More than 3 thousand pieces, such as Painéis de São Vicente, that are the major scanning made by Google, “with more than 140 billion pixels”, became available online in a partnership with the Sate.

“We are the first generation that is capable of fully conserving its heritage”, said Bernardo Correia, Google’s director for Portugal.  The statement was made on the old Coches museum, on Lisbon, a launching event of more than 3 thousand workarts part of the cultural Portuguese patrimony scanned by Google Arts & Culture. This work has been developed since 2017 in a partnership between the Portuguese State and the amerian company.

The Google tool, that is also available in a app for smartphones, allows any person to access pieces of art from the whole world. “Tecnology and the way Google Arts work allows to preserva pices of art and to prevent accidents that happened”, stated the minister of Culture Graça Fonseca, that was present on the event due to the collaboration of the Ministry of Culture to materialise this inniciative.

“This is an extraordinary added value to our museums and to our country”, said the minister of Culture. This initiative is part of  Simplex+, as Maria Manuel Leitão Marques explained, the minister of the Presidency and Administrative Modernization. She refered that this governmental program “is a cultural ally”, and congratulated the work done on the scanning of this heritage.

Google, besides managing  and promoting this project in a partnership with the Portuguese State, joined many Portuguese museums to, directly, allow the online access to inumerous pieces of art, even the ones that aren’t permanently exposed. According to David Santos, subdirector of Direção Geral do Património Cultural, this is “the major cultural digital project in Portugal”.

By Observador, February 2019