In the fifth Amuze Audio Lecture, we discuss in two minutes a painting by arguably the most popular Neoclassical painter ever. Jacques-Louis David painted the last moments in the life of Socrates, largely based on the writing of Plato who is also part of this painting. The Death of Socrates is on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In the fourth Amuze Art Lecture, we are looking at the Annunciation by Leonardo da Vinci. In less than two minutes, you can learn about what is considered to be the first masterpiece by Da Vinci. It is located in the Uffizi Museum. Da Vinci did not paint it alone though. His master Andrea del Verrocchio started the work and left a note for Da Vinci to finish the painting.

​The Amuze app currently offers audio tours for 15 different museums and 5 virtual tours. We are glad to hear that many of you find our tours interesting, and we are always happy to listen to your feedback. One of the things we hear frequently is that a certain artwork should be added to a museum tour. While we cannot accommodate all suggestions, we love to learn about your tastes and keep track of all suggestions!
 
One museum that we get many suggestions for is the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Our highlights tour consists of 16 stops, but as the museum is so big, we totally understand that we are missing a lot of highlights there. One suggestion that we got a lot was the spectacular portrait of Madame X by John Singer Sargent. We are happy to announce that we developed new audio on this “American Mona Lisa” and believe that it perfectly fits in our highlights tour of the Metropolitan.

In the third Amuze Art Lecture, we analyze Diego Velázquez’s painting of Venus admiring herself in the mirror. It is one of the highlights of the National Gallery in London and also part of our audio tour of this free museum in the Amuze app. We hope you enjoy our two-minute discussion of this masterpiece and if you are interested in more Amuze Art Lectures, just check out our YouTube channel.

In our new series of two-minute art lectures, we are discussing one of the masterpieces by Vincent van Gogh. In the year that the Eiffel Tower in Paris was completed and the first edition of the Wall Street Journal was published, Vincent van Gogh feverishly worked on his paintings. Among them was Irises, one of the paintings that is part of our highlights audio tour of the J. Paul Getty Museum in the Amuze app.

With museums around the world closed for the foreseeable future, we have launched a video series for you to learn about art from your home. Each lecture is about two minutes and discusses one of the artworks covered in the Amuze app. The first Amuze Art Lecture is about the Portrait of a Girl Dressed in Blue by Johannes Verspronck.

​The Rijksmuseum is located in the heart of Amsterdam and has arguably the best collection of Dutch Baroque art in the world. In 2013, the museum reopened after a very extensive 10-year renovation which prepared it for the future. It is the biggest and most popular museum in The Netherlands. For these reasons, we have developed an audio tour of the highlights of this wonderful museum. The tour is for free available in the Amuze app on your iPhone or Android phone. Listen to a sample of the tour below:

We have just released a new audio tour for the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston, one of the biggest art museums in the United States. The app and the tour are freely in the Amuze – Museum Audio Tours app which is available for iPhone and Android phone. The MFA has a special collection, partly due to the significant historical role Boston played in the history of the United States. Until the middle of the 18th century, Boston was the biggest and wealthiest city in British America, and it has produced some of the early successful American painters. And the Museum of Fine Arts has many of their works in the collection.

The Italian city of Florence is one of the art capitals of the world, thanks to its culturally rich history. When you look at the skyline of Florence, there are two buildings that dominate the view. The first one is the Duomo, or Florence Cathedral. The second one, is the Palazzo Vecchio, located on the beautiful Piazza della Signoria.

The building of this Medieval palace with its Gothic windows started in 1299 following the design of Alfredo di Cambio. And while the outside of the Palazzo Vecchio has not changed much since, the inside has been remodeled several times over the centuries. And that has resulted in a palace with stunning rooms filled with amazing Renaissance art. We have now introduced a brand new audio tour of the Palazzo Vecchio in the Amuze app (iOS and Android). Try one of our audio files below. If you like it, you can listen to the full tour, for free, in our app.

Among the many industries strongly affected by the Coronavirus is the arts industry. Most museums around the world are closed, as well as theaters and concert halls. At the same time, many people are staying home to prevent the spread of the virus and have more free time than usual on their hands. While our options to enjoy some arts and culture are clearly limited, there is one alternative widely available to us: virtual museum visits. And as Amuze creates audio tours for art museums around the world, we notice the demand for this. We receive a lot of feedback and requests about virtual art tours via email, Instagram, and Twitter.

Over the last years, museums and institutions have slowly developed their offering to enjoy art from the comfort of your home. Google Arts & Culture is a wonderful initiative that allows you to explore arts from around the world. And many museum websites have plenty of interesting content available for you during this downtime. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, for example, is closed now, but they encourage visitors of their website to explore their museum online. Do you want to learn about their collection of British or Abstract art? Or about the works of Mary Cassatt? Just get started online.