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Google Arts & Culture is a free online cultural discovery initiative where you can explore artworks, museum collections, landmarks, exhibitions and other digital cultural experiences. It has two distinct sides: a public website and app for visitors, and an invitation-based publishing platform for cultural organizations.

What can you do with Google Arts & Culture?

Visitors can search or browse artworks, landmarks, World Heritage sites and digital exhibitions. Many exhibitions are presented as stories contributed by cultural institutions, adding context to the objects and places shown. Google describes experiences that include stepping inside museums and taking virtual tours; the available features can vary by device or location. Explore Google Arts & Culture.

The initiative is not a physical product. Google describes it as non-commercial and says its mission is to preserve and bring art and culture online so that it is accessible to anyone, anywhere. Google Arts & Culture About.

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Website and app experiences

The service is available on the web and as a mobile app. Google’s public overview describes virtual visits and tours. The Apple App Store listing also describes features such as Art Selfie, Art Projector, Street View, virtual-reality tours and curated exhibits. Which features are available can depend on the current app, device and region, so check the relevant listing for your device. Google Arts & Culture on the Apple App Store.

How is the partner platform different?

Cultural organizations use a separate Google Arts & Culture partner platform to publish collections and stories and to work with digitization and virtual-tour tools. Google describes tools for managing and sharing content, including Street View technology for 360-degree tours. This is not the same as the public browsing experience: visitors explore published material, while participating organizations create and manage it. Google Arts & Culture for partners.

Google’s FAQ describes potential partners as non-profit institutions, museums, galleries and archives with copyright-free or copyright-cleared material. Access to the publishing platform is by invitation, so meeting those criteria does not guarantee that an organization can publish automatically. Google Arts & Culture partner FAQ.

How large is the collection?

Google currently reports more than 2,000 cultural institutions in over 80 countries, more than 200,000 high-resolution digital images of original artworks, 7 million archival artifacts, more than 1,800 Street View museum captures and more than 3,000 online exhibitions. These are Google’s reported totals, not independently verified counts, and the figures may change. Google Arts & Culture Platform Help.

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Those totals describe the initiative’s reported reach; they do not mean that every museum or every item in a participating institution’s collection is available online. When exploring an object or exhibition, check its page for the institution and accompanying context.

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Who is Google Arts & Culture for?

  • Visitors: people who want to discover art and cultural places online, browse digital exhibitions, or take virtual tours.
  • Cultural organizations: eligible institutions interested in digitizing, managing and publishing collection material through Google’s separate invitation-based partner platform.

For visitors, the practical distinction is simple: Google Arts & Culture is a way to explore digital cultural content, not a complete substitute for every collection or an in-person visit. For organizations, it is a publishing and technology program rather than an automatic public listing service.

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