Google Art Project

The Huntington Museum of Art joined Google Art Project in October 2014, allowing people to explore its paintings, sculptures and other objects online. To view the images, go to https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/collection/huntington-museum-of-art.

Having served the Huntington and Tri-State region for more than 60 years, HMA has amassed an impressive permanent collection of more than 15,750 objects. Several of HMA's standout artworks, including "Kathleen" by Robert Henri, "The Harvester" by Julien Dupré, and "Young Woman in a Landscape" by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, were selected to become part of the Google Art Project. The resolution of these images, combined with a custom built zoom viewer, allows art-lovers to discover minute aspects of paintings they may never have seen up close before.

Visitors to the Google Art Project can browse works by the artist’s name, the artwork, the type of art, the museum, the country, collections and the time period. Google+ and video hangouts are integrated on the site, allowing viewers to invite their friends to view and discuss their favorite works in a video chat or follow a guided tour from an expert to gain an appreciation of a particular topic or art collection.

The ‘My Gallery’ feature allows users to save specific views of any of artworks and build their own personalized gallery. Comments can be added to each painting and the whole gallery can then be shared with friends and family. It’s an ideal tool for students or groups to work on collaborative projects or collections. In addition, a feature called ‘Compare’ allows you to examine two pieces of artwork side-by-side to look at how an artist’s style evolved over time, connect trends across cultures or delve deeply into two parts of the same work.

To date, more than 75,000 high resolution objects are available in the Art Project. Street view images now cover close to 200 museums in dozens of countries with more being added all the time.

The Art Project is part of the Google Cultural Institute, which is dedicated to creating technology that helps the cultural community to bring their art, archives, heritage sites and other material online. The aim is to increase the range and volume of material from the cultural world that is available for people to explore online and in doing so, democratize access to it and preserve it for future generations.