The What: In honor of its first-ever exhibition of Latin American art, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Spain’s national museum of contemporary art in Madrid, called on Philadelphia-based design firm Bluecadet to create an interactive digital experience that would guide visitors through the complex, abstract geometric artworks and concepts on display in the “La Invención Concreta” (Concrete Invention) retrospective.
Quick Facts: Bluecadet partnered with South American philanthropic art awareness group Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros and curators at the museum to develop the project. The display, composed of 100 seminal pieces of abstract art, opened its doors at the end of January and will run through mid-September.
The Channels: Bluecadet created a comprehensive pre-, mid-, and post-visit gallery experience, including a responsive website, a free iPad app providing a variety of additional content—essays, related magazines, videos, and high-resolution images of every piece of artwork in the show—and customizable audio tours accessible via a visitor’s own smartphone. The website also gives visitors the chance to engage socially in both English and Spanish, and to take informal quizzes about the artwork they’ve seen.
The Creative: Bluecadet built a 900-square foot wall-to-wall “concept map” in the gallery as a sort of in-depth, interactive resource room complete with tables, chairs, and explanatory multimedia content to help visitors digest the concepts, artistic groups, philosophical movements, and political undertones that underlie the exhibition. The iPad app is integrated into the concept map experience to offer visitors the opportunity to explore La Invención Concreta retrospective before and after their visit to the museum.
