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Bloomberg Philanthropies Increases Investment in Museum Interactivity

Ruth McCambridge
September 12, 2014
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Brooklyn Museum Painting

September 8, 2014; Wall Street Journal

Bloomberg Philanthropies is planning an investment of $17 million to build the digital capacities of museums internationally. Museums are using such tools not only to enhance the experiences of people while in the museum but to keep in touch with them elsewhere.

According to philanthropist and former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg, “Each of the institutions we’re supporting is using technology in different ways to engage, educate, and immerse their visitors—and to make their world-class resources available to a greater number of people, more of the time.”

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In the past 15 years, Bloomberg’s foundation has donated $83 million, including significant funding of audio guides for museums like MoMA, the New York Botanical Garden, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

One of the projects targeted for funding is at the Brooklyn Museum, where visitors will be able to ask questions of staffers through an app as they walk through the galleries. To download the app, visitors can stop at a central hub modeled on Apple’s Genius Bar, where museum educators await them. For those without smart phones, there will be iPads in selected locations.

The American Museum of Natural History is working on a system that will allow visitors to use a cellphone to interact with exhibits and get an insider view of what is being learned in the museum’s in-house science labs.

These apps are designed to establish contact with visitors before they come and after they leave.—Ruth McCambridge

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About the author
Ruth McCambridge

Ruth is Editor Emerita of the Nonprofit Quarterly. Her background includes forty-five years of experience in nonprofits, primarily in organizations that mix grassroots community work with policy change. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Ruth spent a decade at the Boston Foundation, developing and implementing capacity building programs and advocating for grantmaking attention to constituent involvement.

More about: Arts and Culturearts and technologyCommunity OrganizingGivingIndividual GivingNonprofit NewsPhilanthropy

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