Commonplace: Ambient Art

Turn your Apple TV into a quiet gallery of museum masterpieces — each paired with a line of poetry, with a classical or jazz soundtrack that follows the hour.

Commonplace turns your Apple TV into a living gallery.

It draws masterpieces at random from three of the world's great open collections — The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Cleveland Museum of Art — and pairs each one with a fitting line of poetry or prose. A slow, gentle camera move drifts toward the most striking detail of every painting, and works cross-dissolve into one another like pages turning.

What appears follows the day. Nocturnes at night, seascapes and storms as the weather turns, blossom in spring — the wall reads the hour, the season, and (if you like) your local forecast. On a painter's birthday, an "On This Day" almanac fills the screen with their work. An optional soundtrack of classical music or quiet jazz, played through Apple Music, matches the mood.

Make it yours: • Pin a theme, or let it choose by time, season and weather • Turn museums on or off, and focus on an era from the Renaissance to the Romantics • Press up to save a work you love; a Favorites gallery replays them • Press select for the wall label — artist, medium, dimensions and museum • Choose your soundtrack: automatic, classical, or quiet jazz

Every image is a public-domain work from a museum's open collection. There are no accounts, no ads, and nothing is collected about you.