Gallery One at Cleveland Museum of Art Main Gallery Space - Interactive exhibits
Gallery One at the Cleveland Museum of Art is a unique, interactive gallery that blends art, technology and interpretation to inspire visitors to explore the museum’s renowned collections. It is comprised of 3 major sections.
Those of us of a certain age remember the school field trip to the Art Museum and the stern reprimands to "look but don't touch" as we shuffled from room to room. Yawn.
The Main Gallery Space of Gallery One offers interactive exhibits that will both entertain and challenge.
In this video, Caroline Goeser, Director of Education and Interpretation at Cleveland Museum of Art, demonstrated an interactive exhibit that uses tech as a tool to spark an authentic experience such as putting your own face in works of art.
Games encourage visitors to see themselves in the collection, matching their faces to works of art or striking the poses of sculptures. In addition, touchscreen interactives and the museum's new ArtLens iPad application allow visitors to explore how works of art were made, where they came from and why they were produced. At every turn, technology is used to bring visitors back to works of art and to open multiple perspectives on the collection.
Matching your expression to art in the collection
"It's very important to us that visitors interact with real objects, rather than digital reproductions," said David Franklin. "We want visitors to look closely at original art works and to make personal
connections to what they are seeing."
Caroline Guscott, Communications Manager of the Cleveland Museum of Art, shows some young visitors how to do virtual sculpting .
Caroline Guscott, shows some young visitors how to do virtual sculpting
"Technology is a vital tool for supporting visitor engagement with the collection," adds C. Griffith
Mann, Deputy Director and Chief Curator. "Putting the art experience first required an unprecedented
partnership between the museum's curatorial, design, education and technology staff."
In one of the activities in the Sculpture Lens, visitors match the poses of sculptures in the museum's permanent collection and can link their pictures to social media.
(Photo Credit for above 2 images: Meghan Stockdale, Cleveland Museum of Art)
The exhibits get you thinking about art from different perspectives, including that of the artists. One area of the Gallery has several pieces of art about lions and asks you to consider "What does a lion look like?"
You follow the prompts and start narrowing down key components to what the essence of a lion is. You can then see, in real time, how many other visitors agree with your selections.
On my next visit, I am going to make a lion face and see what pulls up.
