The multi-part feature is informed by data from Artsy’s platform and the UBS Planet Art app

NEW YORK — (BUSINESS WIRE) — December 16, 2015 — Artsy and UBS launched today a dynamic multimedia experience presenting the year’s most influential artists, exhibitions, geographic hubs, and events, which goes live today on Artsy.net and Artsy’s iPhone and iPad apps. Designed to be an accessible and shareable way to understand the year in art in a grasp, the feature highlights themes that tie the art world to the greater world. This is the second iteration of Artsy and UBS’s ongoing partnership, following their collaboration on a series of short films about the 56th International Art Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia earlier this year.

Presented as a single narrative, “ The Year in Art” weaves together topics through a waterfall effect of videos, text, moving graphics, photographic portraits, an interactive map, and illustrations by Rebecca Strickson. By scrolling through the feature, viewers actively explore how the art world transformed in 2015--and how those transformations reflected social, cultural, and political shifts at large. The feature is intended to serve as a touchstone on the art world in 2015, now and as a source of reference in years to come.

Articles announcing the “ Top 10 Living Artists of 2015,” “ Contemporary Art’s Most Influential Cities of 2015,” and “ Top 16 Emerging Artists to Watch in 2016,” among other headlines, are informed by analytics data culled from Artsy’s desktop and mobile platform and the UBS Planet Art iOS app (an aggregator of contemporary art news) that was then filtered through expert perspectives. Data gleaned from Artsy indicates how often users view and follow each of the 50,000 artists in Artsy’s database and inquire on his or her artworks for sale on the platform. Similarly, analytics specialists sourced more than 150,000 articles from nearly 70 outlets published on Planet Art over the course of 2015 to determine how often specific artists, institutions, exhibitions, countries, and cities were mentioned in a broad range of news outlets. Prominent curators, collectors, academics and critics including Michael Auping, Kelly Baum, Elena Filipovic, Mia Locks, and Anita Zabludowicz also contributed their input, providing added context on the relevance of the artists, organizations, and locations named in these lists.

“Artsy is committed to building the canonical database for learning about and collecting art and design, presented in a beautiful and engaging digital experience worthy of art that is accessible to anyone with an internet connection,” said Sebastian Cwilich, president and COO of Artsy. “It’s an honor to partner with UBS, a longtime leading supporter and collector of contemporary art. We're particularly excited to combine insights from Artsy and Planet Art to create a unique digital experience for Artsy’s global audience of art lovers and collectors.”

“From experienced art world insiders to those who are new to this often-complicated space, Planet Art aims to provide users with a holistic look at trending topics and top stories about contemporary art,” stated Johan Jervøe, Group Chief Marketing Officer, UBS. “Our ‘Year in Art’ partnership with Artsy takes the knowledge analyzed by Planet Art one step further by translating relevant trends and highlights, culled from the thousands of art new stories generated this year, into accessible commentary that can be shared with a broader audience.”

About UBS Planet Art

Since its inaugural release one year ago, Planet Art—UBS’s free art news aggregator app for Apple mobile devices— has emerged as a valuable real-time resource for information about contemporary art. In the past 12 months alone, Planet Art has exceeded 25,000 downloads and is now ranked among the top 10% of all branded apps.

Developed by UBS to provide its clients, seasoned professionals and beginning art enthusiasts alike with a simple tool to navigate the growing and often fragmented landscape of art information, Planet Art collects and organizes news, features and market stories from a broad range of news outlets, niche publications and blogs. The “intelligent” app uses a unique algorithm to read, index and objectively rank articles, which can then be customized in a dedicated section called "my stream" so users can follow news and features on specific artists, institutions, cities, events and more. Click here for more information on Planet Art and here to download Planet Art.

About Artsy

Artsy is the leading resource for learning about and collecting art from over 4,200 leading galleries, 600 museums and institutions, 60 international art fairs and select auctions. Artsy provides free access via its website (Artsy.net) and iPhone and iPad apps to 300,000 images of art and architecture by 50,000 artists, which includes the world’s largest online database of contemporary art. Artsy's encyclopedic database spans historical works, such as the Rosetta Stone and the Colosseum, to modern and contemporary works by artists such as Pablo Picasso , Willem de Kooning , Richard Serra , Sarah Lucas , and Cindy Sherman . Powered by The Art Genome Project, a classification system that maps the connections between artists and artworks, Artsy fosters new generations of art lovers, museum-goers, patrons, and collectors.