You Can Keep Travelling from Home

Or at least to museums you can

Photo by Antenna on Unsplash

In the past few days, I’ve lost count of how many stories of friends, regretting having cancelled trips, I’ve heard. Even myself, that moved to Dublin a year ago only to be able to travel more, missed some opportunities too. Many of us are having to rethink all of our plans and how privileged we are when cancelled trips are the worst that can happen to us.

Anyway, working from home and having some free time, it’s sometimes difficult to control anxiety and deal with the boredom that consumes us. I know.

And it was exactly in one of these moments of boredom that I ended up discovering a super interesting tool that was hidden from me in this immensity of the Internet since 2011. That is, Google Arts & Culture.

Please don’t laugh at me if it wasn’t hiding from you!

Because, from me, it was. And I, as an architect passionate about museums, arts and history, loved the concept behind the idea!

Google Arts & Culture is nothing more than a tool created to give accessibility to collections and artworks so important to humanity! And that today, at a time when the entire population needs to protect themselves in their homes, it fulfils its role wonderfully.

“An effort to make important cultural material available and accessible to everyone and to digitally preserve it to educate and inspire future generations.” — Google Cultural Institute

I’m sure you may be thinking, “Ahh! But it’s not the same!”

Of course, it’s not. We fully agree on this point. The fact is that we need to learn to be resilient and understand that we will not always have the possibility to do something exactly the way we would like to.

And now, isn’t the moment.

So while we are unable, nothing prevents us from taking advantage of our time and the opportunities that are given to us in another way.

And again, I insist! Let’s think on the positive side, uh? Without queues, without having to pay to buy tickets, without having to walk immense distances and still have to leave in a hurry without being able to see everything you would like.

All this, just a few clicks away!

“I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.” — Susan Sontag

Through the website or application of Google Arts & Culture, you have at your disposal several very cool resources! I list some of them here for you:

Explore

As the name says, the Explore function is ideal for those who want to wander through all the platform’s features at once. The page brings together the various content and interactivity options, as well as the highlights and the various categories into which the content is divided.

On this page, you can also explore works, photos and pieces from a certain colour or a defined period. You can also view the highlighted collections as the most important available and see the themes most searched by other users.

Nearby

Through this tool, you will be able to explore museums and their surroundings near you. Ideal for selecting the best tours for when social isolation ends! Navigation happens in the same way that you already use Google Street View, using the arrows to move around.

Favourites

Here is your place! Everything you view on the site or app can be saved to your Favorites for viewing later. You can also group favourites in galleries by artist, object or any other topic of your choice.

Collections

In Collections, it is possible to see the collections of works from different museums, cultural institutes and even heritage sites all over the world. You will also have the option to translate all content into the language of your choice. Besides, it is possible to zoom in on the artworks, being able to see a level of details that, in some cases, most likely would not even be seen in person.

Themes

This area corresponds to projects assembled based on specific themes. The curatorship takes place through online exhibitions and the contents are usually very complete, with several items concerning the subject addressed.

Experiments

This is my favourite one! The Experiments section offers users a series of experiences that mix art, technology, music, design and culture. The projects are created by creative artists and programmers and submitted through the website itself, where you can find hundreds of them.

The ideas are so original that there, you can find everything. I mean, from experiments that can be used to find photos with the same colour palette, until to participate in an AI-powered singing challenge that rates how closely your singing matches the voice of Freddie Mercury.

“Experiments inspire, teach, and delight.” — Google Arts & Culture Page, Section Experiments

Bonus — Art Selfie

About two years ago the Art Selfie went viral. I am surprised how, even at that time, I did not hear about it. The tool is a feature available only on the Google Arts & Culture app for Android and iOS. The users take a photo through the app and the service, through a facial recognition mechanism, searches for characters portrayed in paintings that look like them. The results can be very funny and sometimes if you are sensitive, even offensive!

On the platform, you can also refine your searches by Artists, Mediums, Art Movements, Historical Events or Figures and Places. Another cool fact is that if you have virtual reality glasses, the rides can become even more immersive and real!