Dulwich Street Art is now officially part of the Google Art Project

By Ingrid | Published 18 March 2015

The street art in the Dulwich area (now stretching to Peckham, Nunhead and Forest Hill) which collectively is called Dulwich Outdoor Gallery, has now been featured in a new wave of street art uploads on the Google Street Art Project which went live yesterday.

This means that Dulwich Outdoor Gallery is part of the Google Street Art Project which is part of the Google Art Project which is part of the Google Cultural Institute, the non profit arm of Google. Get it?

I quote from the Google Cultural Institute website:

Google has partnered with hundreds of museums, cultural institutions, and archives to host the world’s cultural treasures online.
We have built tools that allow the cultural sector to display more of its diverse heritage online, making it accessible to all. Here you can find artworks, landmarks and world heritage sites, as well as digital exhibitions that tell the stories behind the archives of cultural institutions across the globe. Museums large and small, classic and modern, world-renowned and community-based from over 40 countries have contributed more than 40,000 high-resolution images of works ranging from oil on canvas to sculpture and furniture.

And Dulwich Outdoor Gallery is now one of Google’s partners. Dulwich Picture Gallery is also a partner and held an event at the launch of the Art Project three years ago, described here.

This is wonderful for many reasons. It places street art on a level with other more accepted artworks world wide - anyway in Google’s eyes (some eyes!), and it brings street art to the attention of so many more people. The high quality images of the street works will probably last longer than the works themselves which are subject to tagging, being demolished or painted over. So it acts as a digital archive, more important for street art than for that which is kept in environmentally controlled buildings.

Partners were also given tools to create an exhibition, or in this case, a tour around the art works. Partners can choose art works from any participating museums, combining them into a personalised exhibition. A curator’s dream! Dulwich Outdoor Gallery chose the paintings from the permanent collection in Dulwich Picture Gallery that inspired the walls and pavements in the area. It is also possible to upload images of the works being created and videos, so completing a fascinating story. Check it out DULWICH OUTDOOR GALLERY TOUR

‘The Cultural Institute is an effort to make important cultural material available and accessible to everyone and to digitally preserve it to educate and inspire future generations.’