My headline is way too broad -- one could write a book, or at least a long white paper, on how the web is changing the museum world. And I'm not talking about museum websites. But here are three disparate ways we've seen change in the last few days. 1) Last week, the BBC reported that a crowd-sourcing site it started with the UK's public collections -- called Your Paintings (I reported on that initiative here last year) -- led to the discovery of an unknown van Dyke. Previously, the portrait was considered to be a copy; covered in dirt, … [Read more...]

Well, I didn't see it myself, yet, but the commenters on the Google + site for its new Art Talks series, which I wrote about here, seemed mostly satisfied. One man, from Italy wrote: "...this is a very interesting project. We would like to air the next episodes of the Google Art Project live on national TV in Italy, especially the Art Talk with the London National Gallery with Caroline Campbell, Curator of Italian Paintings before 1500. Do you think this could be possible? If so, can I ask you to help me get the proper … [Read more...]

So what are you doing tonight at 8 p.m., EST? Want to hang out, talking about art with someone from the Museum of Modern Art? Google hopes so. Someone there obviously see value in adding features about art, because the Google Hangout venture of the Google Art Project, scheduled to debut this evening, is the start of a series called "Art Talks." (That's the official announcement.)  These regularly scheduled online talks are designed to explore masterpieces, according to an account on Mashable, though the first tranche seems a bit broader … [Read more...]

Google, always after new content, continues to experiment with museums and other cultural institutions. Earlier this month, in a move that didn't get much press, the Freer-Sackler at the Smithsonian became one of 17 partners collaborating with Google in a venture called the "Google Cultural Institute." Billed as an initiative to "promote history, culture and art online," the site offers a window on the contents of largely unseen archives -- letters, photos, videos, manuscripts and the like. In a way, it complements the Google Art Project … [Read more...]