Khan Academy Contributes to the Google Art Project

My friends Beth Harris and Steven Zucker, formerly of smARThistory, now of smARThistory at Khan Academy, have announced that they contributed 90 art history videos for the newly launched version 2 of the Google Art Project. This idea, of creating virtual versions of important museums around the globe, complete with high-resolution images of the art, is wonderful. Sadly, for me, the interface is a bit confusing and hard to navigate at times. (Frankly, I think Beth and Steven did a terrific job with the visual design of smARThistory; Google should be learning from them.) But still, this is an important effort that I hope Google continues to grow and improve.

I also think it’s interesting to see this kind of partnership between Google and Khan to bring high-quality educational resources together. It may be an early example of what turns out to be a blossoming ecosystem of such partnerships. Let’s hope so.