This App Is Changing the Game for Art and Design Lovers
For most art and design enthusiasts—and casual visitors alike—a day of browsing galleries, fairs, and museums typically involves a good deal of planning ahead—and nothing short of a small army of different apps to plan the excursion. There’s the preferred source(s) of art news to highlight what exhibitions are currently on view; the Notes app to collect a list; Google Maps to navigate between locations; and screenshots of pertinent information like addresses and opening hours to consult. But luckily there’s a new feature within Artsy’s app called City Guide that aims to change the gallery-going experience for the better.
For the past decade, Artsy has been working to put the art world online, but with City Guide, the art and technology company is bringing a bit of online art back to real life. “In the world of art, we identified a real need to better integrate the online and in-person experience. With City Guide, we are excited to introduce an even stronger connection between the experience of discovering art in person and continuing the experience online,” Artsy’s CEO and cofounder, Carter Cleveland, tells AD. City Guide, which appears in the latest Artsy iOS app update starting today, is available in six cities including New York, London, Berlin, Paris, Hong Kong, and Los Angeles, presented in collaboration with BMW.
Using GPS, the feature shows users a bird’s-eye view of all of the shows on view nearby, inviting them to save them to a personalized map. It’s primarily aimed at collectors, sure, but it’s also a powerful and useful tool for art and design lovers to discover work by artists and designers featured in exhibitions near them, be it an emerging creative’s first solo show in Bushwick, a designer’s retrospective in Tribeca, or any fair in between. And if the user already has a profile with Artsy, a tailored list of shows that feature their previously saved artists appears. All the galleries, fairs, and museums listed on the app have existing partnerships and profiles with Artsy, which allows visitors to quickly pull up images of the artists’ work, their biography, exhibition history, and more, in addition to purchasing directly through the app. The feature is easy to navigate—whether you’re out and about and want to open the map to see what shows are on view nearby or planning a day of gallery hopping in advance. The shows are broken down by type (fairs, galleries, and museums), with highlights on exhibitions that have recently opened or are set to close soon.
In addition to discovering new artists and designers and keeping tabs on current favorites, the app shines in its usefulness when traveling. “City Guide is a new way for art buyers and lovers to explore other cities around the world through the lens of art,” says Cleveland. “I often find that those cross-cultural connections can be the most rewarding way to experience a city. Art is a powerful way for people to connect across geographies, and City Guide makes that easier than ever.” One understated feature is that with one glance at the map, users are at once clued in as to where to find the gallery districts in other cities. Of course, the maps lack the insight that navigating a new city with a seasoned art guide provides (context as to which neighborhood is home to more emerging versus secondary-market galleries, say), but for an iPhone app, it’s better than most. It’s head-scratching that a feature like this didn’t exist for Artsy until 2019, but it’s certainly changed the game.
