Each kiosk has a database of more than 2,000 works from MoMA’s permanent collection, accessible via high-quality, high-resolution digital images. The touch-screen computers allow viewers to examine the cataloged artwork more closely than they might in person. Touch a piece of art pictured and it expands to fill the screen. Magnifying and enlarging functions can then be dragged onto the image with a fingertip to take an even closer look. Viewers can also read about the artist, the time period, and art movement, as well as search for similar works by the same or other artists-all with a few taps of the screen. Soon, full biographies of the artists and descriptions of each work and commentaries by critics and by the artists themselves will be available as well.
MoMA is certainly not the only museum to enhance its exhibitions with the help of technology, but it probably has the most sophisticated and accessible on-screen collection. The basic information on the artist and artwork is just a small sampling of the interactive touch-screen kiosks’ capabilities. Their main purpose is to teach visitors more about the museum’s collection, and about modern art in general, through a series of increasingly difficult interactive games.
“We have a very significant, large audience that in relative terms is new,” says MoMA’s chief photography curator Peter Galassi, whose department was the first to participate in the interactive program. “There is a hunger there and a curiosity that the museums have created or helped to create and now they are obliged to help satisfy it.”
The idea of offering interactive educational kiosks was conceived almost six years ago, when the photography department received a grant of about $500,000 to create digital scans of its collection for archival and marketing purposes. The scans were of such high quality that Galassi saw an opportunity to take the idea a step further and use the images to help teach visitors more about the museum’s collection. “This technology just gave us a new opportunity that over time could dramatically transform the key educational mission of the museum,” says Galassi. “When you can sit at a screen and move around the collection that quickly and compare and see these works so easily, then you have a more fluid relationship with the art. For visitors to have this kind of access is extraordinary.”
Galassi enlisted the help of IBM researchers and programmers who have spent the past few years developing and upgrading the program in response to user feedback. While preliminary models were available in the Manhattan location, the collection and the interactive capabilities of the program have greatly evolved this year to include more works, more “challenges” (or tests) and more tools. Five of the museum’s six departments have now made substantial contributions of works-many in the last few months. The last, the film and new media department, is now in the process of doing so.
Educational programs now allow users to test their knowledge by grouping various works of art chosen by the computer by artist, genre, or period. Users also have the option of getting a test score and of increasing the level of difficulty as they progress.
If you’ve ever played the card game Concentration, the format of the tests will seem familiar to you. In one example, the computer lets you select three artists, then it displays about a dozen works and asks you to group them in pairs by artist. It’s not as easy as it sounds. I selected the architecture and design category, but was unable to find a match to one design by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and found myself repeatedly-and wrongly-clicking on Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs instead. I’d forgotten that Mies van der Rohe, who is well known in New York for designing the Seagram Building, had also designed the famous Barcelona lounge chair. Despite my growing frustration at the length of time it took me to find the correct match, I found the game addictive and immediately wanted to play again.
Apparently, this is a common reaction. Lauretta Jones, an IBM manager who worked on the program, says her team has been closely monitoring the use of the kiosks in the Manhattan location. “We found they’re being used continuously from when the museum opens to when it closes,” she says.
The kiosks serve a dual purpose: as teaching tools and as an added attraction to bring in (and bring back) visitors. To that end, the kiosks may help MoMA reach larger goals of increasing attendance, awareness and the length of time (and money) people spend in the museum.
MoMA has attracted 1 million visitors last year. But when the museum moves back to its newly renovated 53rd Street location in 2005, it will be able to accommodate even more. The renovation will increase the size of the museum by about 40 percent to 630,000 square feet-125,000 of which will be used as gallery space (five times the size of the exhibition space in Queens). The interactive program used in the kiosks may eventually be available even to those who cannot visit the museum in person. MoMA hopes to introduce an online version once copyright issues have been worked out. In the meantime, it will offer more options for visitors. “When we come back to Manhattan, there should be computer kiosks here, there, and everywhere,” says Galassi. “This is still in the embryonic stages compared to what we’ll be able to do eventually.”
