Guru Experience Co., the app specialist for the cultural sector, has created a custom interactive that allows museum visitors to share their own stories. This was initially developed for the Baltimore Museum of Art’s touring exhibition, Roots & Routes. The exhibition, curated in partnership with the Mississippi Museum of Art, explores stories of the Great Migration through contemporary art.
The user-generated platform has since been repurposed by the Baltimore Museum of Art to present a new temporary exhibition, The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century.
Sharing stories of migration
This project allowed the museum to put its visitors at the centre of the exhibition and led to an outpouring of highly personal storytelling.
Through the unique Roots & Routes narrative interactive, developed by Guru Experience Co., the institutions hoped that visitors would “Reflect on this moment in history and consider your own family ancestry through the eyes and work of 12 Black artists”. Visitors also had a chance to share their own stories of migration.
Users of the Roots & Routes interactive entered a private booth where they were asked to contribute their stories about how migration was or is a part of their life journey. Here, they could also record audio or video, or just take a photo. Users entered dates and locations, which the interactive then combined with their tales to illustrate the movement of their life trajectories through time. After checking the stories, the museum team could then post them with the click of a button for other exhibition visitors to read.
The exhibition, along with the interactive, is now touring the US and can be found at the Brooklyn Museum of Art until 25 June.
Celebrating hip hop
Following the success of Roots & Routes, the Baltimore Museum of Art partnered with Guru Experience Co. to repurpose the interactive platform. In a new temporary exhibition called The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century, created in collaboration with the St. Louis Art Museum, guests can create, share and save their experiences and stories around hip hop.
Like the Roots & Routes interactive, users can record a story about a special experience they had with hip hop and include dates, locations, and even images. After reviewing the stories, the museum team is able to post them instantly, sharing them with other visitors to the exhibition. In contrast to the last iteration of the interactive, the stories will be preserved in an HBCU partner’s digital library for future research by academics and fans.
Speaking about the interactive, Bridget Reilly O’Carroll, Guru’s platform manager and project lead, says:
“It was really a delight to work with the BMA team again for this project, For the Record. Their team is so dedicated to thinking about visitors and how visitors’ own stories can help bridge gaps in understanding exhibition content.
“For The Culture, stories about hip hop are so personal for people, and helping facilitate sharing these personal moments of connection with people and music was an exciting part of the project for me. It’s been great to see what’s come in so far, and I’m excited to see what people share going forward.”
Earlier this year, Suzie Dergham, CEO of Guru Experience Co, spoke to blooloop about the firm’s mission to help cultural institutions and attractions create, evolve, and refine their digital visitor experience.
