Visitors to the Mauritshuis museum can use their smartphone to experience Rembrandt van Rijn’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp in augmented reality, thanks to Dutch design agency CapitolaVR. To mark 350 years since the passing of the 17th-century Dutch painter, CapitolaVRcreated the Rembrandt Reality app that uses augmented reality to […]

If you were at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on a certain Wednesday earlier this year, you might have noticed something odd. You might have spotted a visitor or two — most likely people in their 20s or 30s — pondering one of the museum’s iconic works, such as “Self-Portrait” by Rembrandt, or “Self-Portrait […]

And with museums and other heritage operations often short of cash, and lacking the resources to provide hardware and technical support to visitors, embracing mobile technology in the form of apps is proving to be an effective means by which to modernize their offerings for a relatively modest outlay.

Barriers to entry for the coveted younger demographic include a lack of awareness of arts organizations, busy schedules, and misperceptions about ticket prices. Or to put it another way: “Kids! You can talk and talk till your face is blue. Kids! But they still do just what they want to […]

The Metropolitan Museum of Art teamed up with Microsoft and MIT to find ways to transform the museum experience using Microsoft AI. Two years ago,  The Metropolitan Museum of Art launched their Open Access platform, making all images and data relating to public-domain artworks in its collection available to everyone online. The goal was […]

With over 2 billion smartphone owners on the planet and most Americans spending at least 40% of their day using devices for things like grocery shopping, running errands, and even getting their dog walked, tech is here to stay. It’s everywhere -including museums and cultural institutions. And it is changing the way people engage […]

When we enter the quiet sanctuary of a museum, we are separated from the whirl of everyday life. Time becomes non-linear and people experience objects and ambiences that have their own stories and histories. Museums are spaces of parallel experiences – visitors thread their way through, making meaning and creating […]

These apps are certainly full of potential. A seamless and functional museum companion app could enrich the museum-going experience through transportive AR experiences, un-Google-able supplemental information, or other multimedia. Unfortunately, the apps can be clunky, unimaginative, and redundant. They introduce reliance on our phones in one of the last places […]

Museums are pillars of culture and learning where people can explore different traditions, new ideas, and unique art forms. They’re also engaging and constantly changing. Curators know this, but potential visitors often don’t. That means many museums are missing out on repeat visitors and new visitors who don’t know about […]

Creating a strong focus on children through the use of interactive, historical reconstructions of machines and tools used in the 19th century is one of three big goals in the museum’s new strategic plan, which will bring some major changes over the next five years. Visitors can expect “fairly dramatic […]