ArtLens Exhibition

The award-winning ArtLens Gallery, including ArtLens Exhibition, is currently closed as it undergoes a complete reimagining with new interactive experiences. The space reopens in July 2026, entirely transformed. 

ArtLens Exhibition is an experiential gallery that puts you—the viewer—into conversation with masterpieces of art, encouraging engagement on a personal, emotional level. ArtLens Exhibition features a collection of 20 masterworks of art that will rotate every 18 months to provide new, fresh experiences for repeat visitors. The art selection and barrier-free digital interactives inspire you to approach the museum’s collection with greater curiosity, confidence, and understanding. Transitioning away from touchscreen technology, ArtLens Exhibition interactives use gesture-sensing projections that respond seamlessly to body movement and facial recognition as you approach, immersing you in the experience. There are 16 innovative games, centered on the following themes: Composition, Symbols, Gesture and Emotion, and Purpose. Each artwork in ArtLens Exhibition has two corresponding games in different themes, allowing you to dive deeper into understanding the object. ArtLens Exhibition opened to the public at the Solstice Party in June 2017. In June 2019, ArtLens Exhibition reopened with a new display of 21 artworks from across the collection—from medieval to decorative arts to contemporary.

New features include the following:

  • Exploration of 3-D artworks using photogrammetry, allowing you to zoom and manipulate gesture-based 3-D projected models to see all angles of an artwork.
  • All artworks, including 3-D objects, in the space are scannable using the “Scan” feature in the ArtLens App, allowing you to access even more interpretive content.
  • All artworks are centered on the theme “What Can Art Be?,” providing multiple entry points into thinking about and engaging with a diverse group of art objects.
  • The digital Beacon has been updated with a new video that showcases even more visitor-generated content from the ArtLens Exhibition games and introduces the overarching theme, "What Can Art Be?" to visitors.

ArtLens Exhibition Artworks and Theme

Articulating a theme, or a framework, that would shape the way we interpreted and presented the objects was important for this installation. The broad question “What can art be?” provided us with multiple entry points into thinking about and engaging with such a diverse group of objects. In the exhibition, we provide one answer, but because we believe there is more than one way to understand a work of art, we encourage visitors to consider their own reactions and ideas. One unique aspect about ArtLens Exhibition is that it provides an opportunity to look at and consider connections across time and place. Each installation can create a dialogue among the artworks and the digital interactives.

ArtLens Exhibition Audience and Goals

The ArtLens Exhibition welcomes nontraditional museum visitors by reducing the intimidation of the art museum and providing visitors the tool sets to look closer, dive deeper, and begin a relationship with the collection. Frequent museum visitors return again and again to ArtLens Exhibition to see and explore the CMA's collection in a new way.

a woman smiling looking at a screen

Discover the Interactives

Gaze Tracker

Gaze Tracker encourages visitors to explore the elements and artistic choices that impact the composition of an artwork. At Gaze Tracker, visitors sit in front of an ADA-compliant monitor, wait for the interactive to calibrate with their eyes, and look at an artwork from the CMA’s collection for 15 seconds. Innovative eye-tracking technology reveals accurately where a visitor focuses when looking at the work of art, increasing the visitor’s understanding of how an artist’s compositional choices influence how they look at art. On a large video projection viewable by other visitors and on the individual monitor, the interactive shows visitors the path their eyes took while observing the work of art, including what grabbed their attention first, what detail they viewed the longest, and what elements they ignored. At the end of the interactive, visitors can see an interpretation of the artist’s compositional intent as well as the artwork’s identification, gallery location, and aggregate results from other visitors.

