Brit Artfinder app ready for Your Smartphone

The first Artfinder app, which is being released in partnership with the Dulwich Picture Gallery, will be available in the Apple’s App Store from Monday, and will allow users to take a picture of any painting in the current exhibition and find out more information about it.

Visitors to the Dulwich Picture Gallery, can download the app for £1.99 and then take a photo of any of the paintings in the Twombly and Poussin exhibition. The Artfinder app will scan the image, taking a digital fingerprint of it, recognise it and pull together information on that particular artwork and send it to your device.

The user is then invited to share the images of their favourite paintings with their friends on Facebook or Twitter, using the sync buttons via the app.

Artfinder, set up by the former chief operating officer of Last.fm, Spencer Hyman, with financial backing from Reid Hoffman (founder of Linked In), and Wellington Partners (the venture capital firm which backed Spotify), is in talks to bring image recognition to the other major UK art galleries and museums imminently.

The site, which aims to do provide a digital home for the entire catalogue of fine art, already has information and images of 500,000 pieces of art and is aiming to help sell art in partnership with galleries.

Hyman said: “It is very hard for most people to get access to great affordable art. There are more artists than musicians in this country and art needs to be helped by the web in the same way music has…Every other sector has an online destination but art has been missing a single place where all works are housed together online, people can buy prints of them or new original art, and easily share their favourite pieces of art with their friends via social networks.
Artfinder also has a tool call Art Nearby, which allows people to find the nearest art galleries to them and see the collections online.