Korean artworks on show on Google

Major works of Korean art are now available for online viewing in ultrahigh definition on Google’s cultural content platform.

The Google Cultural Institute, a nonprofit affiliate of Google devoted to digitization and online publication of cultural content around the world, announced Thursday new additions to its online collection following partnerships with 10 Korean museums, including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, Horim Museum, Modern Design Museum and Ewha Womans University Museum.

“People around the world can now get a quick sense of what Korean culture is,” said Amit Sood, director of the Google Cultural Institute and founder of the Google Art Project, at a press conference in Seoul. 

The GCI partners with more than 700 museums and cultural institutions from 60 countries around the world to exhibit more than 6 million works of art on its online cultural platform (www.google.com/culturalinstitute).

With the partnership, selected works of Korean art such as paintings of master Park Soo-keun and Lee Ufan and artifacts are made into electronic images containing 7 billion pixels. The super high definition images allow viewers to study the artworks in microscopic detail.

“I can travel fast into this amazing world. With the ultrahigh resolution, in one or two seconds, you can dive into a painting this fast,” said Sood, showing the high resolution image of Kang Ik-joong’s 2000 work “Potassium Pencil” on a presentation screen.

In six of the 10 Korean museums, viewers can take a virtual tour of the galleries, powered by Google Maps’ street view.

By Lee Woo-young (wylee@heraldcorp.com)