San Francisco's MOMA texts modern art to suit your mood
Text "show me an apple" and you'll see a piece from its massive collection.
Museum's like NYC's Met and the Smithsonian are becoming more egalitarian by releasing high-res images from their collections, letting you curate your own virtual tours. However, San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) has taken another approach, letting you receive artwork via text messages. With its new "Send Me SFMOMA" project, all you need to do is send a text with the words "Send Me" followed by a mood, color or something specific you want to see.
As shown below, if you text "Send me sunshine," it may reply with Robert Bechtle's photorealist-style painting Watsonville Olympia, a nostalgic, yet detached look at summer's past. In another example, "Send me ☕," (using the "hot beverage" emoji) yields Where We Come From (Marie-Therese), a piece from Emily Jacir's photo exhibit that lets Palestinian residents who moved abroad do activities in the country vicariously.
The effort can yield pretty much anything you can imagine, as SFMOMA has 34,678 pieces in its collection, and just 5 percent of that is on display at any given time. So it's a fun way to see art by themes, colors or whatever else you want, in case you don't have the time to walk the seven miles needed in the physical museum. "Send Me SFMOMA was conceived as a way to bring transparency to the collection while engendering further exploration and discussion among users," the organization wrote.
To check it out, text 572-51 with "Send me" followed by a keyword like a color or mood, or an emoji. You'll then get a related art image and caption (note that local carrier charges may apply). "For example ... 'send me something blue' could result in Éponge (SE180) by Yves Klein; and 'send me 💐' might return Yasumasa Morimura's An Inner Dialogue with Frida Kahlo (Collar of Thorns), the museum says. Unfortunately, because of the "short code" text number, this only works in the US.
