Three of the world’s leading cultural institutions, the UK’s Tate, along with France’s Chateau de Versailles and Fondation Cartier, have signed up to Apple’s iTunes U to make 100’s of interviews, short films and lectures available to download for free digitally.
iTunes U, part of the iTunes Store, is billed as possibly the world’s greatest collection of free educational media available to students, teachers, and lifelong learners. Currently over 100,000 educational audio and video files available and this current deal will see many more added.
The Tate currently has 3 main sections listed on iTunes U store. ‘Tate Symposia’, brings together experts and scholars to present new research or to discuss aspects of a particular exhibition or wider issues around visual culture.
‘Talk & Discussions,’ includes talks and debates from artists and art historians as well as celebrity visitors to the Tate such as Michael Palin and Jarvis Cocker.
Finally ‘Courses. Workshops & Study Days,’ looks at historic, modern and contemporary British art. Courses, says the Tate, cater for different levels of learning offering a range of specialist tutors skilled at encouraging discussion and debate.
“Tate is delighted to come on board with iTunes U”, said Will Gompertz, Director of Tate Media. “In the world of new media nothing can be achieved alone; by working with exceptional companies such as Apple we can use the Internet to help fulfil Tate’s mission to make art available to all.”
The Chateau de Versailles iTunes U site includes English language content covering Marie Antoinette, while several musical performances are also available.
The Fondation Cartier section includes supporting media for current exhibitions as well as archived material, conferences and lectures.
More widely, iTunes U offers a wealth of content created by the like of Yale, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Oxford, Cambridge, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and US PBS stations.
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