Art Authority Blog
Bringing back what was lost
Pioneering sculptor Louise Nevelson’s monumental work “Sky Gate, New York” was unveiled in the World Trade Center lobby on December 12, 1978. It was lost, along with so much else, on September 11, 2001. Forty-seven years later, the Art Authority Museum has worked with her granddaughter Maria Nevelson and the Louise Nevelson Foundation to bring this small part of that history back.
The meticulously reconstructed “Sky Gate, New York” will be re-dedicated at noon New York time this December 12, as part of the opening of the Art Authority Museum exhibition “Louise Nevelson: Lost and Found, Again.” The exhibition has the sculpture as its centerpiece, but also debuts a broader initiative: restoring to view many other Louise Nevelson pieces which, due mainly to their size, have been hidden away in museum warehouses or otherwise hard to experience.
The Zoom-based re-dedication ceremony, and exhibition opening, are free of charge, but advanced reservations are required and can be requested through the exhibition website.
Awaiting the unveiling of “Louise Nevelson: Lost and Found, Again”
Step (further) into the Future of Art
Since its grand opening over a year ago, the Art Authority Museum has enabled its patrons to “Step into the Future of Art.” Through Apple Vision Pro (and more recently Mac and iPad), the Museum’s extensive collection of classic art is fully accessible 24/7/365 in familiar and transcendent ways. Features like personal member’s lounges and “Art Like This” have brought the future of art into art lovers’ present.
Art Authority is now proud to announce the next step in that future: we are bringing Apple’s new “spatial scene” technology to the Art Authority Museum. With spatial scenes, Vision Pro Museum patrons can step further, and more literally, into the Future of Art. They can now lean into and look around the scene portrayed in any artwork, becoming not just immersed in the Museum, but immersed in the work itself.
Spatial scenes have to be seen to be believed, which is why the Art Authority Museum makes them available for free in the Museum’s lobby and period rooms. Museum members are able to experience spatial scenes for every work in the museum’s extensive collection.
Spatial scenes are available today in the Art Authority Museum on Apple Vision Pro, with Apple’s new visionOS 26. Step Further into the Future of Art!
Please Support our Museum
It’s now been over a year since the Art Authority Museum’s grand opening. In that time we’ve been hard at work on our familiar yet transcendent art museum. We’ve added dozens of rooms devoted to major artists and special exhibitions. We’ve added magical transcendent features like personal member’s lounges and “Art Like This” rooms. The Museum can now be experienced on the Macintosh as well as through the Vision Pro.
Major works of art from around the world, all without leaving home.
The expenses of our Museum are also familiar yet transcendent. We have to curate rooms, acquire works of art, let people know about our offerings. We have curators and designers. We don’t have to physically build and staff our rooms, or pay for heat, A/C or plumbing. But we do have to maintain an engineering team as we continue our virtual build-out.
Like most museums, part of our funding comes from memberships. Like some museums, we don’t charge for admission. But like just about all museums, we’ve realized we’re going to need to count on outside donors to “keep the doors open.” And so we’re launching our first major funding campaign: Please Support our Museum!
If you check out the new fundraising site, you can learn more about the Museum itself and familiar ways you can support us. You can also qualify for some transcendent thank-you gifts. Like helping us create and curate rooms. Or even name a room after yourself, your institution, or a loved one. All for way less than the seven figures that traditional museums might expect.
The Art Authority Museum’s one-year anniversary
The groundbreaking Art Authority Museum opened to the public a year ago last month, on Apple’s groundbreaking Vision Pro. And we’ve been busy adding works of art, artists, galleries and features ever since.
For our one-year anniversary, we’re happy to announce that… The Art Authority Museum is now available for Macintosh! Same great lobby, period rooms, and 100+ artist galleries. Same great works of art. Same transcendent “Art Like This” and other features. A very similar look and feel.
We also of course have continued to make other additions. Newly available for both platforms:
- Henri Matisse, Frida Kahlo, André Derain and other rooms.
- Signs describe each room as you come in, and include a searchable list of all the works in the room. Just tap a title to move right to that work.
- When going from room to room, you’ll stay in front of the work you were just looking at if it’s in the new room.
