The Whitney Museum has embarked on an ambitious expansion of its online database, dramatically growing its selection of images from 700 to 21,000 works.  A sizable portion of the museum’s collection, which has long been out of public view, will occupy a 60,000 square-foot section of the Whitney’s new Meatpacking District space. (more…)

Google has launched a new project, an online street art gallery of images provided by cultural organizations and Google’s Street View camera.  But with the company’s entry into the conversation on the documentation  of street art playing out against the criticisms Google has seen regarding privacy and surveillance, the move should offer interesting discussion points for open access to art online and in the streets.  “I’ve always used my street art to democratize art, so it would be philosophically inconsistent for me to protest art democratization through Google,” says Shepard Fairey. (more…)

The Morgan Library has announced an ambitious plan to digitize its full collection of drawings and make them available online.  The project is expected to reach completion by October of next year, and will yield over 10,000 individual images by the likes of Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Dürer, for free access on the Morgan’s site.  The digitization “is critical to our institutional goal of promoting drawings scholarship and reaching out to an ever larger audience,”said William M. Griswold, the museum’s director. (more…)