…by Brangien Davis / http://www.CascadePBS.org

Bloomberg Connects is a free arts and culture app — a sleek digital portal to 700+ institutions globally. Its aim is to increase accessibility and enhance cultural experiences for anyone with a smartphone. But if you haven’t heard of it, you’re not alone.

When I learned about it during an East Coast arts trip this past summer, I was excited to download the app and see how local arts organizations were featured. But when I plugged “Seattle” into the search bar, I was dismayed by the response: “No results.”

Nope, no art galleries, museums, botanical gardens or historical societies to see here. How could this be?

Launched in late 2019, Bloomberg Connects is an initiative of Bloomberg Philanthropies (as in former New York mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who so far has donated $17.4 billion to arts, environment, public health and other causes).

Inspired by Bloomberg’s personal experience of getting a private tour at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, the app’s goal is to be a source of free, high-quality digital content from cultural spaces across the world.

“For me, support for the arts has always been about connecting people with culture by making it as accessible as possible to the greatest number of people,” Bloomberg said upon announcing his plans in 2013. Bloomberg Connects says it currently has 4.1 million users.

Featuring exhibit details, images, maps and exclusive audio and video content, the app is a virtual guide to cultural organizations from the Aberdeen Art Gallery in Scotland to the Zietz MOCAA in South Africa. The design is simple and uniform across institutions, so you get the hang of it quickly.

You might use it as an armchair art-goer, jumping from exhibitions at the Tate in London to the Art Institute of Chicago, all while in your pajamas. Or use it when planning a trip, to see what’s on view at the cultural spaces in your destination. And once onsite, find that piece you specifically wanted to see and access bonus behind-the-scenes details.

In short, Bloomberg Connects is a gold mine for the types of folks who read arts stories like this one. And while the U.S. entries are still heavy on East Coast representation, they’re starting to populate with West Coast cities — including, finally, our own.

As of this week, we have our first (and only) Seattle entry on Bloomberg Connects: The Frye Art Museum.

After getting “no results” for Seattle back in June, I started asking around at local arts institutions to see if they’d heard about the app. Ingrid Langston, director of communications and strategic planning at the Frye, was the only person I spoke to who not only knew about the app, but was already in the process of getting the Frye signed on.

“We have been looking for ways to increase accessibility to the Frye,” Langston told me, “and this brought everything together, elegantly meeting our needs for content and accessibility.” In addition to the extra audio and video content the Frye has added, the app allows for large font, audio transcripts and instant translation into 40 languages (via Google Translate).

Asked what Charles and Emma Frye might think of the app, Langston said, “They would’ve loved it! They loved sharing their art collection and talking with people about it.” It also dovetails nicely with the Frye’s founding mandate that the museum must always be free to visitors.

The day before the Frye launched the app I did an onsite walk-through with Langston and Runyon Colie (the Frye’s digital media and web specialist). They did final tests, double-checking the maps and tweaking the in-app location for the exclusive content. I listened to newly recorded audio from currently featured artists Hayv Kahraman and Natalie Krick, and can attest that hearing them speak personally immediately deepened the experience of seeing their work.

Cultural institutions can join the app for free, but it does require a 13-week online boot camp of sorts (Colie estimated three to five hours per week), which Bloomberg stages in groups of around 20 institutions at a time. (Among the Frye’s cohort was a Ukrainian art museum and a photography museum in Woodstock, New York.) After that, content updates and back-end app administration is in the local organization’s hands.

The Frye’s team is excited about the ways they’ll use the app for future shows. But Langston emphasized that the offering “isn’t meant to suck you into your phone” while you’re at the museum. “It’s there to enhance your visit if you want it,” she said.

Here’s hoping more local organizations sign on soon, to bulk up those Seattle search results and better reflect the rich array of arts and culture here for the visiting.

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