Amon Carter, DMA, and Nasher Sculpture Center bring their masterpieces onto the Google Art Project

DALLAS, TX.- The Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Nasher Sculpture Center announced that together these three North Texas museums are adding more than a combined 1,700 high-resolution works of art to the Google Art Project. The Art Project allows online visitors to explore the museums’ paintings, sculptures, and other objects virtually.

Highlights from the 1,200 images submitted by the Amon Carter showcase work by some of the greatest names in American art, such as Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, and James McNeill Whistler, along with 200 photographs from the collection. The DMA contributed images from the Museum’s encyclopedic collection, which spans 5,000 years of human creativity. Highlights from the more than 500 works of art the DMA submitted include Sheaves of Wheat by Vincent van Gogh and a gold Sicán ceremonial mask from Peru. The Nasher’s submissions from their internationally acclaimed collection of modern and contemporary sculpture include Auguste Rodin’s The Age of Bronze and Mark di Suvero’s Eviva Amore. The resolution of these images, combined with a custom-built zoom viewer, allows art lovers to discover minute aspects of objects they likely have never seen up close before.

The DMA contributed images from the Museum’s encyclopedic collection, which spans 5,000 years of human creativity

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 works of art 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 57,000 high-resolution objects are available in the Art Project.

The Art Project is part of the Google Cultural Institute, which is dedicated to creating technology that helps the cultural community 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.