Google Arts & Culture has arrived to enrich your day

If you’re the kind of person who likes to have their finger to the pulse of culture both old and new, then we’ve got some good news for you. Google Arts & Culture is a new way to explore the best and most beautiful things that humans have created all around planet Earth. This new site and partner app come with daily digests and highlighted features every week, so you can quickly get a history refresher and see what’s going on in the art and culture world.

What’s more is that Google has stocked this resource with all the power of their familiar search algorithms. That means if you want to see paintings by Monet organized by dominant color, you’re just a few keystrokes away. View an artist’s work chronologically to see how he or she grew and improved, prowl through history with an eye on an unusual topic (shoes, for instance), and Google Cardboard to step right into museums or historic locations to take a virtual reality tour.

The app integration looks particularly useful because you can take your culture-savviness on the go. Google’s new Art Recognizer lets you fetch augmented reality information about a particular painting you’re looking at just by holding your camera up to it. This functionality is still under development, and Google wants to bring its capabilities to museums all around the world.

To get a bit of culture into your Philistine self, click the button below to download the app from the Google Play Store. Also be sure to browse around the website version to get a feel for the kind of content you can expect from Google Arts & Culture. As always, let us hear your thoughts about this new service in the comments below!