Artfinder, the home for art on the web, today launched its first fine art iPad apps in partnership with the Cass Sculpture Foundation and the Wallace Collections Watteau exhibition.
Putting collections and exhibitions directly into the hands of art fans, Artfinders apps establish the tablet as the key device for art, just as the iPod was the pioneering device for digital music and the Kindle revolutionised e-reading.
The apps represent a whole new shift for art discovery and appreciation. For those visiting galleries, museums, exhibitions and artists studios, the apps offer a guide before you view. For those unable to travel to see the works, a window is now opened and made instantly accessible to a global audience via the App Store. Where before you might have bought a postcard of a favourite artwork to send to a friend, you can now instantly share your favourites digitally through the app to your social network
With Artfinders apps, art discovery and browsing becomes:
– personal: exhibitions in your hands, in pin-sharp quality
– social: artworks can be shared via email and Facebook
– memorable: favourite the art you like as you browse
For artists, galleries and museums, Artfinder-powered iPad apps represent a new model for publishing curated content: far more accessible than the traditional art book, and offering an experience that can be long-form and comprehensive, souvenir or catalogue-like, a snapshot of an exhibition or collection, or any point in between.
With the Wallace Collection app, users can view high quality images of artworks from the current Watteau exhibition, Esprit et Vrit: Watteau and His Circle. The Cass Sculpture Foundation has partnered with Artfinder to create three apps: Biomorphia, featuring monumental sculptures by Eils OConnell, and two of their Breaking The Mould series, which feature works by Tony Cragg, Eduardo Paolozzi, Bill Woodrow and other eminent artists associated with the Foundation.
Chris Thorpe, Artfinder co-founder, said: Art and this beautiful device and screen are just made for each other. Were very excited to be launching our apps program with the Cass Sculpture Foundation and the Wallace Collection. Were taking the coffee table art book into the digital age, and making it globally accessible. Each app offers a unique, self-contained, finishable art experience, retaining whats wonderful about traditional art catalogues and monographs but with added social features, updateability and interactivity.
Wilfred Cass, co-founder of the Cass Scultpure Foundation, said: We are very excited about the Foundation’s partnership with Artfinder, and about the apps they’ve created for us. The experience of viewing and browsing through these beautiful, pin-sharp images of our monumental works on an iPad is hugely enjoyable. We hope that these apps will bring 21st Century British Sculpture to an even wider global audience, while providing a showcase for the work of the Foundation and the artists it supports.
The apps are available for free in the iTunes App Store now: