Objectives:
For the past 151 years, The Metropolitan Museum of Art has set out to connect people to creativity,
knowledge and ideas. Maintaining this ethos has never been more important than the past few months - with the world in lockdown, the museum’s doors physically forced shut, and people missing out on the cultural and educational benefits the institution can offer. Verizon’s complementary brand purpose is to create a network that moves the world forward. Together, they wanted to collaborate to make art accessible to all and put The Met’s extensive art collection into the hands of people all over the world at a time when they needed it most.

We needed to create an accessible experience that built The Met’s digital presence and allowed virtual
visitors to interact with the museum, creating entertaining ways for people to learn more about The Met’s
masterpieces. It also needed to widen the museum’s reach at a time when their footfall was zero, and prove to be just as engaging as a physical visit to the museum would be. With the launch of Verizon’s 5G network, this virtual experience was also a chance to whet users’ appetites for the future of 5G experiences and show how the technology could enhance the online activation

Strategy:
In 2020, for the first time in human history, our phone screens became our primary window to the world. In the wake of COVID lockdowns, many brands jumped in to try to bring events online as quickly as possible.But not all virtual experiences can live up to the real thing - we wanted to make one that surpassed it.
When The Met had to close its doors due to COVID-19, Verizon found a way to re-open the experience online. We built a new way for people to “walk”the halls of The Met, and created immersive experiences that gave new meaning and context to some of the world’s most famous art pieces using 5G Ultra Wideband technology. We developed and curated 12 never-before-seen galleries and 46 immersive art challenges including educational games in 30,000sq. ft of digitally rendered museum space. And for the first time in history, visitors were given the ability to take Met art home in AR, powered by Verizon 5G.

The activation invited exploration with intuitive design, deep interactivity, and AR functionality. The
enhanced—in fact, the only—experience was on mobile. Personal computers don’t have the right
technology—the gyroscopes, the world-facing camera, the network cards - to handle the capacity of 5G
Ultra Wideband. For The Met Unframed, the desktop with a large monitor was obsolete.

We designed The Met Unframed to create a connection between visitors and the artworks, and to enable
people to interact with art in a way they never have before. We created a detailed 3D render of The Met,
populated it with its most famous artworks, and enhanced them with AR to allow users to hang the museum’s masterpieces in their own homes. Of course, we made these AR art moments easy to share on social to extend the reach even further. Because who wouldn’t want to show off a Met masterpiece like Washington Crossing the Delaware in their living room?

Innovative WebAR technology was leveraged in order to integrate AR seamlessly and also to make the
experience as accessible as possible. This meant there was no need to download an app - users from all over the world could access the immersive experience by simply visiting a URL on their mobile device.

We also created a variety of “unlocking challenges” (essentially guided examinations) that gave new entry
points, new tools, and new frameworks for visitors to engage with the works. We designed these experiences for both novices who had never been to The Met (or taken an art history class) as well as longtime Met visitors who now had the opportunity to get way closer to the art than any security guards previously would have allowed.

Users could interact with artwork by playing games - such as trivia questions, riddles, and a “Zoom and Spot” challenge - which encouraged close observation of the pieces of art and helped visitors develop their knowledge of art history. We utilised The Met's infrared and XRF scans of paintings to give users an exclusive glimpse at underdrawings and other hidden details of well-known Met paintings - something they would never have been able to do in person.

Results:
In the first three weeks of going live, The Met Unframed drew in 500k visitors - a 25% increase on the
museum’s usual physical footfall over the same time period. Not only did we maintain The Met’s connection to its audience, we helped them reach even more people than before.

The digital activation enabled the museum to widen its reach and keep its collections in the public eye at a
time when they couldn’t be there in person, with the accessibility of the mobile format meaning that visitors from all over the world could join - in total we saw 700k visits from 148 countries. The vast digital audience also proves how effective WebAR technology is in driving engagement among users, marking The Met Unframed as a successful extension of the institution’s 151-year mission to connect people to art and ideas.

The experience has seen an incredible 1 billion+ total impressions in the media, with overwhelming support from key industry voices at CNN, Artnet, TheArtNewspaper and The Washington Post. With 22,000hours of engagement, we’ve certainly succeeded in bringing entertainment and education straight into users’ hands when they might otherwise have been disconnected from art.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art & Verizon - The Met Unframed

CREDITS

Ross Hopman

Gio Lobato

Andy Green

Gold partners