Google has unveiled its first digital collection dedicated to Czech art

Prague - Treasures of Czech art, design, and architecture are now freely accessible to the public online. The Google Arts & Culture platform has launched a project called Heart of Czechia, through which interested parties can view works by painter Alfons Mucha or the Tugendhat Villa in Brno, said Liudmila Kobyakova, the manager of Google Arts & Culture for Central and Eastern Europe, to ČTK.

According to Michal Lukeš, the general director of the National Museum, digitization is the future for museums. The aim of the project is to preserve Czech cultural wealth for future generations while bringing Czech culture closer to audiences worldwide. The collection will therefore be presented in both Czech and English. For foreign tourists, this is an opportunity to get acquainted with Czech culture even before visiting the Czech Republic. "We are proud that in collaboration with local institutions, we have managed to bring the cultural heritage of the Czech Republic closer to people around the world," stated Amit Sood, director of Google Arts & Culture.

The project involves 19 institutions, including the National Museum in Prague, the Museum of Art in Olomouc, and the Pilsen Philharmonic. Heart of Czechia includes over 2,500 works and artifacts, including more than 20 panoramic views, among which is the panorama of the House at the Black Madonna in Prague. The collection begins with an alphabet of terms that define Czech culture. For example, the letter F stands for Franz Kafka, while the letter G represents Gothic.

The part of the project dedicated to art showcases works by Czech painter Toyen and painters František Kupka, Josef Čapek, and Alfons Mucha. Interested parties can view 20 canvases from Mucha's Slav Epic in ultra-high resolution, allowing them to closely observe each brushstroke or the texture of the canvas. Specific parts of the paintings are accompanied by brief commentary. The digital collection will also feature the work of contemporary glass artist Martin Janecký, who creates sculptures by shaping glass, thus maintaining a long-standing Czech tradition of glassmaking.

Thanks to the Heart of Czechia project, the Tugendhat Villa, which is one of the 16 Czech UNESCO-listed monuments, collaborates with Google Arts & Culture for the first time. The virtual tour will show interested parties the villa along with its garden, while also outlining the history of this site and presenting the architecture and interior of the villa. Another part of the digital collection includes a section of stories from the world of Czech art, design, and architecture.

The Google Arts & Culture platform was established in 2011. As a non-commercial initiative, it aims to globally make accessible the culture of various regions. It now has over 2,000 partners from more than 80 countries and collects over six million artifacts through more than 3,700 digital exhibitions. Google Arts & Culture focuses primarily on visual arts, literature, music, performing arts, but also history and societal events.

In 2020, an exhibition dedicated to the history of November 17, 1939, when the Nazis closed Czech universities and sent students to concentration camps, as well as November 17, 1989, when a suppressed demonstration of university students led to the Velvet Revolution, was created on Google Arts & Culture. The exhibition prepared by the organization Memory of the Nation presented period photographs and memories of witnesses of the Velvet Revolution. The Kampa Museum in Prague has long collaborated with the Google Arts & Culture platform. According to organizers, the name Heart of Czechia hides the word art, which translates to umění in Czech. The project was created as part of the Czech Republic's presidency of the European Union.