One engineer who couldn't visit art museums ended up moving museums around the world / GOOGLE "ART PROJECT"

The problem

For as long as anyone could remember, the assumption was that to see a museum's collection for real, you had to go there in person. Even as the internet spread, there were still very few places where you could get close enough to see the brushstrokes in a painting.

The insight

The idea's originator, Amit Sood, started from a sense of unfairness: the kind of art access he'd enjoyed in the UK simply wasn't open to people back in his home country of India in the same way. It's a quiet but powerful way of looking at things—trying to close the gap between those who 'can see' and those who 'can't.'

The idea

They brought the trolley-mounted cameras used for Street View into the museums themselves, and used special equipment to move in front of each painting one by one, capturing them in extremely high resolution. Visitors could walk through the galleries just like they would with Street View, and for each institution, one artwork was captured in ultra-high resolution detail—sharp enough to see the brushstrokes. Famous museums including the Tate in London, the Metropolitan in New York, and the Uffizi in Florence took part, and over 1,000 works were made available online.

What happened

The project launched in February 2011 and won Gold in the Cyber category at Cannes Lions 2011.

Afterthought

It doesn't call itself an advertisement, but this is without a doubt the kind of thing this site is all about. What really gets me is that instead of 'selling a product,' Google poured all its technology into 'expanding the chance to see'—that motivation hits home. And knowing it all began with one person's feeling of 'that's not fair' makes it even more moving.

Awards

• Cannes Lions Gold 2011

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