MCN 2024

Since 2020, MoMA no longer offers print materials such as maps and brochures to onsite visitors. In their place, the Digital Product team at MoMA developed a Digital Visitor Guide to provide these and other onsite resources, such as audio, to visitors. The first iteration of the guide was put together quickly in the early days of the pandemic, and was a simple collection of links to existing online content and digitized versions of print materials.

Since then, user research and visitor feedback has highlighted some ongoing challenges that visitors face during their onsite experience and the ways MoMA’s digital materials fell short of alleviating them. PDF resources are difficult to use on a mobile device, and tedious to update internally. Exhibition listings are insufficient for visitors who are either not sure where to start, or looking for specific artists or works on view. The first version of the guide was also not built with accessibility standards in mind.

With these learnings, the Digital Produce team embarked on a process of designing, testing, and iterating on a number of new features and enhancements, such as an interactive map, floor-by-floor previews of exhibitions, galleries, artists and amenities, a streamlined audio experience, self-guided tours that cater to different interests, and an improved search experience for various types of onsite content.

This talk will cover the initial research that exposed these challenges, walk through the product design process of developing these new features, discuss insights and adjustments arising from rapid onsite testing that followed each iteration, and share quantitative metrics that outline the impact of all these changes. We’ll also discuss ideas for future features and improvements for the guide, as well as thornier challenges that we’re still exploring solutions for.

Though our discussion will not focus heavily on the technical aspects of our solution, we will briefly touch upon some important points such as geolocation, building a web-based onsite map without relying on an app or third-party software, and connecting the guide to our content management system to ensure exhibition, location, and artwork data is automatically kept up-to-date.

In this 15-minute presentation, Katy Long and Gabrielle Santas will offer a real-world case study of how a small "start-up" museum has been able to leverage new digital technologies to start building out meaningful experiential and immersive content via a free-to-download app (designed by Spellerberg and Associates) that allows visitors to access 5 audio-first walking tours across San Francisco and Los Angeles. They will discuss the challenges encountered in building the CalMigration app and the Migrant Footsteps tours, and consider how this type of digital-first museum offers new opportunities to connect with different less traditional museum audiences, as well as the potential for Augmented Reality to help create on-site exhibits. They will also talk briefly about their expansion into 360 video as a means to connect with remote users.

The concept of accessibility is simple in theory. You just need to ensure that people with disabilities can acquire the same information, engage in the same interactions, and enjoy the same services as people without disabilities. It’s much more complicated in practice, as we’re learning at the Getty.

Automated accessibility reports and checklists can get your application to a minimum standard, but they don’t always capture the complex user interactions and the organizational structure of a website. For instance, using IIIF, our users can zoom in to admire the strokes of a brush on a canvas. But how can we make those dynamic HTML canvases accessible and navigable for users who may not be able to see our image viewer? Well-structured HTML provides our users the ability to navigate a site without the use of a mouse. But how do we develop well-structured HTML when we’re stitching it together from multiple sources? How do we resolve conflicting structures in our applications from external libraries and our shared component system? And how do we maintain structure over time when we’re constantly making changes to our codebases across teams?

By reflecting on our successes and challenges in meeting the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines provided by W3C this session will outline how cultural heritage organizations can better provide online services to people with disabilities.

Our session topics will include:

1. Maintaining document hierarchy and preventing accessibility regressions when composing pages with components and complex data structures
2. Defining best-practices for improving the accessibility of complex user interactions
3. Promoting awareness of web accessibility concerns across teams

The Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum served as the “client” for DePaul University’s Game Development II course, where students develop skills in game design and development through the creation of a 2D digital game designed from a set of client based restrictions. Students visited the Nature Museum, learned about the collections and education programs, and toured the space to be inspired by local animals. The university students developed the games for an elementary school student audience, but were also learners themselves as they studied the habitats, diets, and behaviors of the focus animals for their games. Nature Museum staff answered content questions and provided feedback on the games in progress. The result was 6 nature-focused, web-based games built in Unity, including custom animations, sounds, and game mechanics. DePaul and Nature Museum staff are continuing collaboration on how these games can be shared out and what future iterations of the collaborative partnership could look like. Some of the games are available to be playing on the Nature Museum website: https://naturemuseum.org/nature-inspired-digital-games

