The Barnes Foundation is increasing its reach and revenue — not with the art it’s known for, but for the tech it developed to better understand its collection.
The museum’s proprietary Virtual Experience Platform (VXP) brings its vast collection into the digital age. Students in its educational programming can see Claude Monet’s brushstrokes up close and examine a Pierre-Auguste Renoir sculpture from every angle, with deep zoom and panoramas in tandem with class discussions.
Now, the Penn Museum will gain access to the tech to help it make online classes more engaging, and the Barnes earns $37,000 in annual fees.
“The long-term health of museums does depend on how well you’re able to get your unique platform and message out there,” said Steven Brady, deputy director for digital initiatives and chief technology officer at the Barnes Foundation. “We always saw it as something that was able to sustain us, and we thought [it] could be a really big positive for other institutions.”
The Penn Museum is the first institution to partner with the Barnes to license this technology. The agreement allows the museum to use the platform for an undisclosed number of live classes and on-demand content.
The museum will also receive audio and visual tech support, plus data about their programs through the Barnes’ impact and evaluation team, to track results.
The Penn Museum will implement VXP for two virtual programs this fall, Deep Dig and Archaeology in Action, according to Jennifer Brehm, director of learning and public engagement at the Penn Museum.
It’s an upgrade from the current slide decks offering limited perspectives of the art to hopefully increase engagement, she told Technical.ly.
“The fact that we can really zoom in on some of the excavations, or maybe on some X-rays, if we’re doing conservation work,” Brehm said, “can really help to illuminate these details in a whole new way.”
The search for a sustainable funding model
The Barnes holds a range of classes, some focused on specific pieces of art and others focused on wider collections, as a part of its community education efforts. Many of those sessions shifted online during and after the pandemic.
Going virtual, however, meant students couldn’t get as up close and personal with the art, according to Brady.
The museum already had an online version of its collection, using scanned high-resolution photos of the art taken for insurance when the museum moved to its current location on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in 2012.
Teachers, however, were looking for ways to make it more interactive, instead of just staring at static images.
Launched in 2023, VXP displays 2D works like paintings as high-resolution images that students can zoom into, while 3D pieces such as sculptures — and even entire gallery spaces — are rendered as interactive models with 360-degree navigation.
Industrywide, museums are constantly talking about how to design a more sustainable business model, Brady said. Many museums haven’t recovered pre-pandemic numbers in terms of visitors and they aim to be less reliant on donor revenue and federal funding.
The licensing model increases revenue and helps other museums expand their reach, he said. Licensing VXP out to others is the Barnes’ way of doing that, while also increasing engagement, according to Brady.
“We were able to sustain ourselves with online educational revenue,” Brady said. “There may be museums who don’t care about revenue as much as outreach. And again, this serves that model as well.”
