Sutton Hoo exhibit on Google Cultural Institute

Expanding its online databases of cultural treasures, Google has added online museum archive exhibits to a portfolio that already includes the hugely successful Google Art Project and Google Street View’s tours of UNESCO World Heritage sites. The Archive Exhibitions are designed by museum curators and experts who collect images and video from their institutions’ archives, caption them and create an online display.

British Museum curators have put together a beautiful tour of the Anglo-Saxon ship burial of Sutton Hoo. It’s structured as a timeline, starting with the discovery in 1939. There are period pictures of the ship as it was revealed, digital reconstructions of the artifacts, maps, black and white video of the excavation and video of the artifacts today. The British Museum website has an excellent set of pictures of the Sutton Hoo treasures, but the Google Cultural Institute exhibit lays out the history of the dig and the artifacts in a crisp, easy-to-follow structure that includes multimedia elements and, best of all, highly zoomable images.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/HMKkMi_Wggg&w=430]

[youtube=http://youtu.be/TX3dgT1l0Rg&w=430]

Once you’ve enjoyed your journey through the funerary riches of Anglo-Saxon aristocracy, check out the rest of the museum collections. This one from the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum features photographs of Holocaust victims found in the property sorting area after liberation. They give a deeply moving glimpse into the family life of Polish Jews before the war. The Imperial War Museums has two World War II exhibits, one telling the stories of the Kindertransport, the evacuation of 10,000 Jewish children from Nazi-occupied territories, and the other about D-Day.

On a more lighthearted topic, the Instituto Luce Cinecitta’ has a wonderful collection of photographs of Italy in the heady Dolce Vita days of 1954-1965. It’s not just about Fellini and the dawn of the paparazzi; it’s also about the booming post-war economy and Italy’s dive into consumerism, Fiat 500s. There’s a great period newsreel of the first supermarket opened in the Roman suburb of EUR (where I grew up!).

Also not to be missed are the exhibitions from the Museo Galileo in Florence. One focuses on the Medici collections of scientific instruments. As always with the Medici, the objects are as beautiful and luxurious as they are important in the history of science. The other covers the Lorraine collection which was built on the Medici core after the House of Lorraine inherited the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in 1737. The Museo Galileo is a garden of earthly delight for combo science and history nerds. It’s wonderful to have an opportunity to explore its collections in this kind of detail. Also, I want Grand Duke Peter Leopold’s chemistry cabinet. Badly.

New museums and exhibits are added all the time, so be sure to keep an eye on the Google Cultural Institute.

3 thoughts on “Sutton Hoo exhibit on Google Cultural Institute

  1. Thank you for all this valuable information. I remember the Sutton Hoo being discovered all that time ago. I am most interested to see this up to date work which has been carried out.

  2. Who’s exhibit is on the Google Cultural Institute?

    Hoo.

    I mean the name of the exhibit.

    Hoo.

    That’s what I’m asking, who’s exhibit is on the Google Cultural Institute?

    Yes.

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