WTI Magazine #27    2014 Apr, 25
Author : buonenotizie.it      Translation by:

More than 370 images of Venetian collections are available on the platform of Google Art Project: thanks to the recent agreement between Venice Civic Museums Foundation and Google Cultural Institute, the lagoon city fulfills a definite step forward on the road of "democratization" of access to its culture and becomes the first city in Italy for the number of museums on the platform of the well-known project of "virtual gallery", launched by Google in 2011.

From every part of the world, a vast audience of fans, scholars, or simply curious can remotely explore masterpieces of Venetian collections from major institutions: the works of Tiziano, Veronese, Tintoretto and Tiepolo in Palazzo Ducale; the paintings of Canaletto and Longhi in Ca 'Rezzonico, seat of the Museum of Eighteenth Century of Venice; the Centre for Studies in the History of Textiles and Costumes, hosted at Palazzo Mocenigo. On the platform all the available images are high resolution, which means that everybody is able to observe and appreciate even the smallest detail of the work.

Since its launch date, the numbers of the Google Art Project have grown steadily reaching more than 57,000 works made available by museums around the world, including the Tate Gallery in London, MoMA, the Uffizi in Florence and the Capitoline Museums in Rome.

The visitor of this boundless virtual "museum", open to free use of any public, can create his own personal art collection and share it through the social networks. In Italy the project includes, among others, the Poldi Pezzoli Museum and the Diocesan Museum of Milan, the Museums of Strada Nuova in Genoa, the Fondazione Musei Senesi in Siena and Venaria Reale in Turin.

The awareness of the centrality of the new technologies in fostering the growth of this sector is a reality nowadays, especially regarding culture, which has a strategic role in the development of a country. On April 13, the Italian Minister for Cultural Affairs Dario Franceschini met with superintendents, directors of centers, museums, archives and libraries for a discussion on intervention strategies that the government intends to promote in the field of culture and tourism (Franceschini is in charge for tourism too).

The Minister highlighted the need to introduce tax advantages and mechanisms to facilitate those who invest in art, to encourage charitable donations and private participation in the development and the protection of Italian huge cultural heritage. Among the objectives of the Minister, one of the most important is the challenge of digitalization: he said that "both for culture and for tourism that's where we still have many delays, although that's also the field where we can play the game with other countries".

Cultural institutions around the world, in fact, are operating more and more towards the modernization of cultural heritage to ensure greater accessibility and availability of their property and foster learning, enrichment, and the enjoyment of exploration.