(NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ) -- The Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers—New Brunswick launched a new digital guide on Bloomberg Connects, the free arts and cultural app created by Bloomberg Philanthropies. The Bloomberg Connects app, available for free download from Google Play or the App Store, invites the public to easily access the Zimmerli's content when planning a trip to the museum, while in the galleries or delving deeper after a visit. Easy links to visitor information, upcoming events, the gallery map, social media accounts, and membership options—as well as multilingual capabilities with the integration of Google Translate—enhance the visitor experience.
Bloomberg Connects offers free digital guides to cultural organizations around the world, making it easy to access and engage with arts and culture from mobile devices: anytime, anywhere. The app offers information about current exhibitions at a portfolio of hundreds of participating cultural partners through dynamic content tailored to each organization. Participating collections currently include botanical gardens, performance venues, outdoor sculpture parks and world-class museums. The app is designed to remove barriers to experiencing arts and culture, with a variety of built-in accessibility features, including voice over, captions and audio transcripts, image zoom and font size adjustment. Visitors also enjoy the flexibility of a visual guide or hands-free audio.
The launch of the Zimmerli's guide on Bloomberg Connects is integral to Smoke & Mirrors, the museum's major fall exhibition. It spotlights the work of 14 contemporary artists with disabilities from across the globe who conceptualize access through humor, antagonism, transparency, and invisibility. In addition to exclusive audio recordings of the artists' discussing their work in the exhibition, the app provides content that is accessible with alt-text, audio and video transcripts, video subtitles and captions.
Exclusive text, photo and audio content also provides new experiences with familiar aspects of the permanent collection. The app will launch with content associated with 30 works from Art of the Americas, European Art and Russian & Soviet Nonconformist Art, accompanied by text descriptions; several also feature audio descriptions from curators and Rutgers students who work at the museum. Some of the key artists from the collection include: Erik Bulatov, Honoré Daumier, Valve Janov, Jo-El Lopez, Eszter Mattioni, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, Leonid Sokov, Renée Stout and Rufino Tamayo. In addition, the app displays featured artworks on the gallery map, facilitating quick access to view them in person.
"We are delighted to join the high-caliber museums featured on this app thanks to the generosity of Bloomberg Philanthropies," said the Zimmerli’s Deputy Director LouAnne Greenwald, who worked with Zimmerli team members on its realization.
Bloomberg Philanthropies invests in 700 cities and 150 countries around the world to ensure better, longer lives for the greatest number of people. The organization focuses on creating lasting change in five key areas: the Arts, Education, Environment, Government Innovation, and Public Health. Bloomberg Philanthropies encompasses all of Michael R. Bloomberg’s giving, including his foundation, corporate, and personal philanthropy as well as Bloomberg Associates, a philanthropic consultancy that advises cities around the world. In 2023, Bloomberg Philanthropies distributed $3 billion.
The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum houses more than 65,000 works of art, with strengths in the Art of the Americas, European Art, Russian Art & Soviet Nonconformist Art, and Original Illustrations for Children's Literature. The permanent collections include works in all mediums, spanning from antiquity to the present day, providing representative examples of the museum’s research and teaching message at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, which stands among America’s highest-ranked, most diverse public research universities. Founded in 1766, as one of only nine colonial colleges established before the American Revolution, Rutgers is the nation’s eighth-oldest institution of higher learning.
Admission is free to the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers. The museum is located at 71 Hamilton Street (at George Street) on the College Avenue Campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick. The Zimmerli is a short walk from the NJ Transit train station in New Brunswick, midway between New York City and Philadelphia.
The Zimmerli Art Museum is open Wednesday and Friday, 11:00am to 6:00pm; Thursday, 11:00am to 8:00pm; Saturday and Sunday, noon to 5:00pm. The museum is closed Monday and Tuesday, as well as major holidays and the month of August.
The Zimmerli's operations, exhibitions, and programs are funded in part by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and income from the Avenir Endowment Fund and the Andrew W. Mellon Endowment Fund, among others. Additional support comes from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and the donors, members, and friends of the museum.
