Making Art Matter to All

As the Cleveland Museum of Art neared completion of its transformative building renovation in 2010, the museum set out to create something new: a gallery intertwining artworks with innovation and technology, creating experiences to meet visitors where they are, and offering welcoming ways into the museum. The vision has always remained the same: making art matter to all. The space was debuted as Gallery One on December 12, 2012. In 2016, the museum iterated this concept further, redesigning experiences to create barrier-free, gesture-based interactives. 

After more than a decade of evaluation and experimentation with innovative technology, ArtLens is being completely reimagined. Opening in July 2026, ArtLens Reimagined represents the most ambitious iteration yet. Nearly everything in the gallery is new, with one important exception: The iconic Collection Wall remains. Now approaching its 15th year, the wall continues to serve as a gateway into the galleries. It is reenvisioned in a future phase planned for 2027. 

The exhibition space intertwines innovation with art. Twenty-eight highlights from the CMA’s collection selected by curators are integrated throughout the gallery, ensuring that every digital experience begins with an inspirational work of art. Among them are Charles Meynier’s (French, 1768–1832) Polyhymnia, Muse of Eloquence and Clio, Muse of History (1800). Additionally, there is a special installation by internationally recognized artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (Canadian, born Mexico, 1967). Binocular Tension presents two eyes that follow the viewer using a computerized vision system, creating a tangible manifestation as the subject of the artwork, with eye contact as the mechanism of sentience, seduction, policing, and control. 

ArtLens is organized into four sections that invite visitors to explore art from different perspectives: relate, create, investigate, and observe/attract. Each area offers a different way to connect with the museum’s collection, from playful discovery to deeper exploration and creative response. 

The Relate area is an immediate entry point into the collection. An “Art Mirror” greets visitors arriving from the North Lobby, their reflection composed entirely of artworks from the CMA's collection. Another interactive moves the visitor through hundreds of artworks that allow them to encounter the collection at actual scale, automatically matching artworks to the size of simple gestures. 

In the Create zone, we have updated some of the most popular interactives from the original Studio Play: “Pottery Explorer” and “Portrait Maker.” Exciting new creative experiences are added, including “Art Morph,” a tactile digital experience that uses the Open Access collection and a real-time generative AI lens to transform arrangements of everyday physical materials into unique creations. Visitors’ creations are displayed in the gallery for all to see in “You on View.” The “Community Mural” creates a collaborative digital canvas where visitors contribute their own responses to weekly prompts using art. As participants add to the collage, the mural grows into an evolving artwork reflecting the creativity of the museum’s community.

The Investigate zone invites deeper exploration, divulging the life stories of artworks and their histories. In “Talk to the Art,” visitors can ask paintings any question and hear responses informed by curatorial scholarship. “What Does Art Sounds Like?” offers an unprecedented approach to exploring a painting, where tactile exploration triggers atmospheric sound and narrative description. A novel approach to an interactive with a tactile interface, “Paint the Past” reveals how Saluting Protective Spirit (883–859 BCE) once appeared, while in “Look Closer,” visitors examine objects in extraordinary detail, hearing insights from curators about how they were created, authenticated, and conserved.

The gallery also includes an immersive theater experience that reconnects objects from the CMA with their original architectural and cultural contexts, developed in partnership with Harvard University’s CAMLab.  

For more than a decade, the CMA has explored how emerging technologies deepen engagement with art. Thoughtful applications of AI represent the next step in that evolution. In ArtLens, AI enables responsive experiences that allow visitors to ask questions, explore artworks in greater depth, and uncover connections across the collection. The museum has taken a careful, responsible approach to AI. Images used for training remain in a closed, ethical model. All models run locally on low-power hardware within the museum and are trained on the CMA’s collection data and CMA curators’ approved content. AI also advances accessibility by generating visual descriptions for every artwork in the collection, helping visitors who are blind or have low vision experience the collection more fully.

The reimagined ArtLens is the result of collaboration across the museum and with leading creative partners. Interactive experiences are designed with Design I/O, creators of the popular Studio Play space and many of the museum’s online AI tools. The redesigned ArtLens mobile app is being developed by DOME, a longtime collaborator on numerous digital projects, including the ArtLens Collection Wall and the immersive digital experiences in the Revealing Krishna: Journey to Cambodia’s Sacred Mountain exhibition. Zenith Systems, a partner across all three generations of ArtLens, leads the integration of the technology infrastructure of the entire space. Accessibility and inclusive design are being developed in partnership with Prime Access Consulting. Equally important is the collaboration across the museum, including teams from digital innovation and technology, design, curatorial departments, education, exhibitions, collections, and many others.

In 2012, Gallery One began as an experiment in how technology could help take away the intimidation of an art museum. ArtLens continues that commitment by offering new encounters with the collection that are meaningful, welcoming, and unforgettable.