Art Authority Blog

Congratulations Art Authority Intern Program Year 9 graduates!

By Art Authority June 13, 2019

 

For nine years running now, Art Authority has sponsored a college internship program. Our interns have usually been art majors with an interest in technology. This year they were technology majors with an interest in art. And they are graduating this weekend!

Brian and Miles, computer science majors at Southern Oregon University here in Ashland, have helped us make major progress in a new mobile app which we hope to be able to have available in the not-too-distant future. As part of the SOU computer science capstone requirement, they also earned college credit and gained real-world experience with both technology and art.

We’ve always said that we here at Art Authority live at the intersection of technology and the arts, and we’re happy to have been able to provide yet another set of internships at that intersection, just coming from a somewhat different direction.

Congratulations Brian and Miles, and thank you for all your help!

Welcome Jamie Wyeth!

By Art Authority March 25, 2019 ,

 

As a user of our award-winning Art Authority app line, or a customer of our 1000Museums brand of top-quality reproductions (available through museum gift shops and 1000Museums.com), you’re probably familiar with those parts of Art Authority LLC. Until today, you may have been unfamiliar with the third part of our business: Fine Art Custom Printing.

FACP, spearheaded by digital printmaking pioneer R. Mac Holbert, is our brand for fine art printing services for artists and photographers. Many FACP clients are renowned artists in their own right, but rely on Mac to hone their vision into the best prints possible.

Today we are proud to announce that we have worked with celebrated contemporary realist painter and third-generation artist Jamie Wyeth to make his works directly available through our FACP program and the new web site FocusOnJamieWyeth.com. Mr. Wyeth played an integral role in designing and developing his FACP offerings, from choosing and proofing the initial set of works available to the selection of the special high-quality paper to be used.

Jamie Wyeth, Dog under Lilacs in a Downpour. 2018. ©Jamie Wyeth, 2019

We look forward to additional work with Mr. Wyeth and with other artists of his renown. So expect to hear a lot more about Art Authority Fine Art Custom Printing in the near future!

Georgia O’Keeffe at New Britain

By Art Authority February 22, 2019

 

Art Authority, through our 1000Museums brand, is pleased and proud we were able to help out with a great show opening  today (February 22) at the New Britain Museum of American Art. It’s called “The Beyond: Georgia O’Keeffe and Contemporary Art.”

NBMAA asked us to create a number of framed reproductions of this quintessentially American painter’s key works (along with prints and postcards for sale), and we were more than happy to do so. If you’re anywhere near Connecticut’s NBMAA, don’t miss this show!

 

(Just in case you couldn’t tell, these photos are of the reproductions in their gift shop, not the real thing!)

The show originated at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art before traveling to the North Carolina Museum of Art as well. We were privileged to work on the show at these too fine locations as well.

Be-Sure-You-Get-It-In-Time: Apps free this week

By Art Authority December 10, 2018 ,

 

As part of our Be-Sure-You-Get-It-In-Time sale, the award-winning Art Authority for iPad and iPhone apps are completely free this week. We’re hoping all you last-minute Christmas shoppers will use the apps (or the 1000Museums.com web site) to take advantage of the last few days you can order our 1000Museums archival prints and get them in time for Christmas* at great sale prices (30% off through promotion code INTIME30).

So, if there’s anyone left on your gift list (and we’re betting there is), please download the apps (if you haven’t already), go to the built-in 1000Museums Gift Shop, and put in your orders. After that you can enjoy the apps for free throughout 2019 and beyond.

*See our holiday ordering deadlines page for details. Custom-framed prints should be ordered by Wednesday, December 12.

Celebrating two years of (even more) giving back

By Art Authority July 21, 2018 ,

 

Free apps! Half off on all prints! This weekend only!

Why? Here at Art Authority we’re proud of how we’ve been giving back to the art community. Starting with an app in the App Store the day that store opened ten years ago, we’ve provided art lovers worldwide with access to over 100,000 classic works of art, university art history classes with (literally) a new way of looking at art, and K-12 teachers with the ability to involve their students with art in age-appropriate ways, including through free lesson plans. We authored a paper on evaluating the importance of art in the Internet era, and are in the eighth year of our summer-intern program for art majors.

And now we have something else to really celebrate:

As of July 22, we’re celebrating two years since we acquired 1000Museums.com and the associated relationships with the artists and institutions that create and care for the art we all love so much. In those two years we have now given back, mainly in the form of royalties on prints we’ve sold, over $250,000. One-quarter of a million dollars has gone to helping current-day artists, artists estates and art museums big and small further their important missions of community, education, preservation and beauty. Some of the relationships we’re most proud of include:

You may be skeptical, but we love paying royalties. We get so much in return, starting with the ability to offer the highest quality curator-approved prints. The more royalties we pay, not only do artists and museums keep doing great things, but the more product that means we’ve sold. And the more product we’ve sold, the more great art is in the hands of our customers, and the more money we have to work with additional museums and pay still more royalties.

We hope to keep this impressive virtuous circle going indefinitely, paying more and more royalties to more and more institutions. As part of that plan, and to celebrate our two-year successes, through July 22 only, we’re putting all prints on 1000Museums.com on sale for an unheard of 50% off.* Please help us give back the next $250,000 and help yourself to some of the best in fine-art reproductions in the process.

Peder Severin Krøyer, Hip Hip Hurrah! Artists’ Party at Skagen, 1888, Goteborgs Konstmuseum

Oh, and the Art Authority apps are free this weekend too 🙂

*First 1000 orders for unframed prints only (custom-framed prints available for 25% off).

