The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Navigating the Historic and Inspirational Maze

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, fondly known as The Met, stands as a testament to human creativity. Located close to the famous Central Park in New York, The Met welcomes millions of visitors from around the world to explore its extensive galleries, exhibits, and collections. As the largest and most visited museum worldwide, navigating this two-million-square-foot maze can be both inspirational and daunting.

Challenges faced by The Met 

If you've had the privilege of visiting The Met, you understand the challenges of navigating its vast expanse. For those who haven't, envision this enormous and complex museum space. The Met visitors face challenges ranging from locating specific exhibits and understanding gallery layouts to managing the vastness of the museum, every single day.

Living Map as a leader in digital wayfinding and mapping, plays a pivotal role in addressing the challenges faced by the visitors at The Met. The Living Map Platform™ is the future of museum navigation, but it's more than just navigating from A to B. 

Living Map transforms the visitor experience, providing an interactive tool that navigates the complexities of the museum. With the use of mobile phones, tablets, and desktops as well as printed posters, visitors can scan QR codes and use optimised routes to easily reach their points of interest during their visit. However, the Living Map Platform™ isn't only a navigation tool used to enhance visitor experience, it is also a tool for the staff and organisers to optimise their space using the data and in-depth analytics available within the Living Map product suite. 

This is how Living Map transformed the visitor experience at The Met:

The interactive Living Map is an essential tool for visitors to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Museum has two locations, The Met Fifth Avenue and The Met Cloisters. With our primary location, The Met Fifth Avenue, being just over 2 million square feet, consisting of several connecting buildings built over 153 years, the interactive Living Map gives our visitors (13,000/day) confidence to navigate the Museum. 

The Museum is currently in the middle of several renovation projects requiring major closures of entire collection areas (Ancient Near East, European Paintings, Africa, Ancient Americas, and Oceania) that are key to museum visitor flow. However, the Living Map introduced routing, live positioning, and step-free routes, which have proved to be incredibly valuable features for our visitors and front-line staff. By heavily promoting the map on-site, we relieve the front-line and security teams by decreasing the number of visitor inquiries for directions. In addition, the Living Map supports our environmental initiative to reduce our carbon footprint. We can direct visitors to the digital map with the most up-to-date information regarding gallery closures, allowing us to discontinue our practice of reprinting hundreds of thousands of maps." 

- Jessica Cardona, Product Manager, The Met's Digital Department. 

Enhancing Visitor Experience

Navigating The Met is not merely a physical journey; it's a passage through time, culture, and creativity, therefore, we are proud to play a key part in making Art accessible to everyone who visits and maximising their experience. To truly enhance every visitor's experience, innovative solutions like Living Map play a pivotal role. By providing routing, live positioning, and key points of interest, Living Map empowers visitors to explore the museum confidently and with ease

Read the full use case and discover The Met's Map for yourself:

The Met