When you hear a song you like that you can’t quite place Shazam has become many people’s solution to the problem. All you have to do it open the app, let it listen to the tune for a few seconds, and more often than not you’ll be presented with the title and artist in just a few seconds.
Now some app developers are recreating that experience for actual art. The New York Times highlighted a few of the apps in the space, specifically Magnus, an app that can figure out who the artist is for a piece of art you see. Even better, it can also give you the title of that piece of art, and how much it was last sold for. That price tag is info you won’t even see on a museum floor.
The app shows you both historic and recent prices from both auctions and gallery sales, so you can get a decent idea quickly how an artist’s popularity has risen (or fallen) over the years. It also has the added bonus of letting you exactly how unlikely it is that you’ll ever own a piece of the artist’s work in your home.
The app also helps you find art and offers information about galleries and museums near you as well as what their current shows are and hours.
When you do find an artist you like, the app can help you find more work by them, and see where they’ve exhibited in the past as well as where you might be able to catch more of their work right now.
It’s obviously an app that will be a bit more powerful when you see that painting in an office building you love rather than one in a museum with an info tag beside it, but just like Shazam for music lovers it can be an excellent thing for art enthusiasts to have on their phone ready to use when they need it.
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