Heather Marie Wells

Along with the rest of the Museum departments, the Digital Media team has been hard at work to create interactives for the State of the Art exhibition.  One project we created was the State of the Art mobile app.  The app is available for free on Apple  and Android  platforms. I’ve been asked a few times why we decided to have a separate app for the exhibition (rather than just a temporary exhibition tour in the Crystal Bridges App) and why a guest should consider installing it on their own device.  There are both technical and experiential reasons.  On the technical side, mobile apps are at their best when they have a focused function.  The CB Museum app functions well because it is primarily an audio guide for the Museum’s entire permanent collection.  We wanted to offer a similar all-encompassing and in-depth mobile experience for this special exhibition. So what are some of the highlight features in the State of the Ar...

Crystal Bridges knows that the majority of our guests come to the Museum with some kind of mobile device, and we are working hard to offer experiences to those that would like to use their own devices at the Museum. Although cell service has always been tricky in the building—remember while you are at the museum, you are in a ravine with three-foot-thick concrete walls—we continue to work with the major cell carriers to strengthen our signals, and have achieved some great improvements. However, depending on the carrier, some guests may still experience low signal strength. We would like to remind you that since opening, we have offered a free Wi-Fi network for our guests called “CBMAA Guest,” and there’s no password needed to join. Six things to consider when using your mobile device: 1. The new mobile version of our website can help you find directions to the Museum and plan your visit. There are even menus to help you decide what you want at Eleven for lunch or ...

Recently, Crystal Bridges received the Gold MUSE award for Audio Tours and Podcasts from the American Alliance of Museums’ Media & Technology committee for the audio/music tour of the temporary exhibition This Land: Picturing a Changing America in the 1930s and 1940s .  This is the highest award that a museum can receive for an audio tour.  MUSE awards honor outstanding achievement for digital media that enhances the experience and engages audiences. They celebrate scholarship, community, innovation, creativity, education, and inclusiveness.  Judges consider each project’s accessibility in terms of ADA, the overall production quality, the inventiveness, and the impact that the project makes to the museum field. The goal of Crystal Bridges’ winning audio tour was to illuminate guests’ exploration of the exhibition in a unique way. Thus we partnered with the Fayetteville Roots Festival to curate a collection of music to accompany  This Land . Each o...

A few weeks ago the Arkansas Museums Association hosted it’s annual meeting in North Little Rock. The meeting is a wonderful two and half days of sessions and events that allow museum professionals from all over the state to get together to exchange ideas and offer each other support for challenges that they might be facing. I attended the conference as a board member and I presented a session on new technologies in museums.  Our Director of Security Geoff Goodrich also presented on everyday security for museums. The annual meeting concludes with the awards banquet, which is always a special occasion as we take time to recognize each other’s accomplishments.  My position on the board is as the representative from the third congressional district and I’m proud to say that out of the eight categories of awards five awards went to museums in our area. (You can see award winners on the AMA’s facebook page ) Crystal Bridges received recognition for Outstanding Achiev...

The reason I was drawn to the use of technology in museums is that it has the power to make the museum more accessible.  Unfortunately a museum can’t be open 24 hours a day 7 days week, but through technology the art and museum programs can be. My duties at Crystal Bridges include managing the mobile app and producing all the audio tours that have been published through the app.  But I also managed the Museum’s presence in iTunes U . In case you are not familiar with iTunes U ,  it is the section of the iTunes store that is dedicated to educational content.  All the content providers in that area are educational non-profits and all the content provided must be free.  Providers include such organizations as Harvard, Yale, the Smithsonian Institution, and The Museum of Modern Art, as well as other Arkansas providers – Arkansas Department of Education, University of Arkansas, and the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History. On iTunes U the ...