Art is usually a big part of any society’s culture and some of the many components that are described as art include artifacts or paintings. Google’s mission has always being digitizing the world’s information and of course digitizing some of this content for people to see is part of their quest to attain their goals.
Google released the Arts & Culture app way back in July 2016 and it was their way to make it easy for you to read about the cultures that are available around the world. On checking out the app (I’m using the Android one in this case), there are three Kenyan partners that have digitized content or people to see.
The first partner is the Kenya National Archives which is a department under the Ministry of Sports, Culture and Arts. In 2015, they officially launched a digitized collection from the Kenya National Archives on Google’s Cultural Institute. On the app, the Kenya National Archives has 1,043 items which have been categorized into 8 exhibits:
- Mashujaa Wetu: Heroes of the Kenyan Nation
- African Carvings and Sculptures
- Traditional African Weapons
- Thomas Joseph Mboya
- Paramount Chiefs
- African Calabash Collection
- Police Commissioners
- Waswa Kinta Mosaic Collection
The second partner is the Red Cross where they have one exhibit “Kenyans for Kenya” which was a successful fundraiser they had in July 2011. There are 47 items in this exhibit includes photos from the Turkana community which shows the various programmes they did over there thanks to the campaign.
The next partner in this list is the GoDown Arts Centre which they say is the “home to Kenyan creativity in arts and media.” On the app, they have one exhibit which includes canvas, oil and acrylic paintings.
It is quite awesome you can be able to learn so much about the culture of a nation right from your smartphone and the Google Arts & Culture app is a really good place to get this information. Check it out on Android and iOS
