WBCA expands access to hundreds of local artists' works
Pots, sculptures, paintings, photographs, manuscripts, and more made accessible automatically.
At a glance
- Institution: White Bear Center for the Arts
- Location: White Bear Lake, MN
- Segment: Arts education and gallery
- Exhibitions: A Culture of Pots, Into Nature Plein Air, Futuros Posibles, Members' Exhibition, Northern Lights, Vision & Verse
- Audiences: Seniors, recordkeepers, visually-impaired, prospective buyers
- Features: Expandable content, rich media, content acquisition, exhibit history, visual accessibility, screenreader support
Overcoming barriers
| Challenge | Resolution |
|---|---|
| More content than label space | One tap provides book-length text, photos, audio, video |
| Cluttered gallery aesthetic | Capption indicators replace labels |
| Hundreds of objects | Programmatic content intake and tag encoding |
| Varied audience access needs | Frictionless BYOD accessibility (no app iOS, instant download Android) |
| Reading labels through crowds | Tap-to-acquire, read in peace |
Enrich lives, nourish imagination, build understanding
Hang around White Bear Center for the Arts and you'll meet people from Texas, Arizona, Florida, and other states who've come to study because there's no place else quite like it. What began as an art teacher's pet project in the 1930s has since blossomed into a modern arts center offering classes to all artists from the fledgling to the experienced. WBCA regularly displays its students' and residents' works throughout its galleries.
WBCA strives to make art an intrinsic part of everyday life. To do that, they're committed to identifying and removing visitor barriers. However, in galleries containing up to several hundred works, exhibit labels can be tiny and unreadable at best. When visitors do approach to learn more (leaning in through their accessibility barriers), they can find small labels even worse than illegible: uninformative.
How could WBCA fulfill its values and make a cramped, busy, and potentially fragile exhibition accessible?
A Culture of Pots—trial by fire
With A Culture of Pots 2025, the St. Croix Valley Pottery Tour provided a unique opportunity for WBCA to test accessibility technology and techniques in their own intimate Ford Family Gallery. Most of this year's works would be for sale, so Capption had to work. Big show, small space, high stakes.
Soon to be displaying almost a hundred ceramic pots in a single gallery with zero space for printed descriptions, WBCA acted aggressively and purchased Capption. Per our typical process, we provided indicator artwork and enabled administrative access. Atypically, the volume of works and associated content (100+ labels) presented a significant workload challenge for a small gallery on a tight timeline.
To assist, we added a toolkit to our administrative system that helped WBCA collect, bulk upload, and bulk create each label. Then we created a separate system to bulk encode a roll of tags. Capture, upload, and encoding workloads fell from an easy 4+ hours apiece to about 90 minutes total, with label install and testing requiring about the same. All exhibit labels were ready.
A culture of access
We at Capption dressed up and attended the opening reception. With no small sense of relief, everything worked, and guests engaged. We spoke with several artists thrilled that WBCA and Capption were making accessibility happen. A Culture of Pots triggered four separate Capption firsts:
- WBCA outright replaced printed labels with Capption indicators
- Each label showed prices for the works on display
- Bulk content upload from a source spreadsheet
- Bulk tag encoding
"I was worried about labels for all these pots in one room, with busy text or ugly QRs, but this looks incredible and delivers infinitely more."
—Executive Director at White Bear Center for the Arts
- Unique visitors: 93
- Unique views: 1075
- Engagement depth: 7.15 views/user (higher than galleries 3x the size!)
- Accessibility use: 10%
All from a Midwestern arts center serving 19,000 visitors annually.
Go further
- Exhibit Capptions: Examples from WBCA: 2026 Vision & Verse overview, KAPRIL (Forms Without Conscience), and Savannah Bustillo.
- Learn more: Upcoming Exhibitions at WBCA