Samsung grows digital art reach

Samsung is trying to turn the television into a rotating gallery wall, not just a screen for Netflix. In April 2026, it said its Art Store had grown past 5,000 works in 4K resolution from more than 800 artists and 80-plus partners, and that catalog now runs across its broader 2026 Art TV lineup, not just a single niche set. (news.samsung.com) The new push is tied to Art Basel, the fair circuit that moves through Hong Kong, Basel, Paris and Miami Beach. Samsung is the official Art TV partner, and it is packaging those fairs into digital collections that can be shown at home on The Frame, The Frame Pro, Organic Light-Emitting Diode televisions, Quantum Dot Light-Emitting Diode televisions, Neo Quantum Dot Light-Emitting Diode televisions and Micro Red Green Blue sets. (news.samsung.com) The Hong Kong piece of that plan went live in March 2026 with a collection of 25 works from 20 artists represented by eight galleries. Samsung showed those works both at the fair itself and inside the Art Store, so a visitor in the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre and a subscriber on a couch could see the same curated set. (news.samsung.com) That is a bigger shift than it sounds, because Samsung started this business as a feature for The Frame television, a set built to look like wall art when it is idle. By 2025, Samsung said the service had expanded to more than 115 countries and was growing fast enough that subscriptions were up more than 70 percent year over year since February 2024. (news.samsung.com) The museum side has been widening too. Samsung had already brought in collections from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Art Institute of Chicago, and in March 2026 it added the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art as its first West Coast museum partner with 34 works in the debut drop. (news.samsung.com 1) (news.samsung.com 2) (news.samsung.com 3) (news.samsung.com 4) The catalog has also moved beyond museums into entertainment brands and private collections. In 2025 and 2026, Samsung added Disney, Pixar, Star Wars, the Lee Kun-Hee collection and new fair-based selections, which helps explain how the library jumped from 3,500 works and 70 partners in mid-2025 to more than 5,000 works and 80-plus partners by April 2026. (news.samsung.com 1) (news.samsung.com 2) (news.samsung.com 3) The business model is simple: sell the television, then sell the wall space on it as a subscription. Samsung’s United States product page says Art Store costs $4.99 a month and gives unlimited access to thousands of works, which turns a hardware purchase into a recurring media service. (samsung.com) The art world gets something out of that trade too. A fair like Art Basel reaches collectors in person for a few days, but Samsung can keep a fair collection circulating on screens worldwide long after the booths come down, which gives galleries and artists another distribution channel without shipping a single crate. (artbasel.com) (news.samsung.com) The result is that the living room television is being pitched less like an appliance and more like a digital frame with a global loan program behind it. Samsung’s latest update is not just “more pictures on a screen”; it is a sign that museums, fairs and consumer electronics companies now see the same wall in your house as a place worth competing for. (news.samsung.com 1) (news.samsung.com 2)