Google's Arts & Culture app is a miniature mobile masterpiece, which anyone with even a passing involvement in art will enjoy exploring.

Launched in 2016, information technology was originally designed to complement the Google Arts & Culture website, which lets you virtually visit thousands of galleries and museums around the world.

Merely the app, which you tin download for free for Android and iOS, now goes far beyond that. It uses the latest technology to deliver an immersive, educational, and entertaining art feel. Permit'due south take a look at its highlights.

1. Match a Selfie to a Painting

The best-known feature in the Google Arts & Culture app is undoubtedly Art Selfie. Information technology finds your art lookalike amidst thousands of famous paintings.

To discover whether you lot more than closely resemble the Mona Lisa or The Laughing Condescending, tap the camera icon and select Art Selfie. Take a photo of your face and Arts & Culture will locate matching portraits.

Don't expect the results to be exact doppelgangers, or even anyone you've heard of (though one of our matches was 28th US president Woodrow Wilson). Tap the flick for data about the subject, artist, and collection, and so tap View artwork to see the slice in close-upward item.

Incidentally, there have been complaints in the Play Store that Art Selfie no longer works, just merely hangs. Nosotros also had this problem, until we switched from cellular to Wi-Fi, which kicked it into activity.

2. Transform Your Photos Into Artworks

Even more fun than Art Selfie is the Fine art Transfer feature. This turns your photos into works of art in the mode of specific painters.

Select Art Transfer in the camera bill of fare, then either capture a photograph or use an existing one from your phone. Tap one of the thumbnails of archetype paintings and historic artifacts, and Google volition use its AI to use that style.

Options include Edvard Munch'southward The Scream, Claude Monet's Ninfee Rosa, Jean-Michel Basquiat's Man from Naples, and self portraits by Andy Warhol, Frida Kahlo, and Vincent Van Gogh.

You can apply a style to merely part of your photograph by borer the scissors icon and tracing the desired surface area with your finger. The app also creates a GIF showing the transformation of your image into fine art. Tap Share to download and share your masterpiece.

3. Insert Yourself Into Works of Fine art

Google Arts & Civilisation is also one of the best augmented reality apps. You lot can run across this in the Fine art Filter tool, which uses AR to plough you into a living piece of work of fine art.

Select Fine art Filter in the photographic camera menu, and then choose one of the 5 artifacts or paintings. These include a Japanese Samurai helmet from the 19th century, Van Gogh's Self Portrait (again), and Vermeer's Daughter with a Pearl Earring.

Tap Try filter to activate your photographic camera and apply the filter, Snapchat-style. It volition adapt to the position of your head and fifty-fifty your facial expression. Tap the circle to take a photograph or hold it down to record a video.

When you're done admiring yourself, select View artwork to learn more than about the original piece.

4. Project Artwork Around Your Home

You probably don't have $eighty million to spend on a Monet for your kitchen, so Google Arts & Culture lets you hang classic paintings for gratuitous. It uses augmented reality to project full-size versions of masterpieces anywhere in your dwelling house.

Press the photographic camera icon and tap Art Projector. Point your photographic camera at the flooring, move it in a circular motion, and a grid of dots will testify yous where the projection will announced.

You can then choose i of 50 famous artworks, including Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, Grant Woods'due south American Gothic, and Leonardo da Vinci'southward Mona Lisa.

As if by magic, the actual-size painting will appear in front of you on a stand. Tap the frame icon in the lesser-right corner to hang the picture on a virtual wall. Walk towards an artwork to examine information technology in detail, as if it were really in front of you.

Fine art Projector is also available for thousands of other paintings in the Arts & Culture app. Merely look for the View in Augmented Reality option.

You can use the Arts & Civilisation app's brilliant Pocket Gallery feature to explore some of the earth's best fine art without leaving your domicile.

Select Pocket Gallery in the photographic camera menu, and then point your camera at a flat, well-lit surface and move your phone around slowly. As with Fine art Projector, a grid of dots will highlight the augmented reality area.

Choose a virtual gallery from ix options including Meet Vermeer, The Fine art of Color, and Chauvet Cave. The size and calibration of these tours means you'll need to download them start, but this also makes them easy to revisit.

Printing Enter to step into the gallery, where you can tap and swipe your screen to explore the contents of each room. Alternatively, move your telephone manually to await effectually.

The name of the artwork and creative person volition announced as you "approach" a piece. You can also contrary-pinch your screen to zoom in and examine the craftsmanship.

6. Play Art-Themed Games

Although y'all can endeavour Google Arts & Culture'south games on its website, tapping your phone's touchscreen makes them easier and more fun to play than with your mouse.

For instance, Art Coloring Book offers monochrome outlines of more than than 20 famous paintings and photos, which you lot can color in using the palette of your choice. Just pick a colour then tap a segment of the picture to fill it in. You can salvage and share the result.

Puzzle Party creates jigsaws from hundreds of artworks, which you lot tin either solve yourself or collaborate on with friends. Just press the puzzle pieces and movement them into identify.

There'due south as well Visual Crosswords, which challenges you lot to grouping thumbnail images by theme, such every bit Contemporary and Renaissance art, or paintings past Van Gogh and Gauguin.

To play these games and more, keep scrolling through the Arts & Culture app until you accomplish the Games department.

7. Bring Ancient Creatures to Life

If you enjoy viewing museum exhibits of fossils and long-extinct species, you'll honey Arts and Civilisation'southward Encounter an Ancient Animal feature.

This uses AR to identify prehistoric beings in forepart of you lot, at their actual size. These include the Opabinia, a 500 million-year-old arthropod with v eyes; duck-billed, crested dinosaur the Amurosaurus; and "Hatcher", the first Triceratops ever put on brandish.

If you tin't see the feature on the app'due south home screen, tap the menu in the top-left corner, choose Collections, and select State Darwin Museum, which has provided about of the 3D images. Select an ancient creature, then tap View in Augmented Reality to bring it back to life.

Interact With Art and Civilisation

You could spend days exploring all the content in the Google Arts & Civilisation app. Endeavor the interactive features we've highlighted to get a season of what to expect.

As well equally browsing artworks and artifacts, you should as well check out the app's virtual tours of galleries, museums, and sites of cultural and historic involvement. They provide y'all with a earth of culture from the comfort of your phone.

And if you're yet hungry for more civilisation without leaving your burrow, you can bank check out some virtual field trips that make history come alive.

9 Virtual Field Trips That Make History Come up Alive

Read Adjacent

About The Author

Robert Irvine (14 Articles Published)

Robert has been writing about the internet and computing since the days of AOL discs and Windows 98. He loves discovering new things about the spider web and sharing that noesis with other people.

More From Robert Irvine