I Am The Curator

IAmTheCurator is a database app building your own private art gallery. You can collect scans of paintings by artists or your own work (or your children’s!) and display the artwork in a variety of ways.

Paintings can be viewed one by one when you select a painter or in albums like a slideshow. You can making groups of painters to organize your collection. You can also display your paintings on other Macs, or Linux stations. Soon we will support Windows machines and the Apple TV.

Below is a quick overview to get you started with building your gallery. The next page has more details on what you can do with your gallery.

Quick Start : Building Your Gallery

If you can’t wait to get started, click on a painter’s name in the middle box. Now drag paintings from your desktop or a web page into the large centre box. The images that you drag onto the main window will be added to your gallery. Select the “Add New Artist” menu to add a new painter. That’s it!

Several galleries around the world now allow users to download artwork free of charge. See the Getty for example. Images from that site can be dragged directly into your gallery.

The Details

See the rest of this page and following pages for help with more of the features of the app.

When you start the application three lists are displayed along the left edge of the main window. The three lists The top list is the list of painters in your gallery or the painters in the group that you have selected. The list of all painters can get very large, so you can make smaller lists or “groups” of painters. To add a new group of painters, click the the + at the bottom of the groups list. Enter a name for the group into the panel then click
“Save It”. You can delete groups, too, so you can make a group for a short time keep it as long
as you like. When you delete a group, the paintings for those painters are not deleted, nor are the painters themselves.

When you click on the name of a painter in the painters box, the paintings for that painter will be displayed along the bottom in a scrolling image browser. Click on any image in the scroller to see it in the main viewing area. (see example below)
When you are viewing a painting in the main view area, you can add information and notes about the painting by selecting the “Show Painting Information” menu from the View menu.

The bottom box has a list of Albums, which are simply collections of paintings. You can view the paintings in an album just by clicking on the album name.

To make an album, drag images from the preview scroller along the bottom and drop them on the name of the album. To add a new album click on the + sign, enter a name and click on “Save It”.