PUCP is the first Peruvian university on Google Arts & Culture platform

With a total of nine virtual collections, the PUCP now has its own profile on Google Arts & Culture. This is a web platform and app that allows users to explore, from anywhere in the world, collections, graphic documents, objects and historical, artistic and cultural archives of different subjects and disciplines.

With this, our University becomes the first national higher education institution to be present on the global platform, which hosts material from more than 2,000 institutions, including The Metropolitan Museum, Harvard University, NASA and the Reina Sofia Museum.

The presence of the PUCP on this platform is possible thanks to the efforts of the Cultural Assets area of the Directorate of Cultural Affairs (DACU), which coordinated the signing of the agreement with Google. The profile allows the cultural heritage of the PUCP to be available at the click of a button for millions of users worldwide, in order to be disseminated and consulted in a simple and dynamic way.

Multifaceted space

"Google Arts & Culture is a very agile and interactive space that focuses on visuals through photos and images so that people can get closer to different cultural manifestations," says Alain Vallenas, coordinator of Cultural Heritage at the DACU.

The novelty of the platform is that it is not limited to the strictly cultural or artistic sphere, but also allows institutions to showcase some of their most important achievements and projects. "For example, the profile has a collection from our engineering department on the MASI mechanical fan project, which explains its relevance for the country," says Vallenas.

Interactive experience

With Google Arts & Culture, users can visually appreciate objects and collections that are not easily accessible in person. In addition, the assets found on the platform include the comments of specialists who have studied or reviewed them.

"The public has the possibility to get to know the cultural heritage of the PUCP, which is very valuable, through photographs of excellent resolution," says Vallenas. "This can be of special interest to experts and academics from other parts of the world," he adds.

In addition, Google Arts & Culture enables the more than 2,000 institutions it hosts on its platform to collaborate and complement each other: "By generating a story, our university can use collections from other institutions, with credit, and vice versa," explains Vallenas.

So far, five PUCP units have registered information on the platform. These are the PUCP Film Library, the Library of the Riva-Agüero Institute (IRA), the Department of Engineering, the Institutional Repository and the Riva-Agüero Historical Archive. Likewise, the Cultural Heritage area of the DACU has created four virtual collections: two on the painter Julia Codesido and two on the heritage found in the excavations of Huaca 20.

However, the aim is that eventually the collections on the platform will cover all areas of the university. "We invite other units to join, so that they can send us their material and continue to upload collections and grow this profile every year," says Vallenas.