iPhone, blog, multimedia tour and web edition make Van Gogh’s letters accessible worldwide

The Van Gogh Museum is the first museum on the European Continent to have developed, in collaboration with Antenna Audio, an iPhone application. The application Yours, Vincent was developed to accompany the exhibition Van Gogh’s letters: The artist speaks. The application offers people with an iPhone or an iPod touch the unique opportunity to get acquainted with Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) also at home and even while travelling.

Van Gogh takes the users of the application on a tour through his life and his art on the basis of his letters. The facilities offered by iPhone, such as audio, video and zooming in on paintings and letters, will be exploited. That way an iPhone allows the user to get closer to the works of art than would ever be possible in a museum. Yours, Vincent can be downloaded free of charge after 6 October 2009 via the App Store in iTunes and is available in English and in Dutch.

Multimedia tour and blog
Apart from the iPhone application, the museum is developing a multimedia tour for use inside the museum in English, Dutch and French. Visitors of the museum are guided through the exhibition Van Gogh’s letters: The artist speaks by Van Gogh himself by means of quotations from his letters, illustrative audio features and films by experts on the letters, as well as interactive media. After 6 October 2009 it will be possible to follow how Van Gogh describes his own life, the places he visits, and his opinions on art and literature on www.vangoghsblog.com. The reader can thus share Van Gogh’s life as he lived it, more than 120 years ago.

The iPhone application, the multimedia tour and the blog have received financial support from the Mondriaan Foundation.

Van Gogh Letters Project
From 9 October 2009 to 3 January 2010 the Van Gogh Museum’s Rietveld building will be devoted to the letters of Vincent van Gogh. In the exhibition Van Gogh's letters: The artist speaks, some 120 original letters will be exhibited alongside the works that Van Gogh was writing about. The combination of more than 340 works, from the rich collection of the Van Gogh Museum, including paintings, drawings, letters and letter sketches offers a multifaceted and penetrating view of Van Gogh as letter writer and as artist. The exhibition is being staged by the Van Gogh Museum to mark the launch of the new international edition of the complete correspondence of Vincent van Gogh. This scholarly edition, which will be published both in book form and digitally (www.vangoghletters.org), is the culmination of 15 years of research into the letters by the Van Gogh Museum and the Huygens Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Art and Sciences (KNAW).

Antenna Audio
For more than twenty years, Antenna Audio has been active in the field of audio and audiovisual presentations for museums, exhibitions and tourist attractions.
Yours, Vincent is the second iPhone application for art education Antenna Audio developed. The first application, LoveArt, was realised in collaboration with the National Gallery in London and was recently downloaded for the 250,000th time. For more information see www.discoverpentimento.com.

Note for the editors

Van Gogh Museum
For further information please contact the Press Office of the Van Gogh Museum:
T +31 (0)20 570 52 92 or e-mail pressoffice@vangoghmuseum.nl.
www.vangoghmuseum.com/letters

Antenna Audio
For further information please contact Martine Meulmann (Dutch press), Account Manager Benelux: T +31 (0)20 673 68 24 or Rosemarie Wirthmueller (International press), Senior Account Manager Europe North: T +49 (0)172 301 30 30 (Berlin).