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Explore The Met in new ways with generative AI

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Explore The Met in new ways with generative AI

Jul 14, 2026

To mark 15 years of collaboration, The Metropolitan Museum of Art is unveiling two new generative AI initiatives with Google Arts & Culture.

Max Hollein

Director & CEO, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Amit Sood

Vice President & Founder, Google Arts & Culture

General summary

The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Google Arts & Culture are celebrating 15 years of partnership by launching two new generative artificial intelligence projects. You can now use the "Art Aura" tool to explore thematic connections between artworks or visit the museum to experience new prototypes built by our recent technologist in residence. Head to the new Google Arts & Culture landing page to browse over 200,000 digitized objects and start your own exploration.

Summaries were generated by Google AI. Generative AI is experimental.

Bullet points

The Met and Google Arts & Culture celebrate 15 years of digital innovation together.
A new residency program uses generative AI to improve your museum visit experience.
Art Aura lets you explore hidden connections between artworks using simple digital tools.
You can now browse over 200,000 digitized objects on the new landing page.

Summaries were generated by Google AI. Generative AI is experimental.

Basic explainer

The Met and Google are celebrating 15 years of using tech to make art easier to explore. They’re now using AI to help you discover hidden connections between different pieces in the museum’s collection. You can even use a new tool called Art Aura to create a digital portrait based on your own artistic taste. Check out their website to browse thousands of artworks from home.

Summaries were generated by Google AI. Generative AI is experimental.

Explore other styles:

The Met Prototypes & Play

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For 15 years, The Metropolitan Museum of Art has collaborated with Google Arts & Culture to bring advanced technology directly into the galleries to transform how audiences connect with art. Guided by our shared belief that access to art should know no distance, we invited audiences to “virtually visit” The Met in 2011 and digitally explore the Museum’s Open Access collection in 2018. Now, we’re unveiling two generative AI initiatives designed to deepen how people discover art online and experience the museum in person.

We recently completed our Technologist in Residence program — a central focus of this milestone year. For this six-month initiative, The Met engaged creative technologist Julia Daser to investigate how generative AI can enrich each visit to the museum. Using Google Gemini and Vertex AI, Julia collaborated closely with museum curators to rapidly build and live-test prototypes directly in the exhibition spaces.

In tandem with the residency, we are also launching Art Aura, an interactive, multimodal AI experience developed by the Google Arts & Culture Lab in collaboration with The Met. Powered by Google Gemini, Art Aura allows users to drag artworks, styles or descriptive phrases into a digital zone to uncover hidden thematic connections across the centuries of art featured in The Met’s collection, creating a personalized portrait of their unique artistic taste.

To discover more about these projects and continue your journey, visit the new Google Arts & Culture landing page for The Met and browse the Museum’s collection of over 200,000 digitized objects and 50 stories.

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