Google Street View does Baltimore street art

Google Street View sometimes struggles to keep up with the pace of development. In the case of street art in Station North, however, the system’s ability to freeze the images in time makes it an asset.
As of this month, murals from a pair of Baltimore street art festivals are now displayed on the Google Art Project. The project makes the murals from Open Walls 1 and 2 searchable, and puts Baltimore alongside 80 other cities in the street art section of Google’s recently-launched effort to make art more widely available.

Technology provides a way to preserve these ephemeral artworks and make them available anywhere and anytime.

See Open Walls 1
See Open Walls 2
The project, which was helmed locally by the Station North Arts and Entertainment District, features separate “exhibits” for each edition of Open Walls Baltimore in 2012 and 2014. The portals allow Google Street View for each mural.
Descriptions include addresses so you can visit the murals that are still there, like Logan Hicks’ dramatic scene on Maryland Avenue, or El Derector’s rule over Calvert Street.
The project also keeps the murals on view, even if they have already been removed from the urban landscape by development or another artist. The murals that remain on view in the Open Walls 1 section show that cities are going to change, but Google doesn’t have to.
“Technology provides a way to preserve these ephemeral artworks and make them available anywhere and anytime,” said Google Art Project head Amit Sood.