- Your personal Member’s Lounge is shared through iCloud, including between Vision Pro and Mac.
- New member settings for “Art Like This” room size and Member’s Lounge.
Finally, we’re please to announce year fifteen (yes 15) of the Art Authority summer intern program. If you are interested, please check interns.artauthority.net or email us.
New Year’s Resolutions
Here at Art Authority we’ve made a number of resolutions, for 2025 and beyond:
- In 2023 we acquired Museum Store Products (MSP), which, together with our 1000Museums brand, has been providing museum stores with an expanded set of top-quality products, from magnets to mugs, postcards to giclée prints. We’ve resolved any remaining issues with the acquisition and passed a corporate resolution that merges the 1000Museums brand into MSP. As of today, MSP is the one-stop shop for museums and art lovers worldwide.
- In 2024, in concert with Apple’s groundbreaking Vision Pro, we opened the Art Authority Museum. Thanks to Apple and our collection of high resolution scans of the world’s most important works of art, we’ve created a new type of real-world art museum, accessible world wide. Art Authority will continue to concentrate on evolving this transcendent museum, in both size and function.
- In 2025, our New Year’s resolution is that we bring even more focus and resources to both our businesses: MSP as the go-to place for museum products, and Art Authority as the (literal) go-to place to Step into the Future of Art. Expect great things on both fronts in the year(s) ahead.
Happy New Year!
The Art Authority Museum’s first additions
When we announced the pre-opening of the Art Authority Museum in February followed by its Grand Opening in May, we promised future features that would “transcend those of traditional museums.” Today we’re pleased to announce a number of those features.
- An all-new Early Room complete with 3000-year old Assyrian Lamassu, 2000-year old frescoes, and 700-year old altarpieces. We literally (ok, virtually) built and curated this room from the ground up in the four months since our Opening! Access to the Early Room, as to all our major period rooms, is currently free to everyone.
- Member’s Lounges. Is there any other museum in the world that gives each member their own personal lounge? Or, better yet, that lets members include any of the museum’s works of art in that lounge? The Art Authority Museum now does.
- Other new rooms. While adding the Early Room and figuring out the magic behind Member’s Lounges, we also built over a dozen new rooms for major artists like Anthony van Dyck, Childe Hassam, Marisol and N.C. Wyeth. Again in less than four months!
If you’re a current member, simply update your Art Authority Museum app to take advantage of the new features. And if you’re not, please consider becoming one (a 7-day free trial is available) and supporting the future of art. Thank you.
Art Authority Museum Opening: The Million Dollar QuARTet
Last weekend was the very successful grand opening of the Art Authority Museum, introduced last February along with Apple Vision Pro. Although virtual in implementation, the grand opening of this full-fledged museum was a physical one, taking place at the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) trade show in Baltimore. Many of our partners in this groundbreaking effort were there: traditional museums, artists and even Apple themselves. The event harkened back to a similar one from another era.
In 1956, a jam session involving Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash was dubbed The Million Dollar Quartet. What took place at our Museum’s grand opening was a modern-day version, The Million Dollar QuARTet.
The Museum opening highlighted five major artist partners, each with their own dedicated gallery: 20th century color field painter Alma Thomas, pioneering sculptor Louise Nevelson, Baltimore artist Herman Maril, renowned photographer Frank Stewart and current-day abstract artist James Little. Mr. Little could not attend, but representatives of the other four made up the new QuARTet.
Million Dollar QuARTet galleries in the Art Authority Museum
The QuARTet was anchored by Frank Stewart and his family, which included his Emmy-winning daughter Sing Lanthan and her son William. Frank was often seen chatting with Maria Nevelson, granddaughter of Louise, whom Frank had met on a number of occasions. Maria spent a lot of time comparing notes with David Maril, Herman’s son. And they were joined by Lisa Chaplin-Hobbs, one of the heirs of the Alma Thomas estate. As far as ourselves, builders of the Art Authority Museum and curators of these great artists’ galleries, we very much enjoyed our role as flies on the wall and documentarians.
