When I joined the Met as Website Editor in 2006, the Artwork of the Day feature—which appeared on our old website's "splash page"—was limited to a small set of preselected, curatorially approved works of art. I felt we had a great opportunity to change the process. Why be limited to a small number of works when the Museum's collection is so vast? And why not tie the picks to actual events, either current or historic? That first year, I even included special birthday picks for my friends and family. These days, I select works that relate more broadly to historic and current events, holidays, artists' birthdays, Museum milestones, and even the weather forecast.

Read More

Hidden behind the galleries, unseen by visitors, lies a veritable city within the Museum's walls. In support of the Met's buildings and daily activities are highly skilled, highly dedicated tradesmen, and our many workshops see the tireless work of carpenters, engineers, lampers, painters, plexi-workers, plumbers, riggers, roofers, landscapers, electricians, machinists/millwrights, and locksmiths. The product of their work is knowable by the constant fine-tuning of our galleries and buildings, and by the comfort of visitors and employees who spend their days at the Museum. Their work has gone on without much fanfare, but without their expert efforts the Museum would struggle to subsist.

Read More

During my Media Lab internship this summer, I explored a prototype project that uses two Kinect depth sensors to reconstruct a scene that can be viewed from different perspectives based on the viewer's position. What I then created (seen in the video above) is a 3D-video-converted GIF shot with two Kinect depth sensors pointing at the dancer, Veronika, from opposing sides. The 3D images from each sensor are then put together in post-production, resulting in this all-around 360-degree video.

Read More

The newest version of the Met App, Version 1.1, was released earlier today, and includes dozens of design and usability refinements inspired by feedback from our users. Among a number of new enhancements being rolled out, I hope users will enjoy the new "Favorites" feature, which enables the creation of personal lists of exhibitions, artworks, and events happening across the Museum. I can't wait to see what makes it to the shortlists of our 134,000-plus users.

Read More

Met Blogs grew dramatically this year, with hundreds of new posts published across twelve different blogs. As my colleagues and I look forward to bringing you even more content in the year ahead, it seems appropriate to take a moment to reflect on some of the highlights of 2014, and to point out a few posts that you may have missed. 

What follows is a snapshot of what we've published—just enough to show that it's been a fantastic year thanks primarily to our willing and generous authors (as of this post we are up to 313 contributors!), a tireless editorial team (Website Managing Editor Anne Dunleavy and Website Editor Michael Cirigliano II), and, especially, to our readers.

Read More

Digital Underground finishes its Met + Parsons Museum Accessibility Workshop series by taking a look at a project that addresses the need for clear, practical guidelines for creating accessible websites. In the end, the participants in this project produced two documents that can serve as guidelines for coding accessible websites and developing verbal descriptions of art objects. We caught up with the team to ask them some questions about their goals in this workshop, and what they discovered about the museum experience while engaged in the workshop.

Read More

In a recent study by LaMagnética, the Spanish digital agency found the Met to be the most influential museum in the world on Twitter.

Read More

Today we've launched the public beta version of our new Audio Guide web app. For the first time, visitors can access our 2,601 audio stops, totaling over sixty hours of content in ten languages, from any web-enabled mobile device, be it iOS (Apple), Android, Windows, or Blackberry.

Read More

For my Media Lab internship during the Spring 2014 semester, I decided to pair 3D models of the Met's structure I received from the Buildings Department with official Audio Guide content. The aim was to construct an immersive virtual-reality tour of the Museum, complete with 3D-scanned models of art pieces on view in the galleries of Greek and Roman Art. This environment, created with the game engine Unity, can be experienced either on a computer screen or through the virtual-reality head-mounted display Oculus Rift.

Read More