Reimagining Digital Innovation

ArtLens Gallery, launched as Gallery One in 2012, has redefined what a museum gallery can be by blending art, technology, and interpretation. Visitors encounter original works by Pablo Picasso, Auguste Rodin, Viktor Schreckengost, and Giovanni Paolo Panini intertwined with interactive games and digital tools that reveal how art is made, where it comes from, and why it endures. At its center is the United States’ largest multitouch MicroTile screen, displaying every object on view in real time. Paired with the ArtLens App, the screen lets visitors create personalized tours with wayfinding, seamlessly linking digital exploration to the galleries. 

Since then, ArtLens has continued to evolve. In 2016, touch screens were replaced with gesture-based and eye-tracking activities, including an interactive that shows how visitors’ eyes move across a painting. In 2018, an independent evaluation confirmed impact: Visitors who began in ArtLens reported learning more about art, and after just five to 10 minutes in the gallery, stayed 30 minutes to an hour longer in the museum than those who did not start in ArtLens. 

Today, the Cleveland Museum of Art is building on more than a decade of innovation, experimentation, and audience engagement to reimagine ArtLens for 2026. This new space again merges art and technology in ways that are inclusive, inspiring, and accessible, offering fresh entry points into the collection for everyone.

Extending Innovation into Exhibitions
The lessons of ArtLens have also extended into exhibitions. In 2022, Revealing Krishna: Journey to Cambodia’s Sacred Mountain set a new standard with immersive storytelling that placed a monumental sculpture in its original sacred context. Surveys showed it earned the highest experience rating of any exhibition in the CMA’s history, with audiences of all ages saying digital tools helped them slow down, spend more time with the work, and discover deeper meaning. 

Building on this practice, three current shows transform the gallery experience in unprecedented ways: In Pintoricchio Magnified: An Immersive Conservation Experience, the 15th-century Virgin and Child is displayed in a central vitrine. Beside it, an 11-foot-high interactive screen allows visitors to explore the painting’s conservation step by step. Visitors can toggle between technical imaging, study the reverse of the panel, and follow the choices conservators made. The installation is quiet and reflective, encouraging slow looking and returning attention to the object itself.

Renaissance to Runway: The Enduring Italian Houses invites visitors to enter a world where history and innovation meet. This immersive experience connects early modern art with contemporary Italian fashion. Using AI and emerging technology, rare archival garments—too delicate to wear—are brought back to life. Artists Francesco Carrozzini and Henry Hargreaves have used AI to show how these garments once moved when worn. By mixing the past with the present, a video produced by Happy Place Media celebrates history while showing how style and creativity change over time and continue to inspire us.

Filippino Lippi and Rome offers another look at artistic process. A projection mapped into the former frame of The Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Margaret animates the construction and preparatory underdrawings revealed through technical imaging. The sequence shows the artistic development of the painting, providing visitors with a better understanding of Filippino’s process.

ArtLens Reimagined: Summer 2026
In early summer 2026, the CMA takes a visionary step forward for ArtLens with a new immersive space. Created with partners such as award-winning studio Design I/O, the team behind visitor favorites like “zoom wall” and “collage maker,” this transformation uses the latest digital tools, including AI, mixed reality, and immersive spaces, to deepen engagement and spark curiosity. The new ArtLens is a multisensory, inclusive environment organized into four zones: Relate, Investigate, Create, and Engage. Each area gives visitors the tools to look closer, dive deeper, and experience art in ways that are innovative and inspiring. Gesture-based interactives with low barriers to entry draw people into the space, using visitor input like poses to guide exploration. A lab-like space illuminates conservators’ work, offering a chance to explore processes used by experts to uncover hidden stories about artworks. Visitors are also invited to experiment with their own creations in response to those in the museum’s collection. Immersive experiences leverage visitor input and dialogue to foster thoughtful conversations around complex topics, using artwork to raise relevant issues and making the discussions accessible to all audiences.

ArtLens 2026 continues the CMA’s leadership in using AI responsibly, building on more than a decade of innovation to create encounters that are intuitive, inclusive, and grounded in art. 

Always About the Art
As the CMA prepares to open the reimagined ArtLens, curators, conservators, educators, technologists, and designers collaborate on artwork selection, experience prototypes, and physical space designs. Together, we are not only building a new gallery but also considering what it means to be a museum in the 21st century, a museum for all. The reimagined ArtLens welcomes every visitor to look closer, explore deeper, and discover new connections across the collection.