Share this with your favorite art teachers and art-loving learners.

I love that technology removes the theater rope.  That great art can be less guarded, more accessible, nearly touchable.

And I sincerely hope that Touch Van Gogh, the newly updated, free, award-winning app from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is only the beginning of a larger touching art trend.

Made for tablets, Touch Van Gogh allows viewers to explore the details, technique and history of six of Vincent van Gogh’s masterpieces: The Cottage, View from Theo’s Apartment, The Bedroom, Seascape near Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, Garden of the Asylum, and Daubigny’s Garden.

Originally released in October with three paintings, the updated app allows us to explore in and under the paint, underneath the frames,  behind the canvases (or, in one case, the tea towel!), of six great paintings.

When and Where? notes and additional curators’ background share quotes artifacts and context about history, subject and settings. 

Interactive features allow us to magnify details and use x-ray technology to examine painting style, damages, to go back in time to explore the fading of original colors, grains of sand in the paint, and to rub away paint to discover works hidden underneath the masterpieces we know.

Touch Van Gogh for Google Play
for Apple

Want to uncover more detail behind the works of the masters, as well as the museum spaces in which they live?

The Google Art Project now includes more than 400 explorable works.

Also consider asking your local museum for information on how to get local access to the 1.6 million images in the Artstor Digital Library.

Thanks to Gary Price for the lead.