Google Arts & Culture

Google Arts & Culture is both a website and an iOS or Android app that provides free access to art, culture, and historical collections from around the world. The site is well-organized and easy to navigate. It allows users to explore by specific museums' collections or themes, and to filter by movement, artist, historical event, historical figure, medium, and more. Some resources can be browsed by geographic location on a map, by dominant color, or in a timeline, allowing students to easily compare works from the same time period. There's plenty here to explore with your family or class, from Impressionism to civil rights to fossils.

In addition to more conventional museum holdings, the site includes the ability to tour famous sites and landmarks and visit outdoor art installations, as well as non-art locations, such as CERN. Users can also visit many works inside the museums using Google's Street View. Some items include the Explore Connections option, which is almost like a two-dimensional stream of consciousness array, linking images by criteria such as location, material, style, time period, etc.

The site includes the latest news related to museums, collections, and events as well as nearby places to visit in person (with media of their collections). There are layers and layers of resources, from visual media of artifacts to virtual tours to "stories," which provide written context to a series of artifacts. When students dig into a historical event, for instance, they'll find curated stories, images, artifacts, and timelines from a wide range of collections. The site also includes links to interactive experiments that demonstrate the interplay between technology, art, and science. Beyond just exploring, users can "favorite" any of the resources on the site and easily access them all from the Favorites page. In addition, they can create different galleries of their favorited resources -- based on any theme they like -- and share those with others, which could align with a specific classroom activity or assignment. Though the collection is impressive, it's not comprehensive, and teachers or students might notice some gaps even with major artists.

One thing to note and be wary of is the Art Selfie feature. This is exclusive to the app, and went viral in early 2018. This feature allows users to take a selfie and get matched with paintings from the app's library. Students are likely to love this feature, but the learning potential is slim and privacy is a concern. This feature has also been criticized for offering few decent matches for people of color.

There's no doubt that incorporating more art and culture into the classroom -- no matter the subject -- is good for learning. Google Arts & Culture makes this easier, providing teachers and students with an incredible collection of resources that will enhance any lesson, activity, or assignment. The challenge for teachers is that it's completely up to them as to how to best use the site to support student learning. While the site's collections are easily browsable and well-curated with tons of compelling material, there are no lesson plans or even an introductory tutorial to introduce what's on offer. That being said, the curated collections will readily offer connections to your existing curriculum, and could also inspire new lessons or units. The thematic collections themselves (blending all types of media and commentary) can give students a model for how to do their own curatorial work in an art history or history class.

In terms of learning, there are a few standout offerings. The virtual tours of museums and sites, videos, experiments, and artifacts are particularly engaging for students. The Favorites feature can allow teachers to share curated media with students, or enable students to create their own galleries to demonstrate knowledge or provide visuals for assignments. Pairing this curation with writing assignments could be fruitful. For schools that don't regularly take field trips or aren't close to many museums, the museum-based browsing can offer a fair approximation, especially those museums with the Street View option.

It's easy for students to fall down the rabbit hole of exploring art and history of the world by following the related links. But it's more than just a site to peruse; you can also search more deliberately for resources related to a school assignment or personal interest. The site really allows students and teachers to explore, discover, and play with art and history in ways that static art museums just can't do.