The National Gallery is the first ever gallery to make its paintings
accessible through a downloadable iPhone application, making it
possible to take a mini tour of the Gallery anywhere in the world.
The Gallery, in partnership with Antenna Audio and Apple Inc., has
designed a new application for iPhones and iTouch devices that
enables people to explore a sample of the collection while they’re on
the move. Designed to appeal to art enthusiasts and fans of the
Gallery, this application is the first of its kind to be released by
a major gallery.
This Pentimento application, called Love Art, features 250 paintings
from the collection along with around 200 minutes of audio and video
content, including interviews with National Gallery Director Dr
Nicholas Penny, dramatist Robin Brooks, artist Maggie Hambling and
Girl with a Pearl Earring author Tracy Chevalier.
Making use of special iPhone features such as its large touch-screen,
zoom, Rolodex and scrollable menus, Love Art offers a playful
exploration of the collection, together with informative
commentaries. The paintings are showcased to the best advantage using
high-resolution images on the iPhone’s excellent-quality screen. Due
to a tactile interface the experience gained through this application
is not only highly enjoyable, but also lets you zoom in to see
details that are often missed.
Building on the collection’s universal themes such as love, passion,
death and beauty, the Rolodex feature allows the random selection of
a theme and provides access to stories about the paintings, told via
video and audio commentary.
Love Art also boasts twelve thematic ‘galleries’, in which users can
explore a greater selection of paintings grouped by popular themes or
types such as portraits, cityscapes and religious paintings. The
application sits alongside the Gallery’s other audio content
including its audio tours and popular monthly podcast series.
Dr Nicholas Penny said, ‘The National Gallery is delighted to be
involved with Antenna in such an exciting and ground-breaking
project. We look forward to working with Antenna in expanding the
application further and reaching new publics.’
Sarah Dines, Managing Director, Antenna Audio ‘We’re really proud to
have created such a beautiful application that allows people to
experience one of the greatest collections of masterpieces in the
world in totally new and exciting ways. This application is a major
step forward in our efforts to reach new audiences on new platforms’
Love Art can be downloaded from Apple’s online iTunes Store, one of
the world’s leading sites for downloading audio content. For a short
time only it is available free of charge.