Art, architecture, accessibility: Weisman Art Museum
WAM provides total translation and accessibility coverage inside (and outside) Frank Gehry's art gallery masterpiece.
At a glance
- Institution: Weisman Art Museum
- Location: Minneapolis, MN
- Segment: Art museums
- Exhibitions: Kara Walker: Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), Permanent Collection, Ebb/Flow, SEEN, Laughing Matter, Imagining Future Cities, Milk/Wine, Librería Donceles, RugLife, Never Spoken Again: Rogue Stories of Science and Collections, The Portfolio's Purpose
- Audiences: Non-English speaking, seniors, mobility-challenged, learning-impaired, visually-impaired, socially-anxious, recordkeepers
- Features: Scalable accessibility, multilingual text, visual accessibility, screenreader support, content acquisition, exhibit history, indoor/outdoor/all-weather
Overcoming barriers
| Challenge | Resolution |
|---|---|
| Self-guided exploration | Exhibit-oriented content, no formulaic guide required |
| Varied audience access needs | Frictionless BYOD accessibility (no app iOS, instant download Android) |
| Complex architectural structure | Minimal bandwidth requirements |
| Translation costs and language selection | Instant translation into 136 languages |
| Indoor and outdoor function | Weather-resilient and on-metal NFC tags |
"The museum is art!"
Shimmering and flowing like the Mississippi itself, the Weisman Art Museum anchors the University of Minnesota's East Bank campus. Designed by the renowned Frank Gehry, WAM opened in 1993 as a reimagined space for creative expression and fearless inquiry.
WAM welcomes a wildly diverse mix of students, museum enthusiasts, and global travelers. Some come for the art, some come for the architecture. With no admission fee or set path, WAM invites personal exploration through art.
Inclusion and belonging top WAM's list of values, but inclusive guest service in such a freeing setting isn't straightforward. Even WAM's well-prepared student volunteer team can't speak every language, be everywhere at once, or recite every minute detail of both Gehry's design and the current exhibit. Putting their values into practice required the WAM team to reimagine accessibility.
Steps on the path to equity
Like many museums, the WAM team evaluated nearly every museum inclusivity tool:
- Visual aids: large print, tactile displays, Braille
- Auditory aids: audio guides, active listening systems
- Mobility aids: loanable wheelchairs, rollators, portable seating
- Sensory aids: noise reduction, quiet spaces, dim areas, fidget tools, limited hours
- Neurodivergence aids: social story guides, virtual tours, specialized tours, museum apps
Capption delivers significant visual, auditory, and neurodivergence assistance plus partial mobility and sensory aid with one system. Better still, it translates curatorial context into 136 languages and functions perfectly both inside the galleries and outside Gehry's metallic exterior.
WAM installed Capption diligently using a checklist that became the prototype for subsequent implementations. Engagement, visitor experience, marketing, registration, and facilities met weekly for six weeks to execute design, signage, content, communication, and technology tasks to the letter. We handled procurement, legal, and IT security reviews alongside installation.
Every change faces barriers of its own. eMuseum blocked Android agents from viewing referenced images, so we worked with Gallery Systems to get Capption whitelisted. Quality testing revealed that WAM's aging WiFi coverage now bottlenecked accessibility; thankfully UMN OIT upgraded it in less than a week.
Results that justify the commitment
Observing from the guest services desk, WAM's broad audience divides roughly in two: students and...older people. Students don't regularly use Capption, but older visitors do.
WAM's Capption use splits similarly in two: seniors and non-English speaking users. In real numbers:
- Period: Fall semester 2024
- Exhibitions: Kara Walker: Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), Permanent Collection
- Exhibits: 55
- Unique visitors: 338
- Unique views: 1280
- Engagement depth: 3.79 views/user
- Most common alternate languages: Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Urdu, Indonesian (and 25 more!)
- Alternate language use: 11.7%
- Accessibility use: 18.4%
- Screenreader usage: 0.7%
Over 1 in 10 visitors understood an exhibit in 1 of 29 non-English languages. Given the attendance data, the other ~9 were very likely seniors or those with disabilities.
"Capption's simple, effective, and affordable. Our whole region should adopt this."
Capption helps WAM alter perspective through art with the dignity and taste befitting its marvelous setting.
Social engagement, enhanced perspective
"We intentionally use models and practices that incorporate content reflecting diverse ways of knowing, being, and
experiencing the world."
WAM features Capption during the University of Minnesota's Give to the Max Day. Watch their promo video to see!
Next up, you'll find Capption on WAM's upcoming self-guided exterior tour of Gehry's architectural masterwork.
Our sincerest thanks to the groundbreaking WAM team and the immensely supportive University of Minnesota.
Go further
- Exhibit Capptions: Examples from WAM: Fat Head Kitty, Plug-In City: Maximum Pressure Area, and (Untitled) Young Mystics.
- Learn more: WAM upcoming exhibits
- Take action: Make your hybrid exhibition space accessible inside and out. Schedule your demo of Capption today.