The current pandemic has lead to an overhaul of how we all live and run our everyday lives, from day to day shopping to social activities. Naturally, this means most places are closed for the foreseeable future, including cultural institutions. A new virtual reality (VR) platform called VR-All-Art wants to help these institutions reach an online audience, inviting them to utilise the service for free whilst the lockdown remains in effect.
Originally, the plan was to release VR-All-Art by the end of next month, offering artists, galleries, museums and collectors the chance to present virtual exhibitions and for visitors from around the world to not only view but buy art as well. That launch has now been accelerated with VR-All-Art not only available but also putting out an open call for institutions to join the platform for free during the lockdown period.
“VR-All-Art is a platform for the future in which the art world is accessible to all art lovers and art collectors wherever they are in the world, even in their own homes. But the future, unfortunately, has arrived much sooner than imagined. Our original plan was to go live online by the end of May 2020. However, our vision of bringing arts & culture into virtual reality must now be realized much sooner than anticipated so our team has worked tirelessly to make sure creating and publishing exhibitions on the platform is available today,” explains CEO and Founder Vitomir Jevremovic in a statement.
For those at home, the platform is run completely online, all you’ll need is a compatible VR headset like HTC Vive, Valve Index, Oculus Rift/Rift S or Oculus Quest. Due to the sudden roll out there are four exhibitions currently available featuring artist Carlos Quintana, Ivana Ivković’s Mother Tongue exhibition, the Arcade Gallery showcasing work by old masters and The Anatomy of Consciousness with multiple works.
Johann Burkhard, Founder of ArteMorfosis – a Cuban art platform commented: “VR and AR are technologies with the potential to bring about in the fine arts what the record player has achieved for music: to spread access to the arts from a selected few to everybody, anywhere and at any time. ArteMorfosis has been using VR-All-Art as a tool to curate new exhibitions and to display past and future exhibits to clients in our gallery and at art fairs.”
You can take a look at VR-All-Art today. The platform also intends to expand into augmented reality (AR) for mobile devices in the future. For further updates, keep reading VRFocus.