People interacting with ArtLens Exhibition


Express Yourself

Express Yourself is a machine-learning interactive that uses facial-recognition software to identify visitors’ emotional responses to artwork from across the CMA’s collection. To begin the interactive, visitors position themselves three feet from one of two touchscreens—one of which is ADA compliant. Next, visitors react to a large sculpture by Frank Stella featured in ArtLens Exhibition, an object that evokes strong, diverse emotional reactions. The visitor’s preliminary reactions enable the facial-recognition software to calibrate and statistics show how their initial results compare with others stored by the interactive. Visitors are then asked to react to a variety of artworks from across the CMA’s collection for 30 seconds. As visitors view each individual artwork, their facial expressions are registered as happy, surprised, confused, distasteful, fearful, or sad. When the 30 seconds are up, visitors see all their emotional reactions associated with the artworks they viewed. They can then select any artwork to begin an engaging mission that encourages deeper looking while launching them into the museum galleries to locate the artwork. Visitors can dock their iOS or Android device at Express Yourself and missions will save directly to the “You” section of ArtLens App via Bluetooth technology. Additionally, the interactive captures a video that features the visitor’s emotional reactions and images of the artworks that saves directly to the device’s camera roll.

Gesture and Emotion

Gestures and emotions may be the most identifiable elements in a work of art, but they can also be the most complex to decipher. The Gesture and Emotion experiences mirror your expressions, and empower you to alter works of art to understand how expression can change meaning.

  • Mash-up: Visitors alter the emotion of a portrait by making a face, and witness how a change in expression can impact the meaning of an artwork.
  • Make a Face: Visitors are shown a portrait to interpret the figure’s emotion, then their facial expression is matched with another portrait. Visitors appreciate how meaning is created through facial expression in an artwork.
  • Body Language: Visitors guess the different emotions expressed by figures in an artwork by mirroring the poses of each figure. By matching gesture with emotion, visitors realize the narrative of an artwork through the interaction between the figures.
  • Strike a Pose: Visitors are prompted to mirror the pose of a character in an artwork, in order to truly feel the physical exertion of the movement and pose. Visitors better understand the emotions of the figure, as well as the contextual emotion of the artwork.

Symbols

The exploration of symbols necessitates an understanding of an artist’s secular, religious, and personal beliefs. These interactives provide satisfying and simple entry points into the complex world of encoded artworks.

  • Hidden Meaning: Visitors use body movement to uncover the meaning behind symbols in artworks, revealing how artists embed symbols in their artwork to represent nonconcrete concepts.
  • Symbol Sleuth: Based on contextual clues, visitors guess which symbol represents a certain theme in a work of art. Visual and thematic clues in a work of art can help a visitor deduce a symbol’s meaning.
  • Decode Symbols: Visitors guess from a selection of symbols which symbol fits an area that has been blurred from the artwork. Visitors learn how symbols can transform the meaning of an artwork.

Purpose

Explore and learn about an object’s original purpose.

  • Purpose Discovery: Visitors decide how an unfamiliar object was once used by placing it on different parts of a mannequin. Through looking at an object closely, a visitor can deduce its use.
  • What Am I: Visitors guess the modern equivalent of an object from a range of options. The modern understanding of an object can differ from its contextual use.
  • Dress Me up: A variety of wearable objects, from fashion statements and cultural wear to unfamiliar pieces, are on display for visitors to select and wear on their body. Visitors realize the functional purpose of unfamiliar objects.

Composition

The composition experience reveals the underlying structure that holds an artwork together. Fun, intuitive, full-body gestures and gaze-tracking games explore the concepts of geometry, all-over, and multiple focus compositions, and provide an entry point into the more nuanced pedagogy of image organization.

  • Shape Seeker: Visitors reveal geometric shapes in an artwork to decipher the compositional arrangement of elements. Visitors see how the structure of a shape gives meaning to a work of art through its dynamism, stability, symmetry, or asymmetry.
  • View Finder: Visitors explore works of art from the museum’s collection to find areas of focus and points of emphasis. Visitors uncover how artworks with multiple focuses are composed of separately identifiable elements that work together to enhance meaning and understanding.
  • Become an Artist: Visitors create an original artwork based on the color, composition, or pattern of an artwork in the museum’s collection. By reinterpreting an artwork while maintaining its aesthetic integrity, visitors can better understand the composition of artworks with no central focal point.
  • Become an Artwork: Visitors generate a unique allover composition through a snapshot of themselves and based on works in the museum’s collection. Visitors learn how works of art can be composed of rhythm, pattern, and repetition by using the palette of their own body and clothing.