By+Sophie+Gilbert

Earlier in 2016， at the Whitney Museum of American Art， in New York， visitors paraded through the fifth floor to see a retrospective dedicated to the abstract expressionist Frank Stella.1 Although many of the works on display were four or five decades old， in some ways the show felt tailormade for the Instagram age： a riot of vibrant colors and textures， 20-foot-long reliefs， and sculptures as jagged and dynamic as 3-D graffiti.2

Visitors on busy Saturday afternoon stopped in front of artworks， lined up shots on their phones， snapped a few photos， and then moved on to the next piece. Some paused briefly to consider a particular painting； more stared down at their screens， furiously filtering. Few noticed an elderly gentleman sitting on a bench in one of the smaller rooms， watching the crowd engage with his work. The only visitor in the gallery not clutching a phone was Stella himself.

Museum directors are grappling with3 how technology has changed the ways people engage with exhibits. But instead of fighting it， some institutions are using technology to convince the public that， far from becoming obsolete4， museums are more vital than ever before. Heres what those efforts look like.

1. Curating5 for Instagram

About five years ago， the Metropolitan Museum of Art6 took a small step that has proved monumental： It stopped entreating visitors not to use their cellphones.7 The decision was driven by a recognition that cellphones are omnipresent8 in modern society， and fighting them is a losing battle.“People ask me what our biggest competition is，” says Sree Sreenivasan， until recently the Mets chief digital officer. （Hes now the chief digital officer for New York City.） “Its not the Guggenheim9； its not the Museum of Natural History. Its Netflix10. Its Candy Crush11.”

Accepting that cellphones are here to stay has led museums to think about how they can work with the technology. One way is to design apps that allow visitors to seek out additional information. The Brooklyn Museum， for example， has an app through which visitors can ask curators questions about artworks in real time. Museums including the Guggenheim and the Met have experimented with beacon technology， which uses Bluetooth to track how visitors move through galleries and present them with additional information through an app. Beacons have the potential to offer detailed histories about works， and directions to specific paintings or galleries.