SAN FRANCISCO (December 8, 2014)—The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco are pleased to announce their partnership with Guidekick—a mobile app that allows tourists and visitors the opportunity to be their own personal tour guide. The de Young Museum will be featured in Guidekick’s upcoming Golden Gate Park guide that will be available for download in January 2015.

The Guidekick app offers fully interactive 3D maps, music, ambient sound and comprehensive narrative for both off-site and on-site visitors. The Golden Gate Park guide will include nearly 150 points of interest in addition to the de Young, including the California Academy of Sciences, the Japanese Tea Garden and the San Francisco Botanical Garden.

“We are excited to be an early partner with this innovative and ambitious young company,” said Gary Castro, director of technology and innovation at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. “We are thrilled that the de Young will be a key component of the launch of the Golden Gate Park app and are looking forward to collaborating with Guidekick on creative ways to enhance our visitors’ experience.”

The app includes narrated pieces of the park’s history, documents, sketches and exclusive photos throughout Golden Gate Park. All information on the Golden Gate Park guide is researched, written and narrated by park historian and author Christopher Pollock.

“The de Young is a crown jewel of Golden Gate Park and the city of San Francisco. Its roots date back to the earliest of park history while continuing as the cultural heart for visitors today,” said Guidekick CEO Mark Paddon. “We are incredibly excited for museum visitors to be able to explore and learn about the park and de Young in a way that blends history and technology like never before.”

Comprehensive guides for Alcatraz, Hearst Castle, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Sutro Baths can also be found within the Guidekick app. The Golden Gate Park app will launch on iOS and be available for Android in 2015.

For more information on Guidekick please visit guidekick.co.

About the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, comprising the de Young in Golden Gate Park and the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park, are the largest public arts institution in San Francisco.

The de Young originated from the 1894 California Midwinter International Exposition and was established as the Memorial Museum. Thirty years later, it was renamed in honor of Michael H. de Young, a longtime champion of the museum. The present copper-clad landmark building, designed by Herzog and de Meuron, opened in October 2005. It showcases the institution’s significant collections of American painting, sculpture, and decorative arts from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries; art from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas; costume and textile arts; and international modern and contemporary art.

The Legion of Honor was inspired by the French pavilion, a replica of the Palais de la Légion d’Honneur in Paris, at San Francisco’s Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915. The museum opened in 1924 in the Beaux Arts–style building designed by George Applegarth on a bluff overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. Its holdings span 4,000 years and include European painting, sculpture, and decorative arts; ancient art from the Mediterranean basin; and the largest collection of works on paper in the American West.

About Guidekick
Guidekick’s goal is to recreate each era of existence for every historical location in the world and enable visitors to observe and interact with those environments while they’re on location. At the start of 2015, Guidekick will launch with five premier California locations: Alcatraz, Golden Gate Park, Golden Gate Bridge, Sutro Baths, and Hearst Castle. Guides for San Francisco’s Union Square, Ferry Building, China Town and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco are planned to be added soon after the initial launch.

The app is based around 3D geo-accurate maps of each location. If on-site, Guidekick will trigger content (historic images, narrated audio, music, video, etc.) in real time as a visitor approaches objects that interest them, but can also be fully explored if not on-site. The company previously launched a world-class mobile app called “Hearst Castle” that runs on Hearst Castle visitors’ personal phones — iPhone, Android, and Google Glass, and has become part of the permanent Travel Guides collection on the App Store.

The company currently has offices in Berkeley, California. Guidekick is a member of 500 Startups, a top tier seed business accelerator and investment fund founded by Dave McClure. Before Guidekick the team owned a mobile app studio where they launched seven mobile titles with over one million combined downloads.

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Media Contact
Erin Garcia, Assistant Director of Communications \ egarcia@famsf.org

Guidekick Media Contact
Mark Paddon, CEO and Co-Founder \ mark@guidekick.co