Every museum has a digital strategy, whether it is formalized or ad-hoc. The challenge is to make that strategy useful and meaningful. This session presents three case studies that showcase approaches to making digital strategy operational and useful as museums look for new digital initiatives and innovation. The Spencer Museum of Art focused on the creation of a digital plan that operationalizes well thought-out institutional goals, and incorporated museum- and campus-wide input, and sought guidance from digital leaders across the museum sector. The Arizona State University Art Museum started from a broad assessment of where they were, and what peer institutions had done, in order to plan how to proceed. The Yale University Art Gallery approached planning after completing a major digital project, reflecting on what the project’s twists and turns said about the organization as a whole, and exploring how they might better plan for digital initiatives in the future. At Yale, digital strategy is an ongoing activity, managed by a cross-departmental team. In each case, digital planning is operational. It is focused on doing: where to start, what to do next, and how to measure and learn from doing. As such, digital planning bridges the visionary strategy with the nuts-and-bolts and day-to-day.

In 2017 Greg Albers and Kathryn Cody sent out a survey and held "An Ideal #musetech syllabus" a highly participatory session at MCN 2017 where participants built what they thought were the core needs for students studying #musetech. Seven years later, and the landscape of what is needed may have changed, certainly much has changed in the #musetech landscape since 2017. The team (Max Evjen, Suse Anderson) intends to replicate the participatory experience (survey sent to the #musetech community, and participatory MCN session) that led to to this output, so we can draw upon the current trends that the #musetech community sees that emerging professionals, as well as fellow staff, should know about digital in museums.

Engaging young audiences in museums is key to sparking their creativity and deepening their connection to cultural heritage. By integrating immersive technologies, in-person visits can evolve into interactive adventures, enticing young people with captivating learning experiences.

In this session, explore how the V&A Learning team uses design-led participatory practices to develop their public programmes. Discover two compelling case studies showcasing how digital try-on experiences have elevated visitor interactions with museum objects, creating memorable and educational moments for young audiences.

Diva of Tomorrow: A Digital Costume Try-on Experience
The V&A hosted a try-on experience where visitors could wear digital garments created by talented young fashion designers, inspired by the V&A Diva exhibition. This event resulted from a month-long Digital Fashion Course for a cohort of young people aged 18 to 26. A design brief challenged students to celebrate the creativity of iconic performers and to create a digital costume that reflects their vision of the 'diva' identity.
Throughout this course they were introduced to new digital technologies to help them envision, investigate, and realise a digital outfit with a focus on sustainable practice and digital innovation. 
At the showcase, students presented their work to the public, explaining their creative process from inspiration to final design. Visitors were able to experience the digital garments first-hand through augmented reality filters and see themselves as Diva Characters on the museum’s large screens.

Drop in Design: Digital Tal-nori was a family-friendly engagement activity for visitors at the V&A South Kensington. Inspired by the Hallyu! exhibition, the V&A Families team worked with Seoul-based creative studio, Commoners to design an AR experience. This case study will unpack the V&A's approach to platforming creative technologists as well as inspiring creative confidence in young visitors.

Imagine museum interactives that combine the durability and flexibility of digital with the satisfaction and tactile learning of physical objects. Today’s museums have learned to rely on the ease and content flexibility that digital platforms offer but interactive screens have become ubiquitous and an analog dial telephone is suddenly strange and intriguing. How could we ever go back to the traditional diorama? This session will explore “phygital”: what happens when we combine digital and physical interfaces for museum engagement. Phygital includes AI overlays but it also includes alt controllers where visitors can use physical objects to control digital environments. You’ll hear from designers and creators using digital/physical interfaces to wash digital boats, play the digital drums and redirect digital water. Join us as we explore the possibilities of combining digital and physical into engaging interactive experiences.