Celebrating giving back, part 1

By Art Authority July 19, 2018 ,

 

As part of our ongoing 2-year anniversary celebration, the award-winning Art Authority for iPad and iPhone apps are now completely free through this weekend. Just another way we’re giving back to the art community. But free apps are just a very small part of on our giving back, so keep watching this space. Here’s a big hint for you:

 

$250,000

Watch this space

By Art Authority July 17, 2018 , ,

 

Having just celebrated the 10-year anniversary of the App Store and the long, strange trip it started us on, we’re about to celebrate the 2-year anniversary of one of the biggest parts of that trip: our major acquisition of 1000 museums worth of art through 1000Museums.com.

So be sure to watch this space as that date, Sunday July 22, gets closer. You’ll be glad you did 🙂

Rembrandt van Rijn, The Night Watch, 1642, Rijksmuseum

Our long, strange, 10-year trip

By Art Authority July 9, 2018 , , ,

 

Ten years ago, on July 10 2008, Apple rolled out the App Store. It sure has been a long, strange trip for us here at Art Authority LLC since then.

In 2008 we were Open Door Networks, founded in 1995 as a dial-up internet provider, and known mainly for developing Macintosh network utilities like the DoorStop Personal Firewall.

The iPhone of course changed everything. When introduced the year before, Apple didn’t allow developers to provide software for it, but they quickly saw the error of their ways and the rest is most certainly history. We couldn’t resist the opportunity to develop iPhone apps, and our iEnvision Web-image browser app was available on day one in the “iTunes App Store” ten years ago.

iEnvision included “bookmarks” to five categories of image sites that we thought displayed particularly well on the iPhone: comics, space photos, newspaper front pages, children’s books and… art! It was a great start for us, and within a month, we broke out the individual built-in categories from iEnvision into individual apps, which we called “Envi apps.” There was “Comic Envi,” “Space Envi”, “News Envi”, “Kid Book Envi” and… “Art Envi.” Many other Envi’s soon followed.

The App Store was a huge success, as was Art Envi in particular. When Apple announced the iPad in early 2010, it was a no-brainer what we were going to implement on Apple’s next groundbreaking device: art, art, art. Art Authority in particular. Art Authority for iPad took Art Envi to the next level, with dozens of times the number of artists and the amount of art, many more ways to search and access the art, and a professionally-designed virtual museum interface. The result: “an experience unlike any other” (the NY Times), which has often sold as the #1 reference app in the App Store. We are proud to have, literally and figuratively, changed art history with our art apps.

Our transition from Macintosh network experts to Art Authority was just getting started. The Art Authority app’s widespread acclaim was noticed by a number of real art authorities, including the Getty Museum’s Stanley Smith and digital printing guru R. Mac Holbert. In early 2016 we got together with Stanley, Mac and other art authorities to form Art Authority LLC. The company had become the app.

Our trip didn’t stop there. E-commerce company Project A had long been associated with Open Door’s efforts, and with their e-commerce know-how, Stanley and Mac’s printing expertise and the app’s access to 100,000+ works of art, we had everything we needed to move Art Authority beyond the app world into selling museum-quality reproductions. Many companies had gone from physical goods to electronic; we went from electronic to physical goods.

The final piece of the puzzle (so far) fell into place when we acquired the assets of art e-commerce pioneer 1000Museums. 1000Museums.com remains the principal site for selling our (physical) wares, and the museum relationships that the site has helped nurture look to be the next big step in what has certainly been a very long, strange 10-year trip. All started by Steve Jobs, the iPhone, and the App Store.

Happy Anniversary!

Focusing on the Genius of Picasso

By Art Authority April 4, 2018 , ,

 

Next up in our Focus series: FocusOnPicasso.com, a site designed to help art lovers explore and obtain reproductions from the different periods and styles of the artist often called the most influential of the 20th century. The site opening is timed to link with the start of the new National Geographic Channel’s “Genius” series, entitled simply “Picasso.” FocusOnPicasso.com lets TV watchers and art lovers everywhere view, learn about and purchase archival reproductions of key works from each of Picasso’s highly varied creative periods.

As with other Art Authority Focus sites, FocusOnPicasso.com provides a succinct overview of major aspects of the subject and makes available museum-approved archival prints of key works of art involved. In addition to exploring by period, users can also browse through Picasso’s works by subject matter as well.

Portions of purchases from Focus sites go back directly to the institutions involved. All Focus sites feature our 1000Museums brand, known for the latest in print-on-demand technology, top-quality archival reproductions, and a broad set of museum and cultural institution relationships. The full 1000Museums print-on-demand line is available at 1000Museums.com.

Helping the helpers

By Art Authority April 2, 2018 , ,

 

Art Authority, through our 1000Museums brand, has been helping museums expand the reach of their collections by providing curator-approved archival reproductions from those collections for a decade now. The museums receive increased exposure along with much-needed revenue through royalties on sales, and art lovers get increased access to the art they love. Many others have been helping the art world in similar ways. Today we’re proud to announce that we’re going to be helping one of those helpers.

I Require Art is a “Digital Arts Platform” consisting of a long-established FaceBook page, blog and set of online galleries. Plus as of today, an online store. That’s where we come in. We have been selected by I Require Art to provide archival reproductions for that store. As you’ll see, I Require Art chooses only a few works for which to offer prints, and makes available only the highest quality reproductions of those works. So it was natural that they would look toward 1000Museums’ proven quality record and set of museum relationships.

We are honored that I Require Art chose us to help them help the art world, and we look forward to a long and expanding relationship.

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