Philadelphia Antiques Show 2018

T he Philadelphia Museum of Art is in the midst of a digital transformation to better meet the needs and expectations of technology-savvy 21st-century visitors in our galleries and online. This area of our work will directly benefit from the 2018 Antiques & Art Show. We increasingly rely on technology to share our collection and scholarship with an ever-widening audience. Well over half of the Museum’s distin- guished collection of 240,000 works of art is avail- able online, giving people access to the masterpiec- es in our care at anytime from anywhere. It used to be that you could only discover and experience works from the collection if you were physically in the galleries while a given object was on view. Your support will help us give ev- ery object a digital life, and apply the latest technologies to create digital inter- pretive tools to real- ize our mission and more deeply engage with our visitors to- day, as we prepare for the future. Over the last five years, we have made major strides to- ward the integration of technology in the galleries. These developments move the needle as we strive to accomplish our stra- tegic goals, including activating the collection and enhancing the visitor experience. Today’s audiences expect an integrated digital experience that com- plements the collection in innovative and inspiring ways, while helping to plan visits, attend programs, make restaurant reservations, and find their way around the building. Through pioneering tools including interactive digital kiosks, touchscreens, and our A is for Art Museum app—winner of the 2016 MUSE Gold Award by the American Alliance of Museums— we are creating new ways to access the collection, look closer, and learn more about the works of art on view. With the advent of internal GPS technolo- gy, the Museum developed the A is for Art Museum app to guide children and families as they find their favorite objects throughout the galleries and provide activities once they are standing in front of the ob- ject. We have recently partnered with Apple to use their Apple Maps technology to expand the func- tionality and accuracy of this system. We continue to explore ways to use this indoor GPS network to provide wayfinding directional paths and assist vis- itors in locating amenities, while being reactive to visitor behavior with new levels of personalization. Our annual Hackathon—which kicked off April 4 and concludes with winners announced at the Final Friday on May 25, 2018— offers the opportu- nity to engage the broader tech com- munity in the devel- opment of collec- tion-oriented apps by surfacing these technical resources and object data and encouraging friendly competition. Hack- athon participants have prototyped apps that use these resources in ways that help inform our future devel- opment. We also have experimented with technol- ogies like augmented reality, in our Chinese Temple gallery interactive, and virtual reality. As we plan to introduce new galleries in 2020 and reinstall and reinterpret existing spaces, we look to technology as a vital way to connect visitors with the art and with each other. Our vision is grounded in the premise that our relationship with our visitors is a conversation, and that a visit to our galleries should be a shared exploration of all that our col- lection has to offer. T he 2018 B eneficiary : P hiladelPhia M useuM of a rT Art, Technology, and Innovation Sustaining the Museum’s Digital Transformation W 22 W