Art Bridges Foundation
Art Bridges
Alice Walton, a committed arts patron, philanthropist and founder of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, identified a problem with museums today. At most major museums, only 5% of the collection is typically on display at any given time. The rest? In storage, locked away from public view. Art Bridges is her vision to change that.
Museum as Hub
The foundation connects large lending institutions to smaller regional museums who want to feature loaned works in exhibitions. To do that well, Art Bridges needed to upgrade the archaic and opaque process of loaning work between museums.
Art Bridges had access to world-class art but lacked the digital tools to facilitate those partnerships. As part of a comprehensive digital strategy, Bluecadet redefined how the foundation operates with a new platform that simplifies the borrowing process and provides essential tools to their partners.
Request to Borrow
Following Bluecadet’s new strategy, Art Bridges made the loan process as easy as clicking a “Request to Borrow” button, something that no major museum does.
In a matter of minutes, curators can inquire about borrowing an entire exhibition from MoMA, or a single painting from Art Bridges’s own collection of work by artists including David Hockney, Judy Chicago, and Andy Warhol.
An Empowered Mission
By setting aside “the way things are done,” Bluecadet brought Art Bridges’ website in line with their mission and completely reframed the conversation around how museums share their art.