Urban art, zoomorphic whistles and Hungarian poetry

There are few places (if any) in the world where you could find urban art, zoomorphic whistles* and Hungarian poetry in a single place—except, of course, on the Internet.

Today 30 new partners are joining the Google Art Project, contributing nearly 2,000 diverse works including contemporary art from Latin America, ancient art from China, rare Japanese paintings and Palaeolithic flint heads from Spain.

One highlight of the new collection is a project to capture the growing trend of urban art and graffiti in Brazil. More than 100 works from walls, doors and galleries in São Paulo have been photographed and will be included in the Art Project. The pieces were chosen by a group of journalists, artists and graffiti experts and include artists such as Speto, Kobra and Space Invader, as well as images of São Paulo’s most famous building-size murals. You can see the contrast in styles in the Compare tool and image below.

Photography features strongly in the works our partners are bringing online this time around. The Fundacion MAPFRE in Spain showcases one of the largest collections with more than 300 photos from a number of renowned photographers. For example, you can explore Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide’s black and white images of indigenous Mexican culture inspired by themes of ritual, death and feminism.

The Art Project is also becoming a home to rare and precious items which move beyond paintings. Petőfi Literary Museum in Hungary has contributed the Nemzeti Dal or “National Song,” a Hungarian poem which is said to have been the inspiration for the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. The original document has rarely been seen in public to prevent humidity and light fading the script further. Online now for the first time, it can be explored by anyone in the world.

With 40,000+ artworks to explore from more than 200 museums in more than 40 countries, we look forward to seeing these new works feature in hundreds of thousands of user galleries you have created to date. Keep an eye on our Google+ page for more details about the new collections.

*ceramic whistles in the shape of animals!