The Kansas City Museum aims to be the “Home of the Whole Story.” But what does that mean when you design interactive media experiences? Since 2022, KCM and G&A have been working together to meet this challenge.

KCM engaged G&A to design a suite of experiences specifically aimed at youth: one welcomes them to discover the lesser told stories of the former mansion throughout time; another shifts their perspective on Kansas City’s development to see it through the lens of those who inhabited it; a third takes students on first-person narrated journeys through generations of marginalized groups and neighborhoods to understand how Kansas City has been shaped both by structural forces and the communities who live there.

The process of developing these pieces has been beautifully humbling and non-linear. We have had extensive conversations with representatives of communities that have experienced historical harm and exclusion–and those conversations have upended our assumptions about our design goals. We have conducted onsite user testing with our target audience–which has compelled us to think about their needs in new ways. And we are doing deep research to inform the pixels that create the collective visuals to ensure they properly convey the perspectives we are trying to represent. We have asked ourselves questions like: How do you design a map when the very understanding of a map differs by group? How can a virtual tour make a Gilded-era mansion feel more welcoming? How do you create a composite character to stand in for a group’s diverse experiences while remaining authentic?

This session will focus on three areas:
Why the Kansas City Museum has made a commitment to using restorative practices and it embeds the methodology in its everyday operations, exhibits and programs
How G&A approaches restorative design through all of its capabilities - content, visual design, user experience and creative technology
The critical role of user testing

We will also invite the audience to provide feedback on our work.

In colonial Manhattan, fiery tensions bubbled beneath the veneer of society. Kofi’s Fire: A Spark of Resistance, an interactive graphic novel, documents the 1741 uprising of New York City, in which enslaved people and indentured servants set fire to businesses throughout Manhattan. We follow Kofi, an enslaved man put to trial, convicted, and executed for arson in our online graphic novel, created in partnership with Historic Hudson Valley Society, and supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities

Created by a Black-led team, Kofi’s Fire interprets biased archives, giving faces and personalities to underrepresented voices in a courtroom drama created for middle- and high-school audiences. In illuminating this hidden narrative, we found opportunities to contextualize the story of injustice and juxtapose 1741 Manhattan and present day, illustrating the ongoing consequences of history.

The session will focus primarily on the collaborative and creative aspects of developing a web-based interactive/digital-first exhibit aimed at middle- and high-school students and teachers. We will provide an overview of the intake of archival materials, the creative breakdown of documents into a narrative, building upon that story with illustration and dialogue, and how the final product incorporates opportunities for further learning.

Attendees will learn how charrettes and user testing with Africana scholars, K-12 educators, and students created a compassionate, engaging “modern-day textbook.” We’ll discuss how museum professionals, artists, and educators collaborated to find beauty and contemporary relevance within this difficult history, while crafting a digital-first experience that meshes a historical visit to Philipsburg Manor (operated by Historic Hudson Valley) with an in-class lesson.

The CMA has prioritized collection digitization for two decades, refining workflows into a comprehensive roadmap that fully documents asset creation, management, usage, and preservation. This initiative does not just include traditional 2D digitization, and additionally incorporates a major investment in generating 3D assets with advanced photogrammetry techniques and animation. This investment in 3D allows us to be agile, iterative, and collaborative when creating new immersive and interactive experiences.

While we know the process of collection digitization is never truly done, we see immense value in sharing digitized resources on a global scale, and believe that continually incorporating new practices allows us to make remarkable content that makes art matter to all.
Our latest case study involves collaboration with an organization in South Korea where we leveraged our digitization efforts for an immersive exhibition featuring a folding screen depicting the landscape of a remote mountain range in North Korea, exhibited simultaneously at the CMA and at the National Palace Museum (NPM) in Seoul.
Through a partnership with the Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Foundation (OKCHF) and collaboration with the experience design firm Technology Research Institute for Culture & Heritage (TRIC) the exhibition on view at the CMA and NPM took shape from the collaborative digitization of objects in our Korean art collection and years of sharing assets between organizations. The exhibitions used CMA’s 3D modeling techniques developed through multiple years of prioritizing 3D as a method of digitization, and TRIC’s animation of the illustrations in the folding screen to create a captivating, first person narrative.

