App-based guides are one of the gifts of mobile phones. Discover the best in the art world
An extreme dependence on your phone can spoil anyone’s vacation, but there is no denying that mobile phones have become wonderful travel companions, especially in cities. Maps, weather forecasts, and electronic boarding passes make life on the move easier, and it is no accident that phones are called the Swiss Army knives of the digital age.
App-based guides are one of their gifts. Linked to location services and online resources, they not only speed up our journeys but also let us go deeper and combine references on a particular subject.
There are some very good ones in the arts.
For me, an indispensable app is See Saw, which covers New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, London, and Paris. In each city, it maps what there is to see, with searches by area, neighborhood, or nearby attractions. But this app excels in more than convenience. Its strength is its lists of exhibition highlights selected by the editors. Another feature I particularly like is chronological browsing, taking you straight to what is opening or closing that week. There are special editions devoted to the Venice Biennale, but nothing about São Paulo.
Meanwhile, the Artguide from Artforum, the world’s leading art magazine, covers not only São Paulo but other Brazilian capitals and a hundred cities across every continent. It offers editors’ selections and unmissable current events, with combined searches by city name and categories ranging from galleries and museums to fairs and auctions. One of its most interesting features lets you create personal guides from your selections.
In Brazil
In Brazil, we have Artikin, a guide combining several features I highlighted in Artforum and See Saw, while taking some ideas a little further. All suggestions in this app are organized chronologically. Those about to close always appear first. It shows what is happening nearby, covers São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, the Federal District, and Belo Horizonte, and has two features I really like: browsing by tags, which lets you search exhibitions by formats and media such as photography, video, and artists’ books, and access to past exhibitions, which can be useful when researching an artist.
For those who are not traveling or want to explore the art world without going anywhere, I recommend Google Arts and Culture, which is not a guide but a platform for visiting and learning about works in some of the world’s greatest museums. Its highlights are the online exhibitions, curated from material digitized by the Google Art Project itself, on subjects such as Gay Pride, fashion as portrayed throughout art history, and the relationship between art and science seen through the history of photography.
Enjoy your vacation, and go easy on your phone!
Transcript of Giselle Beiguelman’s Ouvir Imagens column, broadcast every Monday at 8 a.m. on Rádio USP (93.7).
Access the playlist with all audio episodes of the Ouvir Imagens column on Rádio USP | Read all the transcripts and posts.