Our collection is for everyone. We are constantly working to expand access to our museum, to help visitors find what might be most relevant and interesting to them.
Connecting The Met to the World
Since AI has broad and up-to-date knowledge of the world, and is incredibly customizable, we wondered:
Can AI help create meaningful connections between our visitors’ modern lives and the museum’s collection?
This set of prototypes focuses on creating delightful visitor interactions through play, exploration and experimentation.
We collaborated between departments, spoke with volunteers, and directly tested our ideas with visitors in The Met's galleries.
Prototype Overview
In this article we will look at the following three prototypes:
1. The Books and Art Prototype
2. The Appreciation Day Prototype
3. Find The Met in NYC
Books and Art Prototype
Our first experiment connects things visitors already know and love to our artworks. From broadway shows to soccer matches and music albums...the options are endless!
The Books and Art PrototypeThe Metropolitan Museum of Art
In our first iteration of the prototype, we focused on connecting books and movies to artworks.
The prototype bridges the aesthetic of a visitor’s favorite story, like Cinderella, into artworks from The Met.
As shown in the video below, visitors simply enter a book or movie title. Using Gemini’s general knowledge, the prototype generates short descriptions of the story, which our semantic search uses to find matching artworks.
The artworks are displayed as a website mood board, with an accompanying map showing where to find them in the museum.
The prototype was a huge hit with our visitors, showing how connections to pop culture can make historical art immediately approachable and fun.
Appreciation Day Prototype
Beyond individual books and movies, we wanted to see if AI could connect our art to the current day.
We used Gemini to make a cultural calendar. It automatically maps important events, like Lunar New Year, Mother’s Day, or Malcolm X Day, to artworks.
The Appreciation Day PrototypeThe Metropolitan Museum of Art
For each day, Gemini picks one special happening from around the world.
Using similarity search we find five artworks that interestingly respond to that topic.
The Appreciation Day PrototypeThe Metropolitan Museum of Art
Visitors enjoyed seeing artworks in new contexts, and appreciated the prototype's ability to surface artworks they have never noticed before.
”I’ve been here a couple times, but seeing it in this way definitely opens my eyes to all the things I have missed before.”
”We could have used this last night, when we were planning where to go. Because now I’m more excited to see this stuff.”
Find The Met in NYC Prototype
Front-desk volunteers told us that many visitors ask for recommendations on what to do after their visit at The Met.
What's a nice nearby restaurant, a related art show, or a live show I could go to?
We decided to flip our approach: Instead of using the outside world to guide people into The Met, we wanted to see if Gemini can extend the vibe of specific artworks into the city.
In our prototype, visitors simply snap a photo of an artwork they love. We identify the object using Gemini embeddings-2 via a new API developed by our Digital Product team.
Next, as seen in the video below, Gemini finds three vibe-matched activity recommendations nearby, like local restaurants, museums, parks, or concerts.
The suggestions are displayed as cards on the interface. For each, a representative image is fetched from the Google Places API.
Currently, Gemini's knowledge cut-off is January 2025, which is up-to-date enough for this use.
With our collection and our prompt design, we found our results to be surprising, delightful and interesting — and in our testing, tourists and locals alike enjoyed our suggestions.
Main Learnings
We often focused on using AI to solve logistical issues like navigation.
However, these prototypes showed that AI is just as valuable for sparking curiosity as it is for problem-solving: Visitors love playful prototypes for open-ended inspiration.
Overall, this sprint showed that grounding artworks in familiar topics dials down the pressure of exploring The Met, and helps guests find a place to start exploring the vastness of our collection.
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