Out with the overly creased, easily lost museum guide maps of old. Welcome to the next generation of self-guided tours.
Visitors to the Getty Center in Los Angeles can check out the new GettyGuide, a handheld multimedia system that looks a bit like an iPod or Blackberry, designed to enhance a gallery-goer’s visit.
The Getty is one of the first museums in the country to feature the new technology for visitors.
The handheld device, which hangs from a strap around a user’s neck and requires headphones, is replete with information about the Getty Center’s visiting and permanent exhibitions. It can be checked out for free at the central information desk.
Care to know what lectures or events are happening on the day of your visit? Or do you simply want to know the nearest place you can get coffee or find a restroom? The GettyGuide can help.
“We’re putting at your fingertips stuff you’re likely to go to the information desk to ask,” says Christina Olsen, the Getty Center’s head of interactive programming. “It’s not technology for technology’s sake. This is about the collection.”
Unlike previous self-guided tours, the GettyGuide — in development since 2001 — combines into a single device three elements that were traditionally handled separately: audio commentary, an interactive touch-screen function and online access.
“We had one thing for each of those and they didn’t talk to each other very well,” says Kenneth Hama, executive director of digital policy and initiatives. “I think before, we looked from the point of view of how we produced them rather than more strictly from the point of view of how visitors used them.”
To access the information most successfully, the GettyGuide requires a visitor to walk up to an individual work of art and listen to the device rather than read the information.
Once they’ve watched the on-screen demonstration, users can determine how much of the GettyGuide’s resources they will end up sampling.
If you are doing research and only want to visit certain artworks or are looking to make efficient use of your visit time, an e-mail message (or bookmark) sent to a pre-established Getty Museum account can be downloaded into the device when you arrive at the museum, so that you can design your own tour. Visitors are advised to check out www.getty.edu before visiting the museum to set up an account, which they can then access via a GettyGuide at any subsequent visit.
According to Olsen, easy-to-use interactive handheld devices are starting to sprout up at museums across the country — often in pilot programs. The Smithsonian in Washington, Museum of Modern Art in New York and Peabody Essex Museum in Boston are all in early stages of developing interactive guides.
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