Frank Stewart looking at his self portrait in his Art Authority Museum gallery
One of the coolest aspect of the new QuARTet was that, unlike the original, it represented five generations: grandmother Louise Nevelson, father Herman Maril, the man himself Frank Stewart, his daughter Sing and his grandson William! Similar to the original Quartet, it remains to be seen the roll these four (and many others) play in the evolution of a new take on an old art form. With their help, the Art Authority Museum is sure off to a great start!
Frank Stewart and Maria Nevelson
David Maril (reviewing his father’s gallery), Maria Nevelson, Sing Lathan, Cheryl (Brandywine Museum), Frank Stewart
Lisa Chaplin-Hobbs immersed in the Alma Thomas Gallery in the Art Authority Museum
It’s All Led to This: The Art Authority Museum
If you’ve followed this blog, you may remember that in the past decade+ we here at Art Authority have: created a day-one award-winning iPad app, turned that app into an app line and then into a whole art company, acquired 1000Museums worth of art to go with it, and most recently acquired a whole bunch of Museum Store Products too.
After all that, there was only one thing left to do. Art Authority is thrilled that today we are announcing the pre-opening of our own art museum! And what a museum it will be! The Art Authority Museum will ultimately display thousands of the top works of art by hundreds of the world’s most significant artists throughout history. Our lobby, with pre-opening tours available today, February 2, 2024, already lets you experience dozens of the most important works of all time. da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Rembrandt’s Night Watch, van Gogh’s Starry Night, Munch’s The Scream and many more.
Really? you ask. How? No, we are not the world’s best art thieves, and we don’t have $1 billion to spend on our new museum. But courtesy of Apple’s new Vision Pro “spacial computing” headset (coincidentally also available for the first time ever today), we are able to build this new type of museum and provision it full of the world’s best art, in less than a year and at a very affordable cost.
The Art Authority Museum is not built out of bricks and mortar, but it is groundbreaking, being a whole new class of museum. As you’ve probably figured out, the Art Authority Museum is built as an app for Apple Vision Pro. As such, its art viewing experience will differ surprising little from the art museums you are used to visiting IRL (“in real life”). And that experience will be available any time, from anywhere. With no crowds.
We’ve been building the Art Authority Museum since Apple announced Vision Pro last June. And we’re almost ready for its Grand Opening. But groundbreaking apps take time, and we’re not quite ready for what we believe will be one of the grandest of Grand Openings. So, starting today, for the next few months, we’re offering a free “sneak peek” at the museum through a pre-opening tour of what we feel is already one of the most comprehensive museum lobbies in the world.
We realize that it may be difficult for you to get access to a Vision Pro right away, so, for a small taste of the Art Authority Museum without one, and for additional details on the museum itself, please visit artauthority.museum to see what we’re talking about and to sign up to be kept up to date as we complete construction.
We’re looking forward to seeing you soon!
Another Major Art Acquisition
In July of 2016, we here at Art Authority announced our first major art acquisition, which was 1000Museums worth of art. Our success with that company has led to another similar acquisition.
1000Museums specializes in creating the highest quality archival reproductions for museum stores, as well as for art lovers worldwide. (It is also the basis of the “1000Museums Gift Shop” in the app line.) Over the past 6+ years, we have greatly expanded the set of museums we support, but our product line has remained solely focused on printed items.
We are excited to announce that, effective immediately, Art Authority LLC is now in joint ownership with the leading provider of all types of products for museum stores, Museum Store Products, Inc. The two will still operate as separate sister companies, but with the same owners, same mission to help museums thrive, and same commitment to quality and USA manufacturing (MSP is in New Jersey, Art Authority in Oregon). So now we are not just the leading manufacturer of print products for museum stores, but of all products for museum stores!
Now on Art Channel: The Paul G. Allen Collection
Late last year, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s art collection sold at auction for over $1.6 billion. That’s $1,600,000,000! Through the magic of Art Channel 2.0 and Apple TV, you can now display dozens of works from that collection on your living room wall. Not bad for $0.99 per month!
Wassily Kandinsky, Tiefes Braun, 1924
Henri Edmond-Cross, Rio San Trovaso, Venise, 1904
Paul Cézanne, La Montagne Sainte-Victoire, 1888-1890