Putting Galleries in the Palm of Your Hand

It wasn’t all that long ago that the art world cognoscenti and mere tourists would walk the streets of SoHo, then Chelsea, and even more recently the Lower East Side, with “Gallery Guide” booklets clutched to their chests. Now, it’s more likely that they are looking at their phones, parsing the disparate information and endorsements available online for their favorite galleries and artists.

To help make better sense of it all, and the hundreds of exhibitions available in New York City, Toronto, and very soon, Los Angeles, Steve Miller has helped launch ARTLOCAL, a mobile phone app that has been quietly building momentum as the go-to place for art aficionados to pick their way through the many offerings that can change completely every few weeks.

Over a warming cup of tea on a rainy, windswept winter afternoon in his Sagaponack studio, Mr. Miller described the process of building the app as a coming to terms with the era of big data and how it relates to our phones. “We all realize that the migration of data is to mobile, not even the Internet anymore.” What he describes as “big data” ranges “from quantum mechanics, to particle physics at the sub-atomic level . . . to our web searches being organized and profiles created and sold.” Everyone is aware of what this means for their privacy, “but we opt in because of the convenience.”

What interests him is the data of culture. “This is something I am energetically drawn to: How do technology, science, and art all communicate in the information age? How can they come together in one place? The app was a perfect opportunity to put together all these notions.”

He could see that while more and more people were interacting with art around the globe, it was often through digital reproduction of works, not the physical object itself. Since the time of cave painting, “the vast majority has thought of art as a painting, a sculpture, a photograph — material form — now it’s mostly immaterial” or a hybrid.

Although he said that this is not a new concept, “what everyone is having trouble with is the speed at which it’s happening and the interface, which feels non-traditional, non-historical.”

While he is not a coder or proficient in the technical aspects of the moment, he wanted to participate. Through a felicitous meeting in 2013 with Sean Green, an entrepreneur with a background in finance, they realized they each wanted the same thing. “We were two guys with a different vision and a similar vision . . . to organize exhibitions around the world on one mobile platform” in a way that would encourage galleries to take a financial interest in being a part of it, “to monetize the information as a business.” Rounding out the team is Raymond Nguyen, a co-founder and the chief technical officer.

The app is in its soft launch phase, a time when people invited by the team try it out and offer their feedback on what works and what doesn’t. It has been in existence for 18 months, but they are still tinkering with the ease of navigation, icon placement, and ways to keep users coming back to it. “We’re still not at the final version, we change it every two weeks,” Mr. Miller said.

Some of the modifications suggested by a group that includes neophyte friends and museum directors are a tab for exhibitions about to close and when, in addition to the tabs listing openings and current shows. The way art objects are presented on the app to determine the user’s preferences has been modified as well from a swipe left-right model to a rotisserie so you can see things again that you might not want to favorite, but don’t necessarily want to dismiss outright.

The team expects to continue adjusting it as they poll their audience and solicit responses. The goal is to create the smoothest and easiest way to connect with the kind of art an individual prefers.

According to Mr. Green, during the soft launch, thousands of people had downloaded the app, either finding it themselves or invited by the partners to use it. They have focused on a core group of experts and then others in a larger circle to get feedback on how it works. They have also participated in several incubators for start-up tech concerns and are now in one sponsored through the New Museum in New York City.

Although they are currently only offering the cities Toronto and New York, the partners anticipate being in Los Angeles by summer and London by the fall. The hard launch is expected to occur sometime in late March. Up to that point and after, Mr. Miller said they will continue to refine the app to make it as flawless as possible.

“We are really trying to be the expert’s tool for every profile we can imagine in the art world,” said Mr. Miller. Once they have that imprimatur, he said it is easy to imagine it as a tool for everyone from an artist to a tourist to a seasoned collector to those who just want to fill white space with art.

“We will measure our success based on downloads, user engagement, how many cities were are in, the quality of the product, and how successfully we monetize it.”

He said they expect their money to come from gallery subscriptions. In the start-up phase they are doing all of the work of getting the images and information into the app in order to show how it will work and how effective it can be in “connecting eyeballs to art,” as Mr. Miller put it. Once on its way, they will solicit subscriptions from commercial art spaces. Then, “ideally the gallery would manage its own page,” he said.

Although the app is based in the virtual world, Mr. Miller said he sees its ultimate expression in bringing people back to “the brick-and-mortar gallery spaces.” It might draw users to a new space in a different area that they might not otherwise know about or think they would like. It might prompt users to send images and gallery sites to friends through an easy mail option. The team sees it “driving more focused viewing and better relationships” between users and galleries by making it easier to get to the space in ways that can be mutually profitable.

“It’s a business, but for me it’s a work of art, one that reflects the culture of our time like a great work of art does,” he said.