Pera Museum gets on Google Art Project

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Art lovers are able to view not only Pera Museum’s collection of Orientalist paintings, but also its other collections, including the Kütahya collection of tiles and ceramics.

The treasures of the Pera Museum are now available to be discovered on Google Art Project, a collaboration between Google and 151 art museums and collections from 40 countries around the world.

Art lovers will be able to view not only the Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation Pera Museum’s collection of Orientalist paintings, but also its other collections, including the Kütahya collection of tiles and ceramics, a collection of Anatolian weights and measures and a the Old Istanbul Photographs Collection, on Google’s easy-to-navigate web platform. Users can explore a wide range of artworks in brushstroke-level detail, and even build their own collections to share. “The Art Project is going global, thanks to our new partners from around the entire world,” says Amit Sood, the head of the Google Art Project.

An enhanced “My Gallery” feature allows users to select any of the 30,000 artworks -- along with their favorite details -- and build their own personalized gallery. Comments can be added to each painting and the whole collection can then be shared with friends and family. The new Art Project includes other completely new tools called “explore” and “discover.” Users can find artworks by period, artist or type of artwork, displaying works from different museums around the world. “Google is committed to bringing all types of culture online and making it accessible. The Art Project demonstrates how the Internet helps spread knowledge,” Nelson Mattos, vice president of engineering at Google, said.

Other partners at Google Art Project

Other partners of the Google Art Project include: the Tate Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the National Gallery of Art, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the White House, the Uffizi Gallery, the Rijksmuseum, the Palace of Versailles, the Frick Collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Van Gogh Museum , the Reina Sofia Museum, and the Musée d’Orsay.