and its contents changed our understanding of what Anglo-Saxon society was like.
From archaeology we take you to sport, which is integral to the culture of many nations, including Brazil. In the lead-up to Brazil's hosting of the 2014 World Cup, the
Museu do Futebol
has told the story of how the “beautiful game” came to Brazil. The photos, videos and posters in “
The Game and the People
” track the social impact of the sport and its transition from a past time for the wealthy (with their pleated pants and satin belts) to the modern game.
Science remains a perennially fascinating topic and the
Museo Galileo
in Italy has put together a series of three exhibitions looking at the link between art and science.
The Medici Collections
,
the Lorraine Collections
and the
Library Collections
examine the beginnings of science and technology 500 years ago and chart developments from the discovery of the sun dial to the Google Maps of today. As well as being informative, the exhibitions include beautiful objects such as the
Jovilabe
, which was used to calculate the periods of Jupiter’s moons.
So if broadening your cultural horizons through travel isn’t in the cards this summer, settle down in your armchair and browse through through some of the world’s heritage and history online. Keep up to date with new material on the
Cultural Institute Google+ page
.
Posted by James Davis, program manager, Google Cultural Institute
Marking the fall of the Iron Curtain
November 8, 2012
There are certain events in history that are momentous enough to make you remember where you were at the time. This Friday is the 23rd anniversary of one of those moments—the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989.
To mark this turning point in history, we’re releasing a collection of online exhibitions under the theme of
The Fall of the Iron Curtain
. Partners, including The DDR Museum in Berlin, Polish History Museum, Romanian broadcaster TVR and Getty Images, have created 13 exhibitions containing
documents
,
videos
and
photos
telling the stories behind how events unfolded.
Independent historians have also contributed their expertise. For example, Niall Ferguson, professor of history at Harvard University, provides video commentary on events as part of his exhibition
The Fall of the Wall: Revelation, not Revolution
.
Some of the other exhibitions include:
Solidarity & the fall of The Iron Curtain
- the creation and evolution of the Solidarity trade union leading to Lech Walesa's election as President of Poland in 1990
Visions of Division
- Professor Patrick Major, a specialist in Cold War history, gives an account of life in a divided Germany and the everyday human cost of the Wall
Years of change
- diary of a fictitious author documenting events in Berlin such as the staged elections, the first protests and David Hasselhoff's concert at the wall
The Berlin Job
- a personal account of life in East Berlin made by independent curator Peter Millar, one of the only non-German correspondents in East Berlin in the 1980s
Romanian Revolution
- a series of four exhibitions containing more than 50 videos documenting the live TV transmission of the overthrow of Romanian dictator Ceausescu
The Fall of the Iron Curtain
is the latest chapter in the work of the Google Cultural Institute, following the launch last month of
42 online historical exhibitions
telling the stories behind major events of the last century. You can explore all the exhibitions on
www.google.com/culturalinstitute
and follow us on
our Google+ page
.
If you’re a partner interested in working with the Google Cultural Institute to turn your archives into online exhibitions, we’d love to hear from you—please fill out this
form
.
Posted by Mark Yoshitake, Google Cultural Institute
(Cross-posted from the
Google Europe blog
)
Labels
accessibility
41
acquisition
26
ads
131
Africa
19
Android
58
apps
419
April 1
4
Asia
39
books + book search
48
commerce
12
computing history
7
crisis response
33
culture
12
developers
120
diversity
35
doodles
68
education and research
144
entrepreneurs at Google
14
Europe
46
faster web
16
free expression
61
google.org
73
googleplus
50
googlers and culture
202
green
102
Latin America
18
maps and earth
194
mobile
124
online safety
19
open source
19
photos
39
policy and issues
139
politics
71
privacy
66
recruiting and hiring
32
scholarships
31
search
505
search quality
24
search trends
118
security
36
small business
31
user experience and usability
41
youtube and video
140
Archive
2016
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2015
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2014
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2013
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2012
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2011
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2010
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2009
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2008
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2007
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2006
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2005
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2004
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Feed
Google
on
Follow @google
Follow
Give us feedback in our
Product Forums
.