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5 Great Apps to View Art With

This list of apps is a helpful insight into alternative ways to get even more oomph out of visiting museums, street art neighborhoods, and gallery hot-spots in major cities.

From impressive street art in Brooklyn to the back brick alleys of London, these apps all have one thing in common: thousands of nuggets of information regarding artists, locations of artwork, and background info to give you a better understanding of the artwork. Say goodbye to clunky museum guides and walk around on your own self-guided tours. These apps (like Instagram, perhaps) change how we view artwork. Download now.


1. MoMA App

If you’re visiting MoMa, download their app to take tours and read in depth analysis of their staggering collection of artwork. The MoMa app allows for planning of your trip, and covers basic info like floor plans and a calendar of live events taking place each day in the museum. The app also stockpiles literally tens of thousands of descriptions of individual artworks so you can learn about the collecting at your own pace.

Cost: Free


2. Brooklyn Street Art

This seriously cool app works by locating you and showing you noted works of street art around Brooklyn. It makes walking around Brooklyn seriously fun in that you can open the app and see what historic or new works of art you’re close to. It includes descriptions of artworks and photos so you can find them easily. This app allows users to report new works of art so everyone can locate them and is inclusive to all artists, regardless of clout and fame level.

Cost: Free


3. Street Art London

Similar to the Brooklyn Street Art app, Street Art London also shows art by location on a map. You can search artworks by artist, and it is updated frequently to bring you up to date results. The layout of images is very cool which makes it fun to browse when you’re not walking the streets of London.

Cost: Free


4. British Museum

This ginormous 500MB app can only be downloaded via wifi, and even then, it takes a while. It soon proves itself to be so worth it, even if you’re not near the museum. Curators and developers have worked together with Samsung to make this flagship of museum apps:  it has thousands of high resolution images of the collection and descriptive videos of countless pieces. It’s good for educating thousands of British school kids and for flicking through detailed high res images of artwork from your own home.

20 years ago the British Museum set up a room called the Digital Discovery Centre which was a computer in a room to read from. It has come a (very) long way. Check it out over here.

Cost: Free 


5. Museums of The World

This app is a standout in its organization of Museums around your GPS location. Simply allow location services to locate you in the app, and you will see an impressive list of museums, galleries and exhibitions around you. It includes gallery and museum exhibit information, open hours and contact details as well as a map of how to get there from wherever you are. It works worldwide and what it lacks in exhibition-specific depth it makes up for with a well of practical advice. An amazing app for visiting new cities for a few days. Dive in right here.

Cost: Free


Do you have any apps that are great for viewing art? Let us know in the comments.

[Header image: Octo Rose Love by Variant Illustration]