Sensing Art – Discovering Masterpieces Beyond What Meets the Eye
Meta, Pinacoteca di Brera and EssilorLuxottica join forces to broaden access to art through technology
Launching today: an experiment that builds on Pinacoteca di Brera’s established slow art path – based on ANS’s DescriVedendo method – by integrating AI glasses to give blind and visually impaired visitors a more autonomous and immersive way to experience the museum’s masterpieces.
Making cultural heritage increasingly accessible means enabling more people to discover it, explore it, and build a personal relationship with art. Today, advances in wearable technology and artificial intelligence are opening new possibilities to make this experience even more inclusive.
It is from this ambition that “Sensing Art – Discovering Masterpieces Beyond What Meets the Eye” was born: an experiment conceived and promoted by Meta, Pinacoteca di Brera and EssilorLuxottica, in collaboration with the Associazione Nazionale Subvedenti (ANS), the Unione Italiana dei Ciechi e degli Ipovedenti (UICI) and the Fondazione Istituto dei Ciechi di Milano, with the aim of pioneering new forms of cultural accessibility for blind and visually impaired people.
From today, the DescriVedendo path – dedicated to visually impaired and blind visitors, already present at the museum for nearly ten years and guiding visitors through eight masterpieces of the collection – gains a new access tool: AI Glasses.
By downloading the Grande Brera app, visitors using the glasses will access three dedicated audio contents for each of the eight works (morphological description, art-historical analysis and artist biography), as well as short orientation tracks to move from one work to the next.
Using the camera and speakers of the AI Glasses, visitors will be able to identify the paintings along the path and listen to the audio without using a smartphone.
The glasses are available on free loan to blind and visually impaired visitors at the Pinacoteca di Brera info point, Tuesday to Friday from 10:00 to 16:30, by prior appointment. To book the service, please write to [email protected] indicating the date, time and any logistical support requirements.