Each institution worked to shape their version of the exhibition to align with their institutional goals. Our result? An immersive exhibition harmonious with the learning goals of our iteration, born from the success of a comprehensive 3D digitization initiative, complete with the voice talents of a famous actor, a cinematic score, and primary source materials from an ancient traveler, all combined for an exhilarating trip into an otherworldly terrain where few can currently set foot.

In April Biden signed a potential TikTok ban into law. ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok has until January 19, 2025 to sell their app or risk its removal from app stores in the US. In preparation for TikTok’s potential, eminent demise, this 15 minute fast-paced session will provide a quick overview of alternative use cases for short form video content in a post-TikTok media landscape. This presentation will aim to answer questions like: How can museums leverage short form video content for engagement on other social media platforms like YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels? How do audiences on these alternate platforms differ from the TikTok audience? Where will the TikTok audience go? Through experience and analytics, the co-presenters will share how the National Constitution Center is prepping for a potential, post-TikTok future.

The New Mexico State Land Office leases and manages New Mexico state trust lands. Much of that land has been leased for extractive practices such as oil and gas drilling. During her tenure, Commissioner Stephanie Garcia-Richards works closely with Indigenous communities to return stolen land to displaced tribes. In 2022, just over 2,000 acres were returned to the Fort Sill Apache Tribe. The tribe had been separated from their ancestral land since the US Government captured their forebears and put them in military-run internment camps in Oklahoma. The exchange was completed last fall and the land is now under the management of the Fort Sill Apache Tribe.

Every fall semester, NMHU’s Media Arts Seminar class collaborates with a cultural or community-based organization to develop an exhibit. In the fall of 2023, Professor Lauren Addario’s students Destiny Zukevich, Emily Clark, and Marlene Bad Warrior, worked with Ethan Ortega, Assistant Commissioner of Cultural Resources, and archeologists Carlyn Stewart, Anne Curry, and Adesbah Foguth at the New Mexico State Land Office (NMSLO). The resulting exhibit highlights the recent accomplishments of the New Mexico State Land Office’s Land Back initiatives.

The exhibition includes a video with perspectives from Indigenous youth talking about what land back means to them, a screen-based mapping component that draws attention to how tribal lands in the southwest are impacted by climate change, two graphic panels, and bookmarks that feature endangered animals and insects in southern New Mexico.

New Mexico Highlands University’s Media Arts & Technology Department has partnered with the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs since 2005. The program cultivates a homegrown pool of multimedia specialists working with cultural content and committed to serving their communities.

Los Luceros Historic Site sits on 300-acres of New Mexico land with apple orchards, the Rio Grande, historic buildings, and a rich queer history including Maria Chabot and Georgia O’Keeffe. This historic site opened in 2019, right before every museum and historic site in New Mexico closed due to the pandemic. In January of 2023 the Program for Interactivity and Cultural Technology (PICT) in Media Arts & Technology developed multiple installations for Los Luceros as they planned a grand re-opening.

A 3D-Interactive 60”x44” CNC engraved table was created from trees that burned during the devastating northern New Mexico fires of 2022. The table has 11 buttons that each feature something significant about the location on site they are representing. Different historic structures, animals, and iconography were also created using Blender 3D- an open-source application. Buttons and buildings were 3D-printed in Becca Sharp’s home studio. Using open source hardware (the Arduino and the Museduino- developed in-house by Rianne Trujillo and Miriam Langer) to connect the buttons and LEDs, which in turn illuminate historic buildings, the acequia madre (the mother irrigation canal), and key features of this incredible site on the banks of the Rio Grande.

