Silently Loud

A platform for all the connections inside a museum

Everyone feels something looking at a painting, remembers something, learns something, wonders something. This is where it all goes, accumulating knowledge and meaning. A free platform for everything a museum label can't fit.

Here's the general idea, tap around

Built on public collection data, openly

ArtString is a free platform for everything a museum label can't fit: what other people noticed, knew, wondered, and felt about the objects in front of them. For visitors, by visitors and museum lovers.

The platform can hold the museum's entire collection, and — wherever the museum shares it — it tells you where each object is and whether it's currently on display. Alongside each piece are the things the label never had room for: what others noticed, knew, questioned, or felt.

You can use ArtString on the sofa, planning a visit, or open it standing in front of a painting, wondering what's so special about it. The premise of this project is that museumgoers don't dislike long or difficult reading; they want to read more, but from more perspectives.

Respond, recognise, notice what's been left out, say what you see: everything a thinking being does inside a museum finally has a place to live and grow.

What ArtString knows in each museum

ArtString always shows the pictures and the facts. What changes from museum to museum is how much we can help once you're standing in the building — because not every museum publishes where its works hang. We say which, plainly.

Located

We can point you to the room a work is in, for everything currently on display.

National Gallery, London · Rijksmuseum · V&A · The Met · Art Institute of Chicago · Cleveland · SMK · Kunsthistorisches Museum · Gemäldegalerie Berlin

On show

We can tell you whether a work is on display right now — but not which room.

No museums yet

Online only

Images and facts to browse — but no on-display or location data. Best on the sofa, not in the gallery.

Prado · Finnish National Gallery

This is how ArtString can keep adding image-rich collections without ever misleading a visitor in the room.