Metropolitan Museum Launches Flagship App for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch The Met App Provides Easy Way for the Museum’s Community, Locally and Globally, to Stay Current with What’s Happening at the Museum
Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, announced that the Museum will launch today its flagship smartphone app—titled simply The Met—developed exclusively for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This free digital resource is the easiest way to see what’s happening at the Met every day, wherever you are.
The Met app is available on iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, and can be downloaded free from the App Store.
Mr. Campbell said: “With so much to see and do at the Met on a daily basis, we wanted to create a simple yet personalized way for our community to find the art, exhibitions, and events that matter most to them. The new app is a pocket-sized, customizable tool that puts the Met at users' fingertips. It will be great for both New Yorkers and everyone in our global community who wants to stay connected with the Met--from anywhere in the world."
Sree Sreenivasan, the Museum’s Chief Digital Officer, added: “In developing the app, we hope to provide our audiences with what’s most useful to them, and in the most engaging way. We want this app will offer an enjoyable starting point for many new relationships with the Museum, right now and in the future.”
The Met app is supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies.
"Bloomberg Philanthropies made an extraordinary and important investment in the Met's digital initiatives, and this innovative new app is just one of the results," Mr. Campbell continued. "The foundation is an amazing, forward-thinking partner whose generous support will expand the Met experience exponentially across the globe."
“The Metropolitan Museum is one of the world's most important cultural institutions—and the museum's new app will help open peoples’ eyes to its extraordinary collection and programs like never before. The Met app makes a day at the museum even more rewarding, and by making it possible to experience the museum even when you're not there, the app is a wonderful way to bring art into more lives, more often,” said Michael R. Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg Philanthropies and three-term mayor of New York City.
The Met app helps users discover the galleries, works of art, media, events, facilities, information, and resources that best meet their interests—both in its main building along Fifth Avenue and at The Cloisters museum and gardens, the Metropolitan Museum’s branch for medieval art and architecture in Upper Manhattan.
The app provides information on current exhibitions and when they will close; must-see highlights of the collection; a way to purchase an admission; activities for families and children; syndication of the Met’s highly popular Twitter feed, which carries up-to-the-minute messages and announcements; and much more. Users can swipe both vertically and horizontally within the app, and its contents can be shared seamlessly through users’ social media accounts.
One of the highlights of the app is a set of themed lists of artworks that provide fresh, often playful, perspectives on the Met’s permanent collection. These include: “Grand Spaces and Hidden Nooks,” “Animals: See One, Be One,” “Hidden in Plain Sight,” “Medieval Love” (for The Cloisters), and “Met-Staches,” which shows works of art with mustachioed subjects. For the more avid users there is also a hidden feature to discover: the Museum’s popular “Artwork of the Day.”
“This is an entirely original type of museum app,” said Loic Tallon, the Met’s Senior Mobile Manager. “At the start of this project we took a step back and asked people what they wanted to see in a Met app. They told us three things: make it useful, make it simple, make it delightful. We know there’s a lot to do at the Met, and what we heard was that people wanted our app to answer easily their most essential questions about the Museum: ‘Where should I start? What’s happening today? What can my kids do there? Can you show me something fresh?’ These are the types of questions about the Museum for which our audience wants to turn to their phone, and our app, for answers. At the same time we had to make the app as beautiful as it was useful—a product worthy of the museum itself. We worked with Instrument, one of the world’s leading digital agencies, to design and build an app that would meet those goals, and I believe we have. The Met app balances beauty with utility."
The Met app includes a special area designated for use by the Museum’s Members, a group more than 150,000 strong. It provides news and updates as well as information about special events organized for Members. New Museum Memberships can also be purchased through the app.
The Met app was produced by the Metropolitan Museum’s Digital Media Department in collaboration with Instrument, an independent digital creative agency in Portland, Oregon, and with the assistance of staff from across the Museum, in departments including Information Systems & Technology, Education, and Design.
See related video at: http://youtu.be/rSeojCeMT7o
The Met app is available free from the App Store on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch or atwww.AppStore.com/TheMet.
The Museum is now developing a version of The Met app for Android users, and this will launch in 2015.
The Met app officially launches today with an evening concert event by the band Interpol at the Museum’s Temple of Dendur in The Sackler Wing. The event was organized by Spectrum, an initiative organized by the Met to provide fresh perspectives on the Met's collections and special exhibitions.
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Information about the app is available on the Museum’s website, www.metmuseum.org. To join the conversation, use #MetApp on Instagram and Twitter. Follow us on Instagram.com/metmuseum,Twitter.com/metmuseum, and Facebook.com/metmuseum.
