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Google’s Cultural Institute has launched an online “Women in Culture” project that tells the stories of known and unknown women who have impacted our world as part of the company’s commemoration of International Women’s Day on March 8.
The fascinating online feature includes 18 new exhibits that showcase detailed stories about amazing women throughout our history, according to a March 8 post by Kyle Ewing of Google on the Google Official Blog Page.
Included in the new exhibit are features such as Showcasing Great Women, by The National Women’s Hall of Fame; Makers, by WETA (Makers.com: the largest video collection of women’s stories ever); Frida Kahlo: ¡Viva la vida! by Museo Dolores Olmedo; Pioneering Musicians: Women Superstars of the Early Gramophone Era, by the Archive of Indian Music; and Pathways to Equality, by the National Women’s History Museum.
Also included are features on The Struggle for Suffrage, by English Heritage; Profiles for Peace, by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security; This Mad, Wicked Folly: Victorian American Women, by the Meserve-Kunhardt Foundation; World Changing Women, by Vital Voices; and The painting Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico / Out Back of Marie’s II, contributed by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.
“Since history has so often been biased, leaving out or sidelining contributions from women, the channel is also integrated with the rest of the Cultural Institute collections, making it easier for people to discover even more amazing stories about women throughout history,” wrote Ewing.
Google is also celebrating women throughout the month of March through a series of more than 100 Women Techmakers events in 52 countries, according to Ewing’s post. The events will feature panel discussions with talented female technology leaders, hands-on career planning workshops, networking opportunities and more. A full schedule of the events and locations is available on the Techmakers Website.
Earlier in March, Google announced that it is giving $1 million to 40 global organizations that work with startup companies to encourage them to find ways to bring more women into the fields of business and technology. The program, called #40 Forward, aims to increase the number of women working within the communities served by the global startup-focused organizations by 25 percent in 2014.
The #40Forward project will include participating organizations such as 1871 in Chicago, which is launching an accelerator program for women founded or co-founded companies that’s more flexible and family-friendly, with a customized plan for each startup; Gaza Sky Geeks in Gaza, which is providing rewards for women attending startup events to demonstrate the economic value of them getting involved in tech to their families; Startup Grind chapters all over the world, which are hosting Women Take the Stage fireside chats featuring successful women business leaders in their communities; and Outbox in Uganda, which is launching a yearlong training to teach young women programming and entrepreneurial skills.
The Google Cultural Institute hosts marvelous online collections of artwork and cultural treasures that are in hundreds of museums, cultural institutions and archives around the world, according to the group. Google created the organization to help show the collections virtually to people around the globe.
The Google Cultural Institute includes the Art Project, with some 40,000 images of world-renowned and community-based artwork from more than 40 countries; the World Wonders Project, which includes images of modern and ancient world heritage sites from around the world using Street View, 3D modeling and other Google technologies; and archive exhibitions featuring massive collections of information from institutions and museums the world over, much of which cannot always be put on public display, according to Google.
In December 2013, the Google Cultural Institute gained more artwork for its online collections, including a new assortment of pieces that challenge the visual perceptions of viewers.
The online institute features a collection of more than 57,000 pieces of art.
In November 2013, the Google Cultural Museum showcased the five handwritten versions of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address online in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of his famous and moving 272-word speech. The five versions were placed online in a special gallery for viewers to read and review. Five different copies of the Gettysburg Address were written by Lincoln and given to five different people, each named for the person to whom they were given, according to AbrahamLincolnOnline.org.