Hours 10 a.m.–5 p.m. | Fri. & Sat. till 8 p.m.
ROCHESTER, NY—George Eastman Museum (GEM) and The Strong National Museum of Play have joined Bloomberg Connects, the free arts and culture app created by Bloomberg Philanthropies with a renowned national and international audience. GEM and The Strong are the first cultural institutions in Western New York to work with Bloomberg Connects, which includes content from many of the most prestigious museums, botanical gardens, performance venues, and libraries in the nation, including some New York City landmarks such as the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met), and Museum of Modern Art (MoMa).
“Bloomberg Connects enriches both the onsite and offsite experience for our guests by providing access to unique content and essential information,” said Sara Poe, vice president for marketing at The Strong. “We’re honored, along with the George Eastman Museum, to be the first organizations in the area to join the more than 150 world-class cultural institutions in the Bloomberg Connects network.”
Offsite, Bloomberg Connects allows users to explore institutions from anywhere providing access to collections, curators, artists, and artwork. Onsite, the free app turns a user’s mobile phone into a touchless experience and a centralized place for essential information and often a behind-the-scenes exclusive look at the museum. The GEM’s app, which launched at the end of April, includes an extensive library of historic videos from the GEM’s own moving image collection as well as videos on the history of photography and exhibition processes. Furthermore, the app includes audio tours for every exhibition (recently featuring a child-led audio tour for the new Selections from the Collection), a broad overview of George Eastman’s life, detailed collection highlights, an in-depth look at some conservation practices, and much more. The Strong’s app, which launched this week, includes exhibit overviews, a gallery map, social stories, a 12 Must-See Artifact audio tour, and an America at Play audio tour. All the written content is available in multiple languages, too.
“In joining the Bloomberg Connects family, the George Eastman Museum and The Strong’s digital guides are now accessible to the visitors of more than 150 other museums across the country, highlighting the rich cultural offerings in Rochester to a much broader audience,” says Eliza Kozlowski, senior director of marketing and engagement at George Eastman Museum.
The Bloomberg Connects app can be downloaded for free through Google Play or the App Store.
About the George Eastman Museum
Founded in 1947, the George Eastman Museum is the world’s oldest photography museum and
one of the largest film archives in the United States, located on the historic Rochester estate of
entrepreneur and philanthropist George Eastman, the pioneer of popular photography. Its holdings comprise more than 400,000 photographs, 28,000 motion picture films, the world’s preeminent collection of photographic and cinematographic technology, one of the leading libraries of books related to photography and cinema, and extensive holdings of documents and other objects related to George Eastman. As a research and teaching institution, the Eastman Museum has an active book publishing program, and its L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation’s graduate program (a collaboration with the University of Rochester) makes critical contributions to film preservation. For more information, visit eastman.org.
About The Strong National Museum of Play
The Strong is the only collections-based museum in the world devoted solely to the history and exploration of play. It is home to the International Center for the History of Electronic Games, the National Toy Hall of Fame, the World Video Game Hall of Fame, the Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play, the Woodbury School, and the American Journal of Play and houses the world’s largest and most comprehensive collection of historical materials related to play.