Horsing around the National Gallery in London · 12:42pm Oct 30th, 2021
My review of the Magical Gallery augmented reality app.
When I saw the news stories last month about a My Little Pony experience being launched at the National Gallery in London, it got my attention. Mixing ponies with more erudite material is my thing. I have my little projects using fanfiction to engage people with physics. If someone is doing something similar at the National Gallery then I want to check it out and look for ideas to steal.
Yet I couldn’t find any details beyond the media reports. There was nothing on the National Gallery website or their Twitter account. There was no link to the app and I couldn’t find it on the app stores on my phone. This seemed a bit odd. What’s the point of a public engagement project if the public can’t engage with it?
There was only one thing to do: take a train to London and visit the gallery.
I eventually found the app on the Apple store and downloaded it on my iPad. (Search for: “My Little Pony Magical Gallery”). It seems the android app is not in the Play store but is only accessible via this QR code link in the gallery foyer. This discrete notice was actually the only physical sign of The Magical Gallery that I saw.
I tried to download the android app to my phone. Luckily the gallery has free wifi, but after transferring 138MB of a 147MB file, it aborted with an error. I later downloaded it at home only to get another error message when I tried to install it. Fortunately I had my iPad.
The app has a map of the gallery to guide you to ten horse paintings. Once you have found one, you press scan, and hold your device up to the picture. If it recognises the image, it will be replaced with one of a new generation pony by artist Rachael Saunders. You can then access extra content by touching the little speech bubbles on the picture, and hear a short talk about the paintings and some extra messages from the characters. There’s also a game where you find the three crystals hidden in the pictures.
I found trying to touch the centre of my large tablet screen while holding it up to the wall was like trying to operate a phone with hooves, so left this until I got home. As it works by image recognition, you don’t have to be in front of the original canvas for it to work. You can look at the images on the National Gallery website on another screen.
This means anyone can access it even if you can’t get to London. Just download the app on one device and visit the gallery website on another. Although if you can get your flanks to the gallery, it is definitely worth it. It’s a much more fun experience to find and view the pictures there. Some are little gems, hidden among other paintings on a crowded wall. Other are huge. They tower above you and can be seen from several rooms away through open doorways.
But you may need to be quick. According to the media reports, the app is “live until 1 November”. You have two days. It’s not clear if it will stop working completely after that. [Update 3 November: it is still in the App store and working fine.]
Now let’s look at the paintings.
A Hilly Landscape with Figures by Aelbert Cuyp / A Magical Landscape with Ponies by Rachael Saunders. A lovely calm pastoral landscape by the Dutch master transformed into a scene with Sunny and critters.
A Landscape with Horseman, Herders and Cattle, by Aelbert Cuyp / A Cliff Face With Hitch Trailblazer and Bunnies by Rachael Saunders.
Equestrian Portrait of Charles I by Anthony van Dyck / Equestrian Portrait of Izzy Moonbow I by Rachael Saunders. We are told Charles’ horse was painted with a very small head, so as not to compete with the king’s, while Izzy’s is abnormally large, like all our little ponies.
Portrait of Frederick Rihel on Horseback by Rembrandt / Portrait of Princess Pipp Petals by Rachael Saunders. Both subjects like showing off their fancy feathers.
The Horse Fair by Rosa Bonheur / My Fair Pony by Rachael Saunders. This one is lovely. And it was interesting to learn about a woman artist from the 19th century.
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza by Honore-Victorin Daumier / Sunny Starscout and Zipp Storm by Rachael Saunders. We’re going on a quest.
Ovid among the Scythians by Eugene Delacroix / Pipp Among the Hills by Rachael Saunders. I recall Pliny said he had seen pegasi in Scythia.
A Horse Frightened by Lightning by Jean-Louis-Andre-Theodore Géricault / A Pony Adorned With Lightning by Rachael Saunders. Can’t imagine Zipp being easily scared.
Captain Robert Orme by Sir Joshua Reynolds / Deputy Sprout by Rachael Saunders. Sprout posing as a redcoat British solider from the 18th century.
Whistlejacket by George Stubbs / Starscout by Rachael Saunders. This racehorse is one of the gallery’s best-known paintings. Sunny is a fitting companion.
What’s my verdict? I gave the app five stars. The artwork is brilliant. Rachael Saunders has done a great job producing the sort of vibrant colourful pony pictures that appeal to young children and all fans, but working in features of the original art so we spend time looking at both and comparing the details. The augmented reality is slick. The app is well designed. The extra content will appeal to fans who love that sort of thing.
