Today we announced year 3 of our very successful summer intern program. As we discussed last year in this blog, the Art Authority Summer Intern Program offers art and art history majors a 21st century alternative to traditional art docent internships. By working on our cutting-edge app and database, technology-focused students gain experience with and exposure to a set of tools they’ll need as “art goes digital.”

We here at Art Authority have learned a lot over the past two years, both as far as how to run the intern program and as far as what’s needed to keep the app line on top. And it’s been working, as exemplified in Apple’s current Celebrate the Arts campaign.

Students have learned a lot too, gained credit towards their major, and even found jobs as a result of the program (one of them works here!). And of course it’s not just the Art Authority app now, but also Art Authority K-12, Art Alert and community.artauthority.net. Even an iBook. So we’re really looking forward to another great and meaningful summer for all concerned.

If you or anyone you know is curious about the program, please check out the Summer Intern Program Web site for more information and an application form. The number of spaces are limited, so anyone interested should apply as soon as possible.

A perfect fit for the iPad mini: Announcing… Art Authority K12

Art Authority has been very popular in the education world, from universities to high schools and even lower grades. The iPad version of the app was adopted over two years ago by Seton Hill University’s art department, mentioned by Phil Schiller in Apple’s big education event last January, and featured as part of Apple’s Back To School promotion last summer. We also just concluded a very successful summer internship program.

We have received tremendous feedback from professors and teachers, including our favorite quote that “Art Authority has really changed Art History.” We have also added a number of the features that these educators have asked for, such as simplified “Highlights” shows for each art period, and for the app overall.

We have, however, until now, struggled with the most requested feature from K-12 teachers: removing nudity from the product. These teachers know their students, and we have certainly believed them when they said that many of their students were too immature to not get distracted by the significant amount of nudity that permeates much of Western art.

We had two problems with meeting the teachers’ request however. First, Art Authority provides access to over 55,000 western painting and sculptures, so there are, quite literally, thousands of nudes. Not just classic nude portraits, but other major works like the Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Second, many of these works are so essential to the study of western art that we felt we just couldn’t leave them out of the product. Can you imagine Art Authority without the Venus de Milo?

Art Authority K12 for iPad, a new app, solves both problems. Using automated, computer-aided and manual methods, we meticulously went through the whole Art Authority database and flagged every work that contained nudity (or other similar objectionable material, such as rape). These works are neither downloaded nor displayed by the new app.

For each major work we eliminated, we then added, where practical, a detail view of the work that we felt would be “age appropriate” for K-12 students. So, for instance, Venus’ head from Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, and the classic fingers from Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam.

Problems solved! No worries about nudity, no loss of the most important works of western art history. Art Authority K12 for iPad is 99.9% as complete a study of the western art world as the full version. All the same features, all the same artists, and nearly all the key works. And of course it’s a perfect fit for the new, education-focused iPad mini. It took us a while, but we really think it’s been worth the effort. We hope you, and your teachers, think so too!

Today we announced the Art Authority internship program, with space for up to 100 art majors to help us enhance the database behind the Art Authority app line this summer. We’re very excited about this program, because it’s a win-win-win situation:

• We get to increase the size of the database (50,000+ works) by up to 50% while at the same time enhancing its quality with additional information on current works and higher-resolution images for the new iPad’s retina display.
• Art students get ahead-of-the-curve experience as key parts of their field transition into the digital realm. Plus they get to work on a way cool app
• Users of the app around the world, including other students, get an even more comprehensive, up-to-date version of the app. 

Traditionally, an art internship would consist of moving to a big city like New York and working as a docent or other volunteer at a museum. Such an internship certainly still has its place for a certain set of students preparing for a certain set of jobs. But for others, who are already more focused on technology, getting a jump on the part of their field that they’re more likely to go into could well prove invaluable.

At the iPad 2 introduction in 2011, Steve Jobs said ”It’s technology, married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing.” Art Authority is quite literally the intersection of Art and Technology. And we’re looking forward to meeting a whole lot of art students there.