Art Institute of Chicago App

When I found this app, I presumed I could see the tour of the art within the museum. Rather, I see a pinhead version. Please correct me if this is user error with the app and will be happy to adjust the review. But the app description said you could use it anywhere, it didn’t say that to actually view the art you needed a membership card. That’s disappointing because my initial thought had been what amazing community outreach to let people Tour the museum digitally, what better way to get them to want to see something in person? It feels a bit like an oxymoron that the app will tell you the story about the art, but then won’t actually let you see the art.

I’m a long-time AITC member. Got an email from them saying membership was expiring soon. Thought I’d get the App to check hours and exhibit dates of something I wanted to see rather than just Googling it. The App is a waste. No hours listed! No days open listed! No overall list of exhibits or coming events! Sure, I can watch a 15 minute video of something and see a floor plan, but that’s not what I need! I searched “hours” it gave me “horses”. Only useful thing I found was my membership doesn’t expire for another 3months. But who cares, I still don’t know when the exhibit ends or day the Museum is closed. Back to Google

The app is nice to search by an artist or artwork. The geofencing is great to show where you are in the museum. After that, it has several drawbacks. It crashes and has to reload whenever you switch to a different app. Then you are stuck on the loading screen and have to get back to wherever you are. I tried to load the narration for one of the miniature rooms and I couldn’t choose by number, then randomly pushed a dot near my location. I got an error message saying it couldn’t download the file.