Cool Tips & Tricks for Google Arts and Culture

Robert_Stark

Ever heard of Google Arts and Culture? No? Get ready to venture into a labyrinth of learning that will enthrall you for hours.

Google started its Arts and Culture website in 2011. Now, it partners with over 2000 museums, art galleries, and other cultural institutions across 80 countries. As well as the website, there's a YouTube channel and an app for you to check out the collection and have fun while you are on your phone.

What is Google Arts & Culture?

The basic concept of Google Arts & Culture is to digitize artworks, examples of history and culture, and world heritage sites to become accessible to anyone, anytime, anywhere - and all for free.

Take a virtual walk through the museum or art gallery of your choice and zoom in on the works of art that catch your eye. Investigate places you have heard about or historical events your grandparents talked about. Test your knowledge of artworks or architecture, write your own music, create your own sculpture – and then delete or share the result.

Digital nomads will find this site a gold mine for scouting their next destination. Google Arts & Culture is your passport to an ever-evolving world of cultural exploration.

What are the main features of Google Arts & Culture?

What struck me the most when entering the site was the massive amount of information on this non-commercial site! It felt like when I planned to visit a museum for an afternoon and then realized I could spend almost the whole day just checking out one section.

According to Google, the site contains more than:

• 200,000 digital images of original artworks
• 3000 exhibitions
• 7 million artifacts

Navigating the site is a breeze. The information is in bite-sized chunks and easy-to-read language, so you don't feel swamped.

Apart from the incredible variety, the other standout feature of Arts and Culture is that you can come back and interact with the same thing, or play the same game, over and over again – as many times as you like. Just make them a favorite, so you can find them straight away.

What can you use Google Arts & Cultures information for?

The items on this site are so varied that you can use the site for different reasons.

1) Teaching

Because there are artworks and heritage sites from around the world, this is a brilliant website to teach others (or yourself) about things they might never see face-to-face. There are handouts and lesson plans to download or print, making teaching goals easy to achieve.

Look into history and see things that can no longer be seen – this includes extinct animals and areas that have been wiped out due to natural or man-made disasters.

With hundreds of art galleries and museums to choose from – The British Museum, Palace of Versailles, and Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History are just three - you will learn and see random things you might never have heard of.

For instance, who knew thousands of Polish people, including hundreds of orphans, were evacuated to India during WWII?

Did you know that Vincent van Gogh said that stars made his dream, making it no surprise that his painting Starry Night brings the sky to life?

2) Enjoyment

As well as learning, simply interacting with this site, the YouTube channel, or the app, can be a great joy. The paintings by masters are just as unique as you imagined. Photographs from around the world show our rich tapestry of cultures.

Be spellbound by some of nature's gifts – listen to bird songs, and take in the public gardens of the UK.

Watch little kids test art experts – the kids' honesty and interpretations are worth the time to view the videos.

Feel a connection to your ancestors when you see a place, a thing, or an event your distant family might have experienced.

Google Arts & Culture uses augmented reality in many exhibitions and experiments. This means you can experience the Big Bang, Mona Lisa, or dinosaurs as if you were there.

3) Games

Playing on the Google Arts and Culture website is encouraged. Choose from gaming, coloring, completing puzzles, crosswords, or testing yourself and your friends in the trivia of life.

There are also lots of experiments you can engage in that involve cameras and projectors. Choose one of 50 paintings and see what it looks like hanging in your room, or take a selfie and find your doppelganger in works of art.

Cool tips and tricks for Google Arts & Culture

How to find your way around the site.

On every website page, there is a search feature, but the website is easy to use right from the start as it is divided into five major topics:

• Home. Learn from or simply enjoy items that are being promoted at the time you're viewing the site.
• Explore. There are an enormous number of categories within the Explore page. For instance, more than 9,000 historical figures and 13,000 artists are listed and discussed. As well as people, this is where you will also find art, events, culturally specific topics, history, and nature. Collections are put together by partnered organizations and can be accessed from Explore.
• Play. Experience games, puzzles, trivia, or coloring. Make your own virtual pottery, create a fireworks display, write a piece of music, or develop your own street art. The games and experiments are short and fun, so you can spend as long or as little time as you like.
• Nearby. Find what you can look at in your own neighborhood or district.
• Favorites. This section lists the items, events, etc., you have already made a favorite.

1) The App

The free Google Arts & Culture app allows you to interact with the same things the website enables. Still, the app gives you access to many more fun, interactive things.

The app makes it simple to scroll through museums, art galleries, or street views. The PC's bonus is the larger screen size enables you to better view the work.

The best part of the app is that this fantastic website is mobile! Download and install it on your cell phone and then take it anywhere.

2) Using the camera on your phone

Use the art projector in the augmented reality feature via the app to project Mona Lisa on your wall, and guess what you think she's really smiling about. Check out extinct animals or birds and anything else you would like to look at in fine detail on the site.

Using Google's Art Selfie via the app, you can take a selfie or a portrait photo of a friend, a family member, or a pet and use the app to find a counterpart within the art world. The person or animal found might not be in a famous painting, and they might not look exactly like you, but it's good for a laugh.

The Art Transfer tool in the app allows you to turn one of your own photos into a style of a specific painter. You can also insert a photo into a famous work of art by using the Art filter tool – not only having fun but learning about the artist at the same time.

3) Games

The games section is full of fun ideas you can go to when you need a change from walking virtually around an art gallery. The games vary between creating something in a virtual space and doing a puzzle or test of knowledge. Because of the diversity, there is something to suit people of different ages and abilities. Themes are driven by art or culture, though this is not always obvious, and the topic can be used as a learning experience, combining fun and study.

The creating games include:

• Coloring artworks.
• Creating and decorating a virtual piece of pottery.
• Learning a little about Beethoven, Bach, and Mozart while writing your own music piece.

The quizzes or tests range from crossword and jigsaw puzzles to recognizing words and testing your knowledge of artworks or world heritage sites.

Play video games that teach you about culture while avoiding obstacles to achieve objectives. The latest game is the Return of the Cat Mummy set in Ancient Egypt. As the cat mummy, you try to collect everything required for the pharaoh's afterlife while dodging crocodiles and other dangers.

4) The World

Not everything on this site is about art or culture. Animals – still on the planet and extinct – are showcased in many different ways. For instance, the Saint Louis Zoo is one of the zoos with an online exhibit and hundreds of photos of animals for you to enjoy.

Learn about the culture in places you have yet to visit or might experience while on vacation or working remotely. Over 17,000 sites are described and illustrated, giving you a genuine feel for the region.

Almost 700 historical events are discussed, and illustrations depicting the time's standout points are placed on each page, creating a fuller understanding of the event.

Google Arts and Culture is well worth the time taken to visit. You will have a lot of fun and interest in exploring the virtual world that Google invites us into.