Photo Credit: “Google’s Art Project Website by artimageslibrary

The launch of the Google Art Project marks an important milestone in the relationship between art and technology. The Google Art Project is an online application that allows visitors to take a virtual tour of 17 of the world’s most renowned museums. Visitors to the site use Google’s StreetView technology to digitally move through galleries and view high-resolution (7-billion-pixel) images of some of the most famous art pieces the world has to offer.

Critics of the Google Art Project worry that this type of technology has the potential to ruin what they claim to be the much more fulfilling experience of seeing these art pieces in real life.

“Looking at a painting on screen, however vivid the detail, is wholly different in kind from standing in front of it”, The Guardian’s Tim Adams said. “Though there is genuine wonder in the backlit clarity of the images…as with any reproduction, what is lost is a sense of the painting as a physical object, as a little framed force field.”

The problem with critics like Adams is that they assume that the point of the Google Art Project is to act as a replacement for visiting these museums, when in fact, that is not the case. The Google Art Project should instead be appreciated for its potential to bring art into the lives of millions of people. People who, prior to this type of technology, may not have had the money, resources or time to have such experiences.

“One of the major missions of a museum is education. Social media enables access to our collection, live streams etc,” Guggenheim curator Joan Young said.

In the same way that Skype is not expected to completely satisfy our desire for human interaction, the Google Art Project should not be seen as a replacement for the real thing. Imagine someone who has traveled to London – Will he or she forgo a visit to the Tate purely on the basis that they’ve seen all the artwork virtually on the Google Art Project? Probably not. The project must not be misunderstood as something that is trying to act as a substitute for visiting these galleries in person. It is only under this faulty assumption that the Google Art Project will hurt, rather than help the art world.