Project Title: Gallery One Collection Wall

Museum/ Institution:  The Cleveland Museum of Art

 Program Created: Opened - January 2013 

Media Category:  Interactive surfaces 

Program URL: http://www.clevelandart.org/gallery-one/collection-wall  

Project Image(s) and/or Video

Media Source(s)/Credit(s):

http://vimeo.com/64587687 (video)

http://localprojects.net/ (image)

Program Description:

The Collection Wall in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gallery One is an interactive surface comprised of a 40-foot long touch-screen wall and several iPad docking stations.  As of its opening in January of 2013, it was the largest touch screen wall in the United States.  Along the wall, multiple users interact with tiles depicting the museum’s collection.  They can visually explore over 4,000 works, but there is no traditional search function.  The tiles expand so that users can learn more about particular pieces of art or themes such as historic period, materials, shape, or color.  Even as visitors interact with the wall, the themes are changing approximately every minute, as can be seen in the video above.  Favorite art works can be saved to the iPad docking stations in front of the screen.  They will show where favorited works are located within the museum so that they can be found by then taking the iPad into the gallery.

Firsthand or secondary review/critique:

Though I have not been able to experience the Gallery One Collection Wall firsthand, it seems to be a remarkable new way for visitors to explore the collection.  One of its greatest strengths I believe is that it would appeal to a wide range of visitors – from those already with a passion for art to those who may have only a cursory knowledge of the subject or none at all.  From new visitors to experts, the option to save some favorite works to an iPad allows visitors in a sense to curate their own exhibition and take control over their experience at the museum.  For those visitors who may not be familiar with art or the CMA, the Collection Wall is a way to find works that appeal to them, really, to get their feet wet before venturing into the traditional galleries.  Having this virtual map to help seek out the actual works whose images they have discovered I think would give visitors some degree of confidence that they might not have otherwise had.

However, because the selections on the Wall change every minute or so regardless of the interaction taking place, I do wonder how much this could negatively affect the experience of someone who missed the opportunity to explore an object before it “disappeared”.  Though since the fluidity of the surface is what sets it apart from more traditional collection databases, I suppose this may have been a drawback that the developers were willing to overlook.

Technologies incorporated: 

Touch screen, iPads, Christie MicroTiles, database

Internally or externally produced:

The Collection Wall as well as the rest of Gallery One was produced by The Cleveland Museum of Art in collaboration with several consulting groups: Local Projects, Gallagher and Associates, Zenith Systems, Piction, Earprint Productions, and Navizon.

Entry Contributor and Date: Jackie Verbitski, 1/28/2014

Related projects: None known.