Muzei, the famous works of art live wallpaper

As the saying goes, “I may not know much about art, but I know what I like.” And this is where the rather splendid Muzei Live Wallpaper comes in. This new live wallpaper shows a different famous piece of art every day. Muzei Live Wallpaper comes from Google Engineer Roman Nurik who gave us the elegant lock screen widget DashClock Widget.

Exactly one year after the launch of DashClock Widget, Roman released Muzei Live Wallpaper, a living museum for your Android home screen. Besides the superbly done UI (and we expect nothing less since Roman’s work at Google focuses on UI and visual design), Muzei has a great trick up its sleeve. The wallpapers blur and fade ever-so-slightly into the background so that your icons and widgets remain up front and in the spotlight. But if you double tap the wallpaper, or open the Muzei app, you get the picture back in its full glory. And it works brilliantly!

If you don’t want the art then you can use random photos from your gallery or pick a few special ones. To keep your wallpaper fresh, Muzei will pick a new image from your photos every few hours.

In true Android style Muzei is open source and there is an API so developers can create alternative sources of wallpapers. According to Roman, the API is similar to the one used to build DashClock extensions. You can find the source code at code.muzei.co and the API documentation at api.muzei.co.

All the famous artwork displayed by Muzei comes from WikiPaintings.org and is curated by Roman’s art teacher fiancée Liza Gordon. Muzei is free, so why not give it a try and let us know what you think in the comments section below.