Reimagining The Columbus Museum
Reshaping how a cultural institution greets visitors and engages families
Overview
The Opportunity
We were asked to bring to fruition a bold new vision to connect the Museum’s art and history collections, create a more welcoming entry and orientation experience, and serve young visitors in inventive ways.
The Vision
We wanted to reimagine the role of community spaces, and to create more meaningful and continued engagement with local visitors of all ages by providing new entry points to the museum’s diverse collections.
The Approach
Local Projects collaborated with the award-winning architecture studio Perkins+Will to reimagine the museum’s orientation experience using ideas from hospitality and retail design, and a children’s gallery with indoor and outdoor play spaces.
Partners
Perkins+Will
Services
Concept Design, Design Development, Media Design, Media Production, Software Development
The Details
Welcoming Visitors with the Faces of Columbus
Taking cues from retail design, the reoriented entry features dynamic digital pylons that communicate the voice of the museum and highlight art, artists, and history in the collections. The welcome pylons are the first thing to greet visitors, instead of being relegated to their typical location behind a ticketing desk.
A Personalized Experience
The museum arrival experience begins with a space where visitors design their visit by creating personal guidebooks. Drawing from a 15-foot-long array of double-sided “art cards” depicting museum objects with descriptions from curators and educators, visitors create a personal token of their visit to take home or leave for the next visitor.
The Children’s Gallery
The Children’s Gallery engages children and caregivers in activities that build creative thinking, problem-solving, and curiosity. Centered around the generative powers of the Chattahoochee River, children discover that each bend of the river offers a new experience— “sensory stations” that engage their senses of touch, smell, sound, and sight.
Trying the Art Collection On
We integrate art reproductions and historic artifacts from the Museum’s collection into a playful context by inviting kids to “try on” artworks from the collection. As visitors step in front of the installation, digital “cutouts” of each artwork fill their silhouettes and move in real-time as they move, jump, and dance.
Art + History Rotating Gallery
The Art + History & Diptychs gallery unites two distinct museum galleries, presenting rotating items from the Art and History collections “in conversation" with one another. The space is flexible, with displays suspended from the ceiling that can be reconfigured or swapped out for events.
“I was a designer long before I was a mom, but this is the first project that has allowed me to explore how motherhood has influenced who I am as a designer.”
