Students Strive to Enhance Museum Experience Using Technology

by Sala Levin ’10 | photo by John T. Consoli

Step inside Renoir’s beloved “Luncheon of the Boating Party” and pet the little dog perched—rather unhygienically—on the table. Taste the grapes that are all that remain of lunch. Try on one of the women’s flower-festooned hats. Take a swig of wine from one of the already-opened bottles.

Visitors to The Phillips Collection, the famed D.C. museum, may someday be able to do all this, with the first steps taken by students in the University of Maryland’s First-Year Innovation & Research Experience (FIRE) program.

Through the new partnership between the university and the museum, these freshmen are exploring how virtual reality (VR) and other new technologies can enhance visitors’ experience at the museum and their appreciation of the artwork on display.

“UMD and the Phillips are interested in advancing the arts and using the research capacity of UMD to aid in that cause,” says David Cronrath, special assistant to the provost and campus liaison with the Phillips. “The FIRE program introduces students to the museum and its range of visual and musical arts, and uses the museum as a research focus to enhance museum-goers’ experience.”

The two-semester Phillips Virtual Culture program is one of 14 research options available to undergraduates enrolled in FIRE. Freshmen first took a general introductory course in the fall before selecting a more specialized course of study; at the end of the spring semester, students in the Phillips Virtual Culture stream presented prototypes of projects they plan to execute next semester.

The course “allows the Phillips to function as a playground for FIRE students because they get a real-world application to test out their ideas,” says UMD-Phillips Collection Postdoctoral Fellow in Virtual Culture Nicole Riesenberger. She’s teaching the course with research educator Kyungjin Yoo and Amitabh Varshney, director of the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, computer science professor and interim vice president for research at UMD.

In addition to VR research, the 35 computer science majors and one art history major are also learning web development and mobile technology, perhaps leading to an app that could help visitors navigate the Phillips. The museum, known as the nation’s first museum of modern art, houses works by masters including Georgia O’Keeffe, Mark Rothko and Vincent van Gogh.

“You want to have a good balance between engaging the visitors with tech and also allowing them to still appreciate the art how they normally would,” says Mark Keller ’20. His prototype is of an app that would allow visitors to scan QR codes of artwork and then rate whether they liked the work; this information would be used to create a personalized path through the collection highlighting works the visitor is likely to enjoy. (Example: No Pollocks for Degas-lovers.)

For students like Keller—a computer science major who was drawn to the Phillips research stream by his appreciation for art—the course represents the opportunity to meld two fields of study that haven’t often come into contact. “I’ve enjoyed the challenge of determining how to enhance the visitor experience at the Phillips while also not taking away from the gravity of the art,” he says.