Answers are just a text away.
A new app allows visitors to the Brooklyn Museum to pose questions to a group of history experts and get an immediate response. The Ask Brooklyn Museum app, now available for Android and iPhones, allows museum-goers who are puzzled by the exhibits of boomboxes and Egyptian artifacts to ask their questions anonymously — a boon to those who hate to reveal their ignorance, said a leader of the project.
“People like the anonymity of it — they don’t feel like they’re asking a stupid question that way,” said Shelley Bernstein.
A six-person team of artsy eggheads on the Museum’s ground floor sits ready to answer any questions typed into the app during museum hours. It usually takes about 45 seconds to answer a question, said one of the team members — although there have been a few exceptions.
“Sometimes we have to tell a visitor we don’t have an answer, so we get their e-mail and get back to them,” said Andrew Hawkes. “But that only happens every now and then.”
Each team member focuses on a different area of the Museum’s collections, and when they are not answering questions, they are learning more about the exhibits and adding to an internal database of information, said one of the team members.
“We spend a lot of time learning the answers by talking to curators and scholars,” Hawkes said.
The free Ask app has been in “soft launch” mode since April of 2015, and the Museum began advertising its existence to visitors in the last few weeks.
The app only works while visitors are actually in the museum, and it tracks user’s location so the team can direct visitors to other artifacts they may find interesting. Museum curators say they plan to use the questions they receive through the app to improve the museum experience.
“That’s the power in this app right there. We need to rethink spaces in the museum. Now our visitors can more easily be part of that rethinking process,” said Bernstein.
Use the Ask Brooklyn Museum app at the Brooklyn Museum [200 Eastern Pkwy. at Washington Avenue in Prospect Heights, (718) 638–5000, www.brook
