Technology for arts sake.

Artfinder, the home for art on the web, today launched its first fine art iPad apps in partnership with the Cass Sculpture Foundation and the Wallace Collection’s Watteau exhibition.

Putting collections and exhibitions directly into the hands of art fans, Artfinder’s apps establish the tablet as the key device for art, just as the iPod was the pioneering device for digital music and the Kindle revolutionised e-reading.

The apps represent a whole new shift for art discovery and appreciation. For those visiting galleries, museums, exhibitions and artist’s studios, the apps offer a guide before you view. For those unable to travel to see the works, a window is now opened and made instantly accessible to a global audience via the App Store. Where before you might have bought a postcard of a favourite artwork to send to a friend, you can now instantly share your favourites digitally through the app to your social network

With Artfinder’s apps, art discovery and browsing becomes:

- personal: exhibitions in your hands, in pin-sharp quality
- social: artworks can be shared via email and Facebook
- memorable: favourite the art you like as you browse

For artists, galleries and museums, Artfinder-powered iPad apps represent a new model for publishing curated content: far more accessible than the traditional art book, and offering an experience that can be long-form and comprehensive, souvenir or catalogue-like, a snapshot of an exhibition or collection, or any point in between.

With the Wallace Collection app, users can view high quality images of artworks from the current Watteau exhibition, Esprit et Vérité: Watteau and His Circle. The Cass Sculpture Foundation has partnered with Artfinder to create three apps: Biomorphia, featuring monumental sculptures by Eilís O’Connell, and two of their Breaking The Mould series, which feature works by Tony Cragg, Eduardo Paolozzi, Bill Woodrow and other eminent artists associated with the Foundation.

Chris Thorpe, Artfinder co-founder, said: “Art and this beautiful device and screen are just made for each other. We’re very excited to be launching our apps program with the Cass Sculpture Foundation and the Wallace Collection. We’re taking the coffee table art book into the digital age, and making it globally accessible. Each app offers a unique, self-contained, finishable art experience, retaining what’s wonderful about traditional art catalogues and monographs but with added social features, updateability and interactivity.”

Wilfred Cass, co-founder of the Cass Scultpure Foundation, said: “We are very excited about the Foundation's partnership with Artfinder, and about the apps they've created for us. The experience of viewing and browsing through these beautiful, pin-sharp images of our monumental works on an iPad is hugely enjoyable. We hope that these apps will bring 21st Century British Sculpture to an even wider global audience, while providing a showcase for the work of the Foundation and the artists it supports.”

The apps are available for free in the iTunes App Store now:

Cass Biomorphia
http://www.artfinder.com/app/cass-biomorphia/

Cass Breaking The Mould 1
http://www.artfinder.com/app/breaking-the-mould-one/

Cass Breaking The Mould 2
http://www.artfinder.com/app/breaking-the-mould-two/

Watteau at the Wallace Collection
http://www.artfinder.com/app/wallace-at-watteau/

More Artfinder-powered artist and gallery apps - both offered free and sold commercially - will be released in the coming weeks and months.

FACTFILE:
Artfinder is the place for consumers who want to access art via the web. A marketplace for art, Artfinder works with museums, galleries and artists to bring their works to a global consumer audience via the web, smartphones and tablet devices such as the iPad. Artfinder members can find and share art from the most comprehensive database of art online, discover new art through the platform’s innovative personalised recommendation system, as well as purchase on-demand prints of favourite works. Artfinder comprises a team of entrepreneurs and engineers from Last.fm, Amazon, IAC, Yahoo, Tangozebra, Moshi Monsters and The Guardian.

For more information, visit www.artfinder.com.

The Cass Sculpture Foundation is advancing British sculpture in the 21st century by supporting emerging and established talent. The foundation is a commissioning body that has produced over 400 ambitious new sculptures over the past 20 years. The Cass Sculpture Foundation’s 26 acre grounds are home to an ever-changing display of 80 new monumental sculptures, all of which are available for sale with the proceeds going directly to artists.


The Wallace Collection is a national museum in an historic London town house. The Collection was acquired principally in the nineteenth century by the third and fourth Marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace. In the twenty-nine galleries are unsurpassed displays of French eighteenth-century paintings, furniture and porcelain together with superb Old Master paintings. A magnificent collection of princely arms and armour is shown in four galleries and there are further important displays of gold boxes, miniatures, sculpture and Medieval and Renaissance works of art.

For more information, visit www.wallacecollection.org