marginalia

What we collect

Nothing personal. marginalia does not collect your name, email address, device identifiers, location, or any personally identifiable information. There are no user accounts, no sign-up flows, and no tracking of how you use the app.

When you open the app, you are anonymous — to us, and to everyone else.

Artwork data

All artwork is sourced from open-access museum APIs — the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rijksmuseum, Art Institute of Chicago, Harvard Art Museums, and Europeana. Images and metadata are fetched directly from these APIs by your device.

AI-generated notes

When you press and hold a painting, a short note is generated using Mistral AI. The artwork's public metadata (title, artist, date, medium) is sent to Mistral's API — a third-party service, so that request leaves your device. No personal data is ever sent, and it can't be tied to you. Some on-device features use Apple Intelligence, which runs locally — nothing is sent off-device for those.

No analytics or tracking

marginalia contains no analytics SDKs, no crash reporting, no advertising networks, and no third-party tracking of any kind.

What stays on your device

Your preferences are stored only on your device and deleted when you uninstall. The only thing that ever leaves your device is the public artwork metadata sent to the APIs above — never anything personal.

Contact

Questions? Reach us at s.anurag1998@gmail.com or @anuraaagg_ on X.

I kept noticing the same thing happening to me — I'd see a painting somewhere, feel something about it, and then lose it. Scrolled past in a feed, forgotten in a screenshot folder, or worse, behind the glass of a museum I'd never get back to. Art was either locked in a building I couldn't always visit, or flattened into another tile in an infinite-scroll feed designed to make me forget it thirty seconds later.

Marginalia started as a question: what if discovering art could feel as unhurried as wandering a gallery, but as accessible as opening an app?

I didn't want to build another content feed. I wanted an infinite canvas — something closer to how memory actually works, where you drift and stumble onto things rather than being fed them in a queue. And I wanted the context to be there the moment you wanted it, not buried in a wall text you'd have to seek out. Press and hold, and the story surfaces. Let go, and it's just the art again.

The name comes from the marginalia in old manuscripts — the notes, sketches, and commentary scribbled in the margins by the people who actually lived with these books and paintings. Art was never meant to be sealed away. It was meant to be annotated, argued with, returned to. This app is my attempt to bring a little of that back.

Data & resources

Every artwork is pulled from public-domain or open-access museum collections, attributed to its source institution:

• The Metropolitan Museum of Art — Open Access API, public-domain collection
• Rijksmuseum — Rijksmuseum API, Amsterdam
• Art Institute of Chicago — AIC API, open-access collection
• Harvard Art Museums — Harvard Art Museums API
• Europeana — pan-European cultural-heritage aggregator

Contact

Questions, or just want to talk about art? Email s.anurag1998@gmail.com or find me on X at @anuraaagg_.