A new way to peruse Cleveland arts and culture launched online Wednesday. Eighteen area institutions partnered with Google Arts & Culture, a web platform and app, to feature artwork, 360 views, local history and more.
“Google Arts and Culture is a platform for cultural organizations to share their collections and do online storytelling,” said Surya Tubach, the U.S. lead and program manager for Google Arts & Culture. “We partner with cultural nonprofits all around the world.”
Cleveland is just the sixth U.S. city featured on Google Arts & Culture, which provides organizations with tools like digitization to share their collections online. Other U.S. cities highlighted on the platform include Pittsburgh, Kansas City and Charlotte.
“There's a lot of Cleveland pride. People are super proud of their city,” Tubach said.
The Cleveland section on Google Arts & Culture is meant to serve people who live in the area, national travelers who may visit and arts enthusiasts around the world, Tubach said.
Local organizations like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame supplied videos and exhibit information for the platform. The Cleveland Museum of Art provided more than 30,000 works from its Open Access for digital users to explore, which they can sort either by time period or color.
The Cleveland section of Google Arts & Culture also offers lists of things to do in different seasons and guides to food and breweries in the region.
“It doesn't have to be fine arts,” Tubach said. “It's, you know, food, sports, street art, dance, really anything you want to call culture.”
Other participating entities include the Cleveland Orchestra, Destination Cleveland, Akron Art Museum, moCa, Transformer Station, Karamu House, Cleveland Public Library, Julia de Burgos Cultural Center, OCA Greater Cleveland/Cleveland Asia Festival, Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland Cultural Gardens, Baseball Heritage Museum, “A Christmas Story” House, FRONT International and Ohio History Connection.
Google Arts & Culture is also open to working with other area non-profits in the future and considers this a first iteration of the Cleveland project, Tubach said.
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