Europeana content can be discovered with the Art Up Your Tab Chrome extension

Europeana content can now be easily discovered in a new and fun way: Kennisland, Studio Parkers and Sara Kostler have developed Art Up Your Tab, a new plugin for Chrome which displays a full screen painting or photograph for each newly open tab or window.

The plug-in selects artworks from the rich collection of Europeana: gathering approximately 30 million images, of which 200 thousand meet the (technical) quality criteria for Art Up Your Tab, it offers an easy and entertaining way to discover arts and culture in the familiar surroundings of the user's’ web browser.

Switching away from the blank screen users would often see when opening a new window in their browser, they can now get inspired and informed by Europeana content and easily integrate cultural heritage in their everyday activities without even having to search for artworks. The image is displayed full screen and without text, and web users are invited to click on it to find out more about the background of the specific work, their author, or the institution it belongs to. They can also download the image in full resolution, and get information about the terms of use. Launched on 28 March, the plugin already received a great response with users tweeting they couldn’t stop opening new tabs.

The first version of Art Up Your Tab focusses on Europeana artworks provided by Dutch heritage institutions, with more contributions by other European countries to come. The current selection of enticing images has been selected by Kennisland. Curation of specific themes or storylines might be directly suggested by cultural heritage institutions in the future, enabling digital heritage collections to increase their visibility.

Install the Chrome extension

by Camille Tenneson