Send us a masterpiece: the museum texting its artworks to anybody that asks

f you fancy receiving an artwork originating from a world-class gallery, all you could are in possession of to do is ask. Liberating itself from your confines of physical space, the Bay area Museum of latest Art has launched something that’s already gone viral. You only need to take out your phone and text it a request, testing “Send me” pursued by a descriptive word or even emoji. Send me mountains. Send me sadness. Send me something orange. It can text back the picture selected collected from one of in the 34,678 artworks in the vaults.

SFMOMA was focusing on 100,000 texts over the summer. On Monday a week ago, it clocked up 385,000. By the end of the week, it had passed 2m. Search through several of the exchanges so you quickly understand the potential. It’s beautifully simple C and consistently surprising. “Send us a Warhol” won’t get you a Warhol: the artbot doesn’t search by artist, nor by title. Looking for Kardashians won’t ensure you get anything, either. But when a match cannot be found, texters don’t emerge empty-handed. Suggestions will be provided instead. Maybe try “Send me the ocean” or “Send me San Francisco”.

The project contains two aims: to obtain us looking, in order to make us take into consideration what it is i am interested in when we check out art. Some searches read more surprising results as opposed to. Showing a talent for boundary-pushing associative wit, a ask for Donald Trump, from writer Caleb Pershan, scored a true golden spoon C a 2005 piece entitled Coke Spoon 02, by Tobias Wong and Ju$t Another Rich Kid. Their gilded handle the white plastic spoons you receive at McDonald’s was summoned for the reason that chain’s name runs inside the spoon’s side (containing from it the idea of Donald).

The museum, including the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and London’s V&A, has been consistently upping its digital game. At any given time, you’ll only ever see C while in the flesh C about 5% on the collection. But resilient thumbs, a dictionary plus a decent data consider your mobile, it’s at the very least theoretically a possibility to peruse the remaining from the comfort of your very own couch.

So long for your couch is stateside, that could be, since the service is limited by the united states. Art lovers, and fans of your form of poetry the net sometimes surprises us with, can only hope that Send Me SFMOMA has global expansion in their sights.

• To try Send Me SFMOMA, text your want to 572-51 in the US. SFMOMA may extend the work globally later on.