What makes this table so special is the use of technology to enhance the historic site without requiring the visitor to use screen-based technology. Visitors can feel the corn-based plastic that houses the buttons and the wood that was given a second life through this project. The table also guides visitors as a way-finding tool and creates an exciting map for both adults and children to learn about all that the site has to offer.

Kunstsilo is a brand new art museum in Kristiansand, Norway. A former grain silo has been remodeled into a distinctive gem for Nordic modernist art. In the same way the siloes inside the building was cut to create the open Silo Hall, new technology has been explored to create new space for engaging the audience. Inside, several innovations in immersive production and interactive content for families and teens are available. In this session, we will explore three highly innovative solutions in Kunstsilo. We will go through the steps from early phase idea, over the obstacles met during the way and to launch and visitor feedback. The session will use three projects as case studies. All the projects presented involve reaching new audiences through applying different technologies:

1. Pride and prejudice - How the immersive inhouse-production of “Fun fair” by Reidar Aulie became a success for audiences as well as art critiques. When Kunstsilo launched the idea of creating an immersive experience of the painting “Fun fair” by Reidar Aulie, we were very aware of the poor critiques received by immersive productions elsewhere. We have experienced that the art community has prejudice against immersive productions, and wanted to show that it can be done differently and respectfully. A major goal of the project was to create an immersive experience that made the original artwork shine and evoked more interest in the painting itself.  
2. Catch me if you can - Using design thinking and escape room dramaturgy on the world’s largest tablet for teens. Many teenagers visit art museums as part of a school field trip, but few of them come on their own initiative, in their spare time. Through workshops with teens, one of the things they highlighted as interesting was doing fun activities – such as escape rooms- together with their friends (without adult supervision). We took them by their word, and through a series of tests, failures and new prototypes, we have created a detective game for groups from age 10 and up. The players must get through escape room–like tasks and use the exhibited art to solve puzzles to catch a spy in Paris in 1940 before the time runs out. The game combines a huge tablet with physical props and the art exhibited in the room. 
3. The good, the bad and the ugly – Overcoming hurdles in the process of going from audio guide to augmented reality guides. Based on audience feedback – especially from parents who seeked a way to introduce their younger children to art – Kunstsilo wanted to try out a new take on the classic audio guide. Together with LuzidLab we have created augmented reality (AR) guides; one for families and one for individuals exploring Kunstsilo. The AR guide app allows for video and audio content, music, games, 3D effects and artwork animations. However, getting to a production worthy app has been a rocky road, and we will share form our learnings

Often tactile expression is bound by the materials that are available to the person interested in expressing themselves. There is nearly always a limit to the available space, size, colors, or dialogue between the artist and the medium they are working with. Therefore, one’s imagination is tied to the scope of the physical variables that they must work within, informing their art and growth. Within the new realm of digital art-making materials and expressions, there can be a greater amplification of size, space, and resources made available to the aspiring artist, or more importantly, the non-artist who has yet to find the fire of imagination inside of them. These digital canvases can be multifaceted, mutable, alive, and lend themselves more wholly to the fostering of unbound imagination, inspiring all people to express themselves as creative humans. The Dream Studio digital painting installation at the Denver Art Museum is an example of limitless expression, allowing artists and non-artists alike to find self-expression in scale and format in which they have possibly never experienced. Three different 3D projection mapped stations allow the user to paint on an iPad, unleashing the imagination to challenge itself on new canvases, on a scale that most people do not get to experience. The digital format allows itself for varied non-traditional painting techniques and opportunities that offer new horizons for individualized expression. Not only is this type of live digital painting ground-breaking, but the ease of use is elegant, accessible, and approachable for all museum visitors. Designing the installation to be accessible reinforces the values of our institution of inclusivity and creativity. This example is merely a curated taste of the limitless nature of digital painting and the possibilities therein.

