Gallery One Reason to go to Cleveland

Last week I read this article about the Cleveland Art Museum in the New York Times right before I went to bed. When I woke up in the morning, I thought what I was remembering about the article was a dream.  The Cleveland Art Museum has created a state of the art interface of technology and art that is stunning, family friendly and truly enhances the accessibility of their collection, both on and off site. This endeavors is a quantum leap into the future.  Pivotal to the development of this technology paradise are museum director, David Franklin, a $10 million gift from the Maltz Family Foundation and Local Projects, a Manhattan interactive design firm. 

The Collection Wall in Gallery One consists of over 150 Christie MicroTiles, displaying over 23 million pixels or the equivalant of twenty-three 720p HDTVs. This is the largest multi-touch screen in the United States.The wall alternately displays 3,500 images from their collection changing every 10 minutes.  The images are grouped by theme, time period, materials and techniques. There are also 32 curated selections from the collection that are displayed. Visitors can select various images that they want to see and create a tour for themselves while at the museum. The images are downloaded to their iPad while it is docked at the screen. This also provides the museum with data about which images are of most interest to their visitors.

That's not all, folks. That's really just the beginning. Gallery One has six interactive workstations(referred to as a Lens), each with it's own computer/monitor and unique twist on finding and interpreting artworks from their collection. The Sculpture Lens has two features; Make a Face and Strike a Pose. A visitor contorts her face into a specific gesture and the Sculpture Lens finds one of 189 works of art that replicate that gesture. Strike a Pose presents a sculpture and the visitor is asked to replicate the pose and their success is documented on the screen.

Visitor at the Make A Face kiosk with artwork from the collection that mimics her expression.

Stories Lens also has two components. Find the Origin presents 3 archetypes and challenges visitor to find analogous stories in historical or popular culture.Tell A Story features Perseus as seen in a near by tapestry. The story is to be retold in comic book style with added speech bubbles and text. Global Lens addresses the issue of multi-cultural influence on art and tests the visitor ability to detect country/cultures of influence. Their website provides a description of all six of the interactive offerings.  All as robust as the aforementioned.

The Director's Tour of Ancient, Medieval and African Art on the ArtLens app

I downloaded the ArtLens app, another component of their Gallery One offerings. Brilliantly it has functionality off site.  I just watched a tour narrated by museum director David Franklin of some of his favorite objects from the collection, the first being a beautiful marble scuplture from Turkey dating back to the 3rd millennium BC, enchantingly titled "The Stargazer". This 10 object tour cycles through an photograph of the object and a two minute video that displays the object with narration by Franklin. The tours are informative in terms of getting a feel for their collection but the real payoff is using ArtLens at the museum. It has the capability of scanning the artwork you are standing in front of and offers additional interpretive content. Visitors can share favorite works of art with both Twitter and Facebook from the app.

I can't wait to experience this marriage of art and technology in person. Thank you Cleveland Art Museum for all of the thoughtful time and energy that has gone into this effort and congratulations.