 Now you can stick ArtLens in your pocket.
The Cleveland Museum of Art’s award-winning mobile app for the Apple iPad is available for the iPhone, the museum announced today.
ArtLens, which debuted last year, enables visitors to construct their own tours of the museum’s permanent collections and to access written information and pre-recorded video and audio commentaries on artworks prepared by curators and other experts in Cleveland.
“It just means more people are getting access to our collection quickly,†said Jane Alexander, the museum’s chief information officer.
The free app has been available to be downloaded from the Apple’s iTunes store [1] to any iPad, or visitors can pay $5 to rent an iPad from the museum, which comes in an easy-to-carry frame made of plastic foam that protects the device if dropped.
With the new launch, tech-oriented visitors have the option of using the far smaller iPhone, instead of the iPad.
New features for the iPhone include a user interface designed for one-handed use, a scrolling function, and the ability to search the collection by artist or title of artwork.
The ArtLens program can also help visitors navigate the museum’s collections with maps, and to find restrooms and other amenities. As with the iPad app, the iPhone can also be used in conjunction with the museum’s 40-foot-long interactive Collection Wall.
By tapping or swiping the screen of the Collection Wall, visitors can select or “favorite†images of any one of 4,000 objects, assemble lists and export the information to ArtLens, which can then guide visitors to find the selected artworks. Visitors can also access lists of “top 10†objects assembled by curators or other visitors.
By using the iPhone’s camera function, ArtLens can “recognize†specific artworks and display information about them.
When the museum launched ArtLens last year, experts called it the most comprehensive educational use of popular computer technology by any art museum in the U.S. Specialists in museum education also predicted that larger institutions would emulate Cleveland’s example.
Coming next for ArtLens: The museum said it would also launch an app for Android devices in the spring.
Even though the iPhone ArtLens app hasn’t been officially announced until today, Alexander said scores of people are already downloading it because it is visible on the iTunes site.
So far, since the launch of ArtLens, the program has been downloaded 10,945 times, she said.
“People have their device with them all the time,†she said. “We’re just opening up our collection in a new way to almost anyone who walks in the door.â€
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