Art Authority Blog
Most Wonderful Time of the Year
For many, the holiday season is The Most Wonderful Time of the Year. It’s definitely up there on the Art Channel. We’re happy to be debuting two new shows, “Winter Wonderland” and “Christmas Classics.”
Plus we’ve updated the “Highest Priced” show to add another $80 million or so to the $2 billion of art it includes.
Wonderful!
(P.S. If you’re really into Christmas, don’t forget about our dedicated Christmas Art Apple TV app).
Adding our Art Acquisition
As mentioned previously, we recently acquired 1000 museums worth of art through our purchase of 1000Museums.com, the go-to site for top-quality fine art reproductions. We’re pleased to announce that we’ve now begun the integration of that site with our flagship Art Authority for iPad app. Art Authority for iPad 4.10.3 is now available through the App Store, and it includes the ability to purchase prints of a number of major works of art directly from 1000Museums.
When browsing through art in the app, simply look for the “Available at 1000Museums” button to access the purchase page for that work directly from the app. You can choose five sizes (up to 32″ x 40″) and four high-end framing options. You can also select additional works from the site at the same time. One of the many great aspects of 1000Museums is that portions of your purchase price go back to the artist and museum involved with the work itself, so you’re getting a great piece of art for your wall and giving back to the art community at the same time.
With over 100,000 works of art in Art Authority for iPad, as you can imagine only a small percentage can currently be purchased directly from the app. But 1000Museums has tens of thousand of works available too, so expect a whole lot more to be added to the app in the months ahead. And of course that’s only the beginning. As we say in the app, we have big plans for Art Authority + 1000Museums!
Our original research: Ranking Artists
We are pleased and honored that the MIT Press journal Leonardo has chosen to publish a research paper which we here at Art Authority have been working on for nearly two years: “Ranking Artists: An Internet-era Analysis.” We are equally pleased that we are able to continue to give back to the art history community from which we (and our app users) have also benefited.
Quoting from the paper’s abstract, “To provide guidance to the vastly expanded, un-curated art world made available through the Internet, [we] developed a methodology for objectively and repeatably rating artists, … [and] applied that methodology to Western painters in particular, creating a ranked list of the significance of nearly 10,000 of those painters… [we] observed that the Internet not only greatly broadens access to art, but also provides the tools needed to curate that access in a meaningful scientific manner.”
We learned quite a lot in the process, and are happy to be making the major result of the study freely available online. So, without further ado, we are proud to unveil our ranked list of:
The Most Significant Western Painters
With close to 10,000 annotated entries, we feel that this scientifically-developed list provides a major resource for art historians, educators, students and just plain art lovers. And of course app developers 🙂 Essentially for the art community as a whole. As we indicate in the paper, although one of the main goals of the study is to be as objective as possible, we realize that many of the specific decisions we made in the specific method we used are themselves subjective, and thus this ranking is simply one of many possibilities.
We also hope and believe that our research provides more than just this important list. As the paper concludes, “We hope that our work serves not just as a useful source of exploration, but as a template for other similar guides, and as a starting point for questions about how we all value artistic contribution in this massively connected and information-intense era.” We look forward to those questions.
From Summer into Fall
As the seasons change, once again, from Summer to Fall, we’re happy to announce the newest show on Art Channel for Apple TV: Autumn.
Autumn Regrets, by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1882
And, just in case you missed, there’s still time to enjoy Summer at the Beach as well.
At the Seaside, William Merritt Chase, 1892. Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Our Major Art Acquisition
Art Authority is pleased to announce our first major art acquisition. If Art Authority were a traditional art institution, we might well be announcing that we had obtained a rare painting by a renowned artist like Rembrandt or van Gogh. Instead, this being the 21st century, we’re announcing that we have obtained 1000 museums worth of art!
To be specific, Art Authority has acquired the digital portfolio of 1000Museums, Inc. Both Art Authority and 1000Museums have been pioneers in connecting art museums and art communities in new ways. 1000Museums’ particular strengths have been their relationships, their museum partners, and their web-based capability to affordably provide art lovers with high quality reproductions of works from those museums.
1000Museums’ relationships and print capabilities complement our own, combining with our award-wining mobile app line to greatly advance our mission of making the world’s art accessible to all the world. We can now look forward to working with not just one thousand, but many thousands of museums, helping them use Internet-era tools to connect them and their collections with the rapidly expanding community of art lovers, art students, and art creators around the world.
Gallery of the Louvre, S.B. Morse, 1831-33, Terra Foundation for American Art
Not that long ago, the only way art lovers could view the art they loved was by traveling to art museums in their local community and around the world, and the only communities art museums could draw on were their local ones and those art travelers. With our 1000Museums art acquisition, we here at Art Authority think we’ve taken a huge step in giving art lovers easy access to way more art, and art museums easy access to way more art lovers. We couldn’t be more pleased if we had acquired a Rembrandt ourselves!
Independence Day
Having moved from Spring to Summer, we here in the USA are about to celebrate our 240th Independence Day. Our latest Art Channel show commemorates and celebrates July 4, 1776.
Fourth of July Number 1 by Florine Stettheimer
The Art of Framing Art
Frames make beautiful art even more beautiful. Indeed, framing is itself an art form.
We here at Art Authority have been working with renowned framing authority Eli Wilner & Company to adapt their frames for use throughout the Art Authority museum.
Eli Wilner & Co. have designed a specific frame for each of our museum’s eight period rooms, and these frames are now available in the latest upgrade to Art Authority for iPad, version 4.10.2.
From the basic beauty of Early art, to the elegance of the Baroque, to the desire of Romanticism and the statements of Modern and Contemporary, we think Wilner frames are the perfect finishing touch to the paintings by over 1500 of the world’s greatest artists.
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- Early frame
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- Baroque frame
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- Romanticism frame
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- Modern frame
We look forward to additional work with Eli Wilner & Co. in the months ahead.
Sunrises and Sunsets for Solstice
As the seasons move from spring to summer, so too with Art Channel for Apple TV. Our newest show, for the upcoming summer solstice, is “Sunrise, Sunset.” It joins our “Spring Landscapes,” “May Day” and “Mother’s Day Cassatts” seasonal shows.
Happy Solstice!
May Days on the Art Channel
Following Landscapes for Spring in April, the month of May brings three new shows to our Art Channel on Apple TV.
First, a short show celebrating May Day, the first of May.
Second, an in-depth homage to mothers and Mother’s Day through the work of Impressionist Mary Cassatt. Few, if any, have portrayed the bond between mother and child better.
Third, a show focusing on the work of Sandro Botticelli, whose classic work “Primavera (Allegory of Spring)” brings us back full circle.
Spring is in the Air
We’re pleased to announce our newest show on the Art Channel for Apple TV: “Landscapes for Spring.” Landscapes fit particularly well on HD TV’s and we’ve got over 50 of the best of them. Shining particularly brightly are the beauty and power of Frederic Church’s Heart of the Andes and Twilight in the Wilderness.
Happy Spring, and Happy Easter!