The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden are joining the iRace with the app titled “Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers,” which gives users the major retrospective of the artist’s work in the United States in nearly 30 years. The application offers a full overview of the exhibition (opened through September 12th, BTW), highlighting selected artworks alongside video and quotes from the artist himself.
In case you’ve no idea who Yves Klein is, here’s a snippet from the press release:
Klein (French, b. Nice, 1928; d. Paris, 1962) is one of the 20th century’s most influential artists. He took the European art scene by storm in a prolific but brief career that lasted only from 1954 to 1962. The Hirshhorn is the opening venue for this landmark retrospective, co-organized with the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. The exhibition features examples from all of Klein’s major series, including his Anthropometries, Cosmogonies, Fire Paintings, planetary reliefs and blue monochromes, as well as selections of his lesser-known gold monochromes, pink monochromes, sponge reliefs and immaterial works and examples of “Air Architecture.” The installation also presents arrays of ephemera that demonstrate the full extent of Klein’s creativity, including sketches, photographs, letters, writings and several films — both performances and documentaries.
A company called Toura helped Hirshhorn Museum develop the app and the next thing is to port it to other platforms such as Android. Then, if enough people buy the application, more exhibitions will be offered as mobile apps as well. I salute to that goal. Even more, I would like a single Hirshhorn Museum app that would allow in-app purchases of additional exhibitions. As a matter of fact every museum should have such an app. Now that would be something, right?
Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers ($0.99) [iTunes link]