It has potential to engage children with art. This is not just a fun toy to keep them entertained while their parents drag them around a gallery, it gets them to search for pictures and look at the details. But is it working? Sadly, I didn’t see anyone else using the app, although the gallery was full of families and young children. And there don’t seem to be many fans posting their snaps on social media. This doesn’t surprise me given the lack of visible promotion on the gallery floor and on social media.
So what is going on at the National Gallery?
At first, I assumed that this had been commissioned by the gallery. However, it has become clear that this partnership is driven by Hasbro and Netflix. What do they get out of it? Publicity. Those news stories back in September were covered by many national news outlets and picked up by local newspapers and others around the world just as the movie was released.
This article, on a PR industry website, gives the inside story from the company who masterminded the stunt: ‘More hurdles than Aintree’ – Behind the Campaign, My Little Pony at The National Gallery. They say, “This contributed significantly to 'My Little Pony: A New Generation' becoming the biggest film on Netflix that week… Few would have paired The National Gallery with My Little Pony, not least the British press, but this was the very reason the idea worked.”
This Telegraph article gives further insight into the partnership: Purists bridle as National Gallery’s equine masterpieces come to life as My Little Pony characters. It suggests “the art institution seeks the backing of entertainment giants following controversy over past donors.” The project, “is aimed at appealing to younger audiences… and forging new relationships with benefactors not linked to fossil fuels.”
Although done as a publicity stunt to promote the film, this project has produced a high-quality educational output. I hope that the National Gallery will ignore the neighsayers, do more projects like this, and do more to promote them to reach a wider audience.
Go download it now.
That’s all from London.
There's some fic prompt material here, mostly looking at Sunny and Zipp being Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. :V
What a fascinating exhibit, and what lovely paintings, both real and virtual! Wish I could be there. Thanks for posting this.
Neat!
We need a repaint of that guard at the end, but with Izzy looking all super serious. Same sign next to her though.
"Hey! I do not!"
5601722
Indeed. And if you write a crossover fanfic for a piece of 19th century fan art for a 17th century novel, who knows where someone will take it next?
That's marvelous. Shame it isn't more well-known.
That's really cool! Yeah I heard nothing about this and I wish the actual exhibit would have had more attention but that's awesome and I'm glad it was well executed for those who used the app. Thanks for sharing the pictures too!
5601730
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There's gotta be a way to work this into Bruener, hm....
5601794
Having the time travelers mention it off-hoofedly maybe?
5601730
If you're too annoying the human guard might kick and bite as well.
5601773
For such short notice, wonderful!
Delightful! It's a shame that they're discontinuing it so soon, because I'd love to see it in person and won't be back in the UK until next summer. Thanks for giving us this glimpse! I think I need to go to that link now.
I think this sort of thing (augmented reality in service of art, not pony promotion) has a great future. I've taken audio tours of lots of galleries, and they are almost all... pathetic, really. Trivia at best. A well designed AR tour of a gallery could be incredibly informative, particularly when it can display for contrast other works side-by-side.
Oh, and Whistlejacket has got to be one of the most perfect goofy pony names, ever. Right up there with Clutterbuck. I know lots of people recommend looking at paint names for sources, but racehorses and obscure British families come in a close second.
5601834
AR has enormous potential, but it feels like we are still figuring out how to best use it. The technology is mature, but for a long time we saw technically brilliant projects, which got little or no attention outside a small group of tech nerds, as people found it too confusing. I think we will see more successful projects coming along soon. If the museums and galleries don't do it, outsiders will produce apps to 'hijack' their exhibits.
5601912
I think you're right about that. Here's to hijacking! I, for one, would gladly pay for good, non-official guide apps.
Gave it a try and it's well made indeed! What surprises me most is that they got some of the VAs to record original lines for this.
I really wish I had the time, inclination and hardware to go down to the Gallery.
5601834
We've had at least two D&D campaigns peopled by UK place names - some of the villages are alomst made for the job.
5601794
Surely there's an art gallery somewhere.
5602115
I know, right? I once saw a steampunk play titled The Adventures of Stoke Mandeville, Astronaut and Gentleman. Great name for a Victorianesque adventurer, right? Turns out Stoke Mandeville is a little village near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire.
Neat! Thanks. :)
Thanks for linking to Rachel's Twitter; her non-pony art is delightful as well!
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Quite a few Harry Potter characters take British place names. I heard that some people living in Dudley and Dursley were not very pleased about this. But the residents of Snape didn't mind at all.