This session will dive into the Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum (AEHM)–a first-of-its-kind, tech-focused exhibit where visitors explore Amelia’s remarkable story while immersing themselves in the Art Deco era and early years of flight.

AEHM is not only innovative and inspiring but also highly educational and emphasizes STEM disciplines. The museum’s content was designed to engage students of all ages, particularly those in surrounding rural communities. Two teacher resource documents are available that exceed the National Curriculum, Kansas Curriculum, and Missouri Standards of Learning.

The experience begins with a lifelike portrayal of Amelia, who greets visitors and offers a sneak peek into her life. The digital display warranted 1,000+ hours of research, AI technology and computation to create. Archival photos and videos paired with human talent were used to ensure this portrayal of Amelia was as authentic as possible.

Inside the gallery, audio interactives, digital kiosks and imagery tell the story of Amelia’s youth. Visitors can listen to accounts of her relatives using an antique telephone and get a lesson in physics by cranking the cars of a model roller coaster inspired by Amelia’s homemade version.

“Careers”–an augmented reality (AR) interactive–invites visitors to see themselves in the historical and modern-day professions Amelia employed. Participants step in front of a gesture-reactive screen, then a digital image of their face is overlaid on an avatar that mirrors their movements and shows how they’d look in each uniform.

A timeline wall and 3D holograms showcase the evolution of flight. The capacitive display, accompanied by two aircraft engines and engine pieces, allows visitors to learn how airplanes operate. When participants touch one of the engine pieces, an illustration appears on the screen to showcase its function. Visitors can also test their mechanical eye in an effort to restore Muriel–the world’s last remaining Lockheed Electra 10-E and model Amelia piloted on her final flight.

An imitation of the Muriel cockpit equipped with real flight controls offers a sense of Amelia’s tight flying quarters. Outside the flight deck is a Garmin avionics suite and touchscreen where visitors can browse advancements since Amelia's era.

AEHM’s mezzanine features “Amelia’s Guiding Lights”--a massive ceiling element designed to unveil how Amelia navigated flight paths. By pressing the buttons on the table, each constellation illuminates overhead. Visitors can practice celestial navigation using a sextant, analyze different atmospheric layers and get an up-close look at authentic tools.

Finally, visitors test their pilot skills in a VR flight experience. Stations include two steering yokes and VR headsets. Players embark on a lifelike flight path, piloting to either land successfully in France or reroute to Ireland. AEHM was named one of USA TODAY’S 10Best Readers' Choice Awards for Best New Museum 2024.

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is increasing the size of its current facilities by 50 percent. Adding nearly 100,000 square feet to the 200,000-square-foot facility, the expansion will allow the museum to showcase its growing collection and welcome more visitors to experience the power of art, in an inclusive environment. Envisioned to support Crystal Bridges’ commitment to free access to art for all, the new space will increase capacity for presenting art and exhibitions, educational and outreach initiatives, cultural programming, and community events. Increased gallery space (by 65 percent) will allow the museum to present art with two new galleries while also adding to existing space for temporary exhibitions and offering new spaces for community displays and in-gallery engagements.

This past year, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opened three experimental gallery spaces. One experimental space focuses on the art of American craft; woodworking, ceramics, textiles. This space not only explores how we play with our collection, but how we plan and execute both physical and digital engagements. This space plays a significant role in the institution’s digital expansion through a digital interactive pilot focused on contemporary artist processes of woodworking.

This presentation will illustrate the processes of creating this interactive pilot including leading an multi-departmental task force, participating in a global web3 technology cohort and tech accelerator program (Web3 for Arts and Culture), and producing an experience that transcends the in-person experience through an online gaming platform (Spatial.io).

Through a tech accelerator program called Web3 for Arts and Culture (https://wac-lab.xyz), the museum partnered with a digital agency, Broken Egg (brokenegg.io). Together, they developed an immersive experience that guides visitors through the woodworking processes of various artists represented in the museum’s permanent collection.