10 Fantastic iPhone, Android Apps For Museum Visits
Expand your horizons with interactive iPhone and Android apps from the Louvre, the Prado, the Met, and other great museums.
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Now that we've entered the dog days of summer, and you've had a chance to hit the beach and work on your tan, it's time to skip the humidity and sweltering temperatures and cool off indoors.
No, we're not talking about sitting on the couch in front of the air conditioner catching up on Game of Thrones. We're talking about expanding your cultural horizons inside a museum. (OK, maybe you can visit from the couch, too.) To help guide you on your journey, we offer this collection of 10 apps for some of the world's greatest museums.
The majority of these apps follow a similar template, offering a selection from the museum's collection through high-quality photos and information about each piece, and also helpful guided tours that can be selected based on particular interests.
[Check out this list of handy iPhone apps to download.]
Another thing all these apps have in common is their impressive breadth and depth.
For example, the Prado museum app features 400 works of art with detailed descriptions, and many of these apps also provide you with information on the history of the institution and about the ways these collections have been amassed over the years.
As a bonus, many of the apps are available in multiple languages, so if you want to give your French a whirl while reading about the masterpieces hanging in the Louvre, you've got that option.
While this is a list of our 10 favorites, it is worth noting that this is far from a complete list. We would highly recommend checking the Google Play Store or Apple's iTunes store to see if your next museum destination offers a handy guide.
Best of all, almost every app on this list is free, which means you don't have to fork over any additional funds once you pay the price of admission.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is the largest art museum in the western US, with more than 100,000 works of art. The app features an interactive map that shows the location of exhibitions and events on campus, interactive guided tours to choose from, and location-aware alerts for special exhibits.
The Field Museum of Natural History app is loaded with exclusive content, experiences, and curated tours, and the app allows you to share your favorites with friends or create your own tours of the Chicago science museum based on an interest or theme. Through video and audio features, the museum's scientists give visitors a greater insight into featured artifacts and specimens, of which the massive museum has a daunting number.
The British Museum app helps you figure out what you must see and where to find it with a fully interactive map of all the museum's floors, a virtual walk of the top galleries, high-resolution images of the objects, a detailed history of key artifacts, and information on current events and activities.
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York is world-renowned for its collection, and its slick app allows you to hear from artists and curators, plan your visit, and see a calendar of events and exhibitions. You can also explore the museum's collection of modern and contemporary art, as well as design and create personal collections of media and artworks.
A trip to Berlin's cultural epicenter, Museum Island, can be daunting, but this visitor's guide ($1.99) helps Apple device users navigate its five monster museums with offline maps, individual guides to each museum, practical information, and a history of the site.
The sprawling institution known as the Smithsonian is brought down to a pocket-sized plan with this app, which allows you to plan your visit with museum hours, locations, and floor plans; discover highlights; and search the collections. Its augmented reality feature, "Smithsonian That Way," shows you some behind-the-scenes work of the Smithsonian's museums, research centers, libraries, archives, and affiliates in your neighborhood.
Madrid's Prado is one of the most impressive art museums in the world, and if you can't catch the plane to Spain, this app is the next best thing. You can gain a good view of the museum via the app, which showcases 400 high-quality images, short texts on the artworks and their importance within the museum's collection, as well as the ability to learn about collections, themes, or information of interest to you.
Once you are inside the State Hermitage, one of the world's largest museums, its app can help you find your way around the massive building in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the approximately 3 million items in its collection. The app also offers tours, additional information about the works in the collection, and information on upcoming events.
This free digital resource for New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art helps users discover the museum's galleries. It provides information on current exhibitions, must-see highlights, ticket purchases, and activities for families and children. It also gives a syndication of the Met's highly popular Twitter feed.
This free digital resource for New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art helps users discover the museum's galleries. It provides information on current exhibitions, must-see highlights, ticket purchases, and activities for families and children. It also gives a syndication of the Met's highly popular Twitter feed.
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