March 28, 2024

New to the App Store: The Schumacher Gallery

Experience the wonders of the Schumacher Gallery now from the palm of your hand.

For the past two and half years, David Gentillini, the Schumacher Gallery’s director at Capital,  has worked behind the scenes on a new virtual experience to make viewing art a little easier with a new perspective, called the Schumacher Gallery app. 

Photo submitted by David Gentillini.

Gentillini’s thought process was behind the scenes for a while. His inspiration stemmed from wanting to add a digital element to the gallery. The idea was a loose concept for the past several years, and finally was developed into an app concept five years ago. 

One of his goals was for the app to be educational.

“Our primary mission of the gallery is for those to be educated on pieces such as non-western, asian, and the largest African pieces. This gives people a chance to dive deeper into the art, the background, the why, the what, the when,” Gentillini says. 

Shy of two and a half years ago, Gentillini started working with an app developer company called Red Minnow. To get the project going, he gave them a list of what he wanted to do for the app and an idea of what he was looking for, and they took it from there. 

Of course nothing was set in stone and ideas were going to change. 

“As any project goes, you realize you need to switch things up,” Gentillini said. 

On the home screen, one is invited in with a preview of some of the pieces in the app. There is the opportunity to collect your favorite pieces, be up to date on the events and exhibition calendar, and search through The Stacks. This is one of the many alluring features of this app. 

The Stacks section gives one the ability to search for any and every piece in Gentillini’s collection, not just the pieces that are displayed on the floor. There is also a floor plan available to the physical gallery in the Blackmore Library on campus. 

“This is a growing process. Right now there are about 8-10 pieces per gallery, broken down by collection. We’re slowly adding more pieces,” Gentillini said.

This project just came out short of three weeks ago, and so far Gentillini has received positive feedback, including feedback from his friend all the way in Germany. He discovered that Capital University is one of the only universities in Ohio that has an exclusive feature like this with their gallery. 

Gentillini believes that this project will become quite successful. He said, “It’s a passionable project and well worth it. I believe it will be a feather in the cap for Capital.”

The Schumacher Gallery app is free for anyone, anywhere, with an Android or Apple device and can be found in the app store. No login is required.

In depth articles about some of the most recent Schumacher Gallery exhibitions can be found here.

Author

  • Bianca Blanks

    Bianca is a triple major in sociology, criminology, and Spanish, treasurer of the Criminology and Sociology club, America Reads tutor, along with her position as a reporter for the Chimes.

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