Overview

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is an art museum in Kansas, Missouri, with an extensive collection of art from nearly every continent and culture.

The brief

The Nelson-Atkins Museum had been using an alternative software solution to power its guided tours on visitors' smartphones. After investing in audio content creation and handsets (preloaded for visitors who did not wish to use their phones), it was suddenly left without its original software partner. For Nelson-Atkins, it was important to offer accessible tours in multiple languages and for visitors who are blind or have low vision.

5,000 years of art at the heart of Kansas City

The solution

As most of the content creation and digital collection was ready to go, integration with Smartify took just one week to get up and running. We gave Nelson-Atkins access to the Smartify dashboard to manually manage the visitor experience. This enabled museum staff to easily create new guided tours by dragging and dropping works into a trail and customising an interactive map.

The results

Visitors can access Smartify on their personal devices as they enter the museum, and it has already become an integral part of the visitor experience. Since its launch in 2018, the gallery has created five building tours, including one in American Sign Language, one in the Sculpture Park, and one in the Collections Highlights.