The Prado Museum awards its new intelligent audio guide to GVAM

NEWS


12 April, 2022

The Prado Museum awards its new intelligent audio guide to GVAM

This smart audio guide designed for tablets and smartphones is the most advanced application to date to be launched by the state-owned art gallery. In addition to the digitalisation of the most outstanding paintings in the world, the app will also be available for rental, and in webapp format; it will incorporate new theme-based tours, offer different options for exploring the rooms and include accessibility features, augmented reality, data intelligence, etc. Innovation and technology will be put to work in the service of heritage to provide a rich dynamic visitor experience to our most important museum, and one that can be personalised.

GVAM is the leader in the digitalisation of Spain’s cultural heritage. Their technology offers a wide range of formats, allowing visitors to fully immerse themselves in the works on display, and choose the visit experience that best suits their needs. For all these reasons, GVAM is leading the digital transformation of visits to great monuments, museums, and cities, and to cultural, natural and leisure spaces.

A notable new feature for both Spanish and foreign visitors to the Prado Museum using this app is that the explanations about the 281 works on display in the permanent collection will be available in fourteen languages: Spanish, Catalan, Galician, Basque, Valencian, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. Each year, new works from the museum’s permanent collection will be added to the app, as well as the temporary exhibitions programmed by the art gallery.

This multilingual app also introduces new features such as the option to view the works in different formats (descriptive video, photo carousel, explanatory audio, augmented reality, text, etc.), access to an interactive map of the museum, image recognition of the works through photos taken with a smartphone, additional information (restoration, interesting facts, etc.), and access to new themed tours (the Family Visit, and the Women and Power tour, for example).

Also available on the app will be specific tours of the temporary exhibitions, tours adapted to the time the visitor has available (from one to three hours), as well as a children’s tour designed by the education team at the Prado, and the opportunity to rate the works by awarding stars.

For the first time there will be a specific tour on the Prado Museum visit app for children.

 

Works of art and formats in the app: video, audio, image, carousel 

The works are easily identifiable. On opening the GVAM app, users can see an image of the piece, together with the title, the name of the artist, and the museum catalogue number. Each user can choose between: an explanatory video, an explanatory audio, a single photograph, or a carousel of images.

The audio can be paused, and repeated as many times as desired. Furthermore, the full descriptive text for each work will be available for visitors who are hard of hearing, or who simply prefer to read it. For those who choose the reading option, the full text can be displayed at the click of a button. Even the font size can be changed.

From the artworks screen, you can access the interactive map of the museum and see exactly where each piece is located on the building plan, go back to the main menu, or access a range of additional content related to the works (for example, find out how a painting has been restored, or what it looked like years ago, and what it looks like now).

The app also makes it possible to rate the works. By clicking on the stars on the image of each work, the visitor has the opportunity to award between 1 and 5 stars.

New tours available on the app

Alongside the indispensable tour of the museum’s permanent collection of 271 artworks, each with its own commentary, this new visit app offers new tours designed to suit the different types of visitor, and that adapt to the time available for the tour:

*Tours of the permanent collection: three tours based on the time available to the visitor (“One Hour in the Museum”, “Two Hours in the Museum”, “Three Hours in the Museum”)

*Themed itineraries (Family Visit, Women’s Work, Women and Power, etc.)

*Children’s tours in two languages (Spanish and English).

*Tours of the temporary exhibitions to be held at the museum

*Accessible tours

 

Accessibility of app contents

As well as specific features for the visually impaired, all content in the app includes accessible resources. When accessing the selected tour, it will be possible to activate the sign language video buttons, and listen to the audio descriptions. This additional functionality is compatible with the specific accessible routes, and with the technical support provided for the visually impaired.