Rotten Tomatoes is the most trusted source for what critics are saying about movies and TV shows. But why should we stop there? We’re proud to announce the imminent launch of RTArt — for the first time ever, we’ll be applying the Tomatometer to paintings!
Our Tomatometer scores will be based on the aggregated reviews of art critics from hundreds of sources, both contemporary and historic; the list includes reviews from newspapers, websites, magazines, stone tablets, scrolls, and oral histories.
We have a lot of great things planned for RTArt, and we plan to expand our coverage and add new features in the coming weeks. Since humans have been making art for more than 40,000 years, we’ve decided to focus on painting for the time being. If all goes well, we will start to assign Tomatometers to works from other artistic disciplines, including sculpture, photography, architecture, textiles, ceramics, graffiti, origami, and performance art.
Getting our art section up and running has been a massive undertaking. Each member of the RT staff has had to take extensive art history courses and become fluent in French, Latin, German, Arabic, and Japanese. Given that many older reviews aren’t online, we’ve had to travel around the globe to find original reviews; many were written in arcane languages and were printed on fragile materials. Hazards abounded: While searching for reviews for an Albrecht Dürer triptych in the basement of a medieval church in Fischland, Germany, editor Ryan Fujitani unwittingly awakened the spirit of a malevolent Saxon warrior.
Our beta launch is fast approaching, but we’ll be making some adjustments for a while, and we definitely value your feedback. So please take a tour through our virtual museum, and remember — you can’t spell “art” without RT!
When you visit the RTArt pages, here’s what you can find:
(Click on the image to see a full-size version)
