Degree
Master of Arts
Program
Media Studies
Supervisor
Carole Farber
Abstract
This thesis explores the digitization initiative Google Art Project and the ways in which the Project negotiates its place between rapidly developing Web technologies and the often-contradictory fine art tradition. Through the Project’s marketing and website design, Google constructs a narrative that emphasizes the democratization of culture, universal accessibility and a new progressive future for the art world while obscuring more complex political, social and cultural questions. Bringing together scholarship from various disciplines including library studies, digital studies, art history, and cultural studies this thesis highlights how the Project might open up a space to talk about art publics and the desire for openness in the art institution while also recognizing how GAP remains firmly planted within that institutional structure.
Recommended Citation
Bayer, Alanna, "Evangelizing the ‘Gallery of the Future’: a Critical Analysis of the Google Art Project Narrative and its Political, Cultural and Technological Stakes" (2014). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 2239.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/2239
Included in
Cultural History Commons, Interactive Arts Commons, Interdisciplinary Arts and Media Commons, Other Film and Media Studies Commons