Historically speaking, art museums have often required a bit of fortitude. Visitors are asked to navigate labyrinthine galleries, hilariously oversized paper maps, and masses of people all squinting at the same tiny placards. The art—and the visitors—deserve new approaches. Now, with the free Bloomberg Connects app, visitors to some of the Hudson Valley's favorite arts and cultural institutions can have on-demand access to digital guides that help them discover and explore stories and insights directly from artists, curators, and experts in the palm of their hands.
Bloomberg Connects was launched in 2019 as part of Michael Bloomberg's vision for expanding access to arts and culture across the world. As of this year, six beloved Hudson Valley arts institutions—Storm King Art Center, Magazzino, Dia Beacon, Art Omi, the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz, and the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College—have joined the likes of the Museum of Modern of Art in New York, the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Joan Miro Foundation in Barcelona, and over 280 other organizations around the world in offering their digital guides on Bloomberg Connects.
Visitors can use the all-in-one app to enhance their visits with trip-planning tools and maps, or dive deep into shows with behind-the-scenes audio, video, and text content curated by the institution and accessible from anywhere—in person, at home, or on the go.
Leveling the Technological Playing Field
"Museums and technology has always been this very challenging dynamic to navigate because a lot of smaller institutions don't have as many resources, staff, or budget to put towards technology," says Amanda Potter, the Putnam Assistant Director of Learning and Community Engagement at the Loeb. "To be able to say to visitors that you can use Bloomberg Connects at all of these institutions, and that this one app is going to give you a better, deeper, richer experience of all of them is a really wonderful breakthrough."
The app, which is offered for free to its partner organizations, is opening the doors for them to think creatively about how to meaningfully expand the visitor experience. At the Loeb, Potter has been working with student guides who lead tours to create commentary on pieces in the museum's collection informed by their academic areas of study. "More than delivering the same old art-historical context, people are looking for a more personal experience now," she says. "Over time, different students may offer new perspectives, and we'll have a diversity of voices speaking about the works in our collections."
The Dorsky is taking a similar approach to using the app as a way to change-up traditional curatorial dialogues and increase accessibility to the diversity of tourists who visit the Hudson Valley. "This collaboration provides art lovers and curious visitors with an exciting opportunity to delve deeper into our collection, hearing from our college students as well as artists speaking about their artworks on display," says Anna Conlan, the Neil C. Trager Director at the Dorsky in New Paltz. "One feature of the app that is particularly meaningful is the ability to translate interpretive text into any language, allowing the museum to expand its impact with multilingual audiences."
For institutions that have moved away from traditional descriptive signage in their spaces, the app also offers them a way to provide additional context while maintaining a minimal physical footprint. "As a multi-site institution, the app makes it easy for users to understand the full scope of Dia's sites and locations," says Hannah Gompertz, the director of communications and marketing at Dia Art Foundation "Typically Dia uses very minimal signage and labeling in our galleries, so the app has also been a helpful tool for our visitors to navigate all of our exhibitions via one centralized digital hub."
As more organizations join the app, making the most of a visit to any of the region's hundreds of cultural institutions may become a much more seamless proposition. "The Hudson Valley is a region rich in arts and culture," Gompertz says, "We hope that Bloomberg Connects provides a path of discovery for visitors, and those living here, inspiring them to visit old favorites and hidden gems."
Ready to explore? Download Bloomberg Connects here.
