Meet the Team

ON CHILDHOOD

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My father is from Norilsk. He’s the son of a former GULAG prisoner who was exiled there. Later, my dad moved to Tolyatti, and I was born in Moscow. I studied at the Institute of Journalism and Literary Creativity. The professors there were excellent—some also taught at Moscow State University. There was a vibrant, media-adjacent community at the Institute, which I really loved.

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I worked a lot during my student years—started at 17 as an editor for television, working on scripted courtroom shows. I jumped from one project to another but eventually decided not to pursue journalism professionally. The last show I worked on was filmed around the clock. That kind of schedule is incompatible with a normal life—with parenting, with family. I finished that job while pregnant and knew it just wasn’t sustainable.

 

ON MUSEUMS

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That’s when I decided to change my life. I looked toward the museum world. Museums are all about working with audiences and creating content, but it felt less toxic than television. At least, that’s how it seemed to me. So I started as an intern, just trying to learn how that world operates. I volunteered at the Tretyakov Gallery, the Pushkin Museum, and the Garage Museum. Eventually, I stayed on at Garage. At first, it was pure charity on my part. I got added to all sorts of chats, groups, mailing lists—assignments poured in: helping with kids' tours, preparing materials for the visually impaired, working in the inclusion department… I rotated through different departments to understand how the whole industry functioned.

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Eventually, I joined the department of educational projects—that’s where I began working full-time. Museum work has its paradoxes. Museums aren’t about money. They attract people seeking creative self-expression, community, or academic fulfillment. But getting in is hard. It’s a closed world—like the theater. It’s very hard to get in from the outside. And even if you do, unless you’re a top star, the pay is minimal. The museum won’t give you money worth sacrificing your time for. It’s just not about the money. But still, I saw my professional future there. And I was doing well. I worked as a tour guide at Garage, then joined the education team, creating public programs for exhibitions.

 

We didn’t have a permanent collection, which was amazing. I think guides lose their spark when they work with the same display all the time. At Garage, you’re constantly preparing for something new—three to four times a year, everything changes. That refreshes you as a professional, too.

 

BETWEEN TWO WARS

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When the war in Ukraine started, I quit my job and moved to Israel. I realized that working remotely wasn’t going to cut it. You need to be present with your colleagues, to breathe the same air—and at that moment, breathing in Moscow was incredibly difficult. I really wanted to continue working in Tel Aviv. I created a project for the Tel Aviv Museum as part of a performative exhibition. That was an amazing experience. Then I started working on a public program for a Kabakovs’ exhibition.
 

But then war broke out in Israel. The museum temporarily shut down. All my plans fell apart. Cultural funding in Israel froze. That was a massive setback for me. I felt completely drained.

We were stuck at home for days, hiding in the stairwell during rocket attacks. It was a terrifying, exhausting way to live. But being locked up like that led to something unexpected: my husband and I started pitching ideas to each other. Projects that combined culture and IT—two pillars of Israeli society and, reportedly, a way to build a real business. The offline world seemed so unstable that we wanted to create something online—something safe, creative, meaningful, and resilient. Something that wouldn’t be so vulnerable to politics or global disasters that ruin lives and shatter plans.

We were searching for whatever tolerance remains in this world. We wanted to find the threads that connect people to that tolerance.

It seems to us that art is still a safe space—a way to hide and also a way to understand each other better. The viewer, the user, is on the side of truth. They experience art as something beautiful and trustworthy. We wanted to hide in that space ourselves—and from there, we began to invent.

 

A TOUR GUIDE IN YOUR POCKET
 

By then, we were totally fascinated by neural language models. They talk to you like a real person. They offer actual help. It’s all about convenience—solving everyday problems that used to take hours, days, weeks. Now, it’s instant. My experience in museums taught me that a good guide needs charisma, humor, and the ability to improvise—but without deep knowledge, they’re just a charming companion.
 

What did we do before every tour? We soaked up information—visited libraries, talked to curators and artists, did our own research. We vacuumed up data. Then we would pass that information to visitors in the right tone and style. That’s exactly what a large language model does. It’s been trained on vast knowledge and knows how to summarize it. If you’re good with prompts, you can tune AI to give you any kind of tour: casual and friendly, or formal and informative. Want audio? You’ll get a fully voiced story.

How is that not amazing? Sure, it can’t replace a real guide with their knowledge and charisma. But what if you don’t have a guide? Or can’t afford one?

We didn’t build this app to eliminate tour guides. A good guide is irreplaceable—they’re passed from person to person like treasure. But our app can definitely help—and not just tourists. It can help the guides themselves.
 

We created an app that adjusts to the user and tells them interesting stories about works of art. This assistant doesn’t go anywhere. You don’t have to pay it. You don’t have to feed it. It just lives in your pocket and is always ready to answer your questions. Even if you’re cut off from museums or travel for any reason, the app is still with you. In a way, it brings you a museum and a journey—not emotionally, but in terms of knowledge and information.

The museum hall is inside your smartphone, wherever you are. Just find an image you like, upload it to the app—and there’s your story. Here’s the artist. Here’s their biography. Here’s the historical context. That’s the whole point of the app: to help someone going on a trip, a walk, or a museum visit.

 

ONE BUTTON
 

In the future, we want to guide that person through full-length trips—help them build a personalized art tour. “Here’s a museum with these artists. Just 20 km away, you’ll find another place with works by artists inspired by the first. And here’s where you can buy merchandise with the art you liked…”. We want the app to feel like a complete guide: showing, explaining, advising where to stay, what to eat, what to admire. And all of that should work as simply as possible. No overcomplication.

I have deep respect for our home coffee machine—it has one button, and every morning, it makes me happy. That’s how our app should work: simple, even though it deals with complex topics.

 

ON COMPETITORS
 

People often ask us: why do we need ArtCracker if Google Lens already exists? It can recognize anything. Why not use that?

Google Lens is a fantastic tool. Computer vision that identifies the object in front of you—it's magical. But once it scans the object, Google gives you a list of websites. A chaotic stream of information. Often, it confuses more than it clarifies. It’s just another search engine—only for images. It doesn’t give you lovingly crafted stories. I can’t imagine someone deepening their museum experience using Google Lens. Sure, it’s good for general info. But as a smart art guide? Not really.
 

ArtCracker pulls from verified sources. Plus, we have our own database of lesser-known art—works Google doesn’t know about. We include pieces from regional museums, small galleries, and independent artists. We manually collect these from all over the world, and our collection grows every day—like flowers in the sun.