The AGO goes mobile

The AGO's recently released iPhone app (designed by Tristan Interactive) offers a great way to get a little culture when you're stuck fiddling around on your phone looking for something to do. Along with the usual information regarding upcoming exhibitions, floor plans, and visitor hours, there's two features in particular that make this a nice addition to one's app collection: 1) audio guides and 2) an impressive sample of the gallery's permanent collection.

The former is of course, only really useful when you're at the gallery, but the latter is a wonderful little guilt-free time waster. Although it'd be nice to see a more extensive collection of photographs and contemporary art in general, the European and Canadian collections offer lots to look at with more than 800 pieces to browse between them (the Modern and Contemporary section, on the other hand, only features 39 pieces). I'm less taken with the puzzle game that invites users to piece together famous paintings, but that's mostly because I'd rather explore the collection.

The app's not perfect. Along with the obvious fact that it's not yet available on non-Apple platforms, it uses a lot of data, and the social media function could be improved. Although you can post content to Facebook, it's not possible to tweet images/artworks. I also had mixed success using the search function. But, hey, it's free. And why not get to know the AGO's collection a little better when you have a few minutes to kill and only your phone to entertain you?