Newfields Lab

TECHNOLOGY FOR NATURE & THE ARTS

Newfields Lab is a team of designers, developers, and digital strategists who create technology solutions for Newfields. We engage audiences through technology by developing new ways for people to interact with art, nature, their environment, and one another.

The Lab serves as the in-house development team for Newfields. We specialize in online, in-gallery, and outdoor interactives, digital publishing (including web development), data analytics, online collections, and data and systems integrations. Fostered by the depth and breadth of the expertise and support of its Newfields colleagues, the Lab takes a holistic approach to digital projects at Newfields.

Our staff has a wide range of expertise and backgrounds, including backend and frontend software design and development, digital strategy, graphic design, content assessment, digital asset and data management, data analytics, digital content creation and management, and in-gallery interpretative applications.

We specialize in:

Digital collection integration
Access and exploration tools
Web design and development
Custom software development
Mobile applications
Data and asset management
AR/VR development
In-gallery technology that engages and entertains visitors

Some of our latest projects

Museums for Digital Learning

Museums for Digital Learning (MDL) is a unique platform that provides K-12 educators with access to authentic museum collections-based resources for use in and outside of the classroom. Participating museums use templates to create Resource Kits that contain activities designed to engage learners and support national standards in a variety of subjects. Newfields Lab, along with The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the Field Museum, Chicago, and History Colorado, Denver, developed MDL with K-12 teachers so that museums of all disciplines can leverage their digitized collections to help educators inspire their students.

DiscoverNewfields.org

While gearing up for the launch of the Newfields brand, the Lab, working in collaboration with a local advertising agency, developed an entirely new website for our institution. Mindfully incorporating the many diverse aspects of Newfields — the galleries, gardens, historic homes, and performance spaces — we built a user-friendly website that prioritizes admission for events and exhibitions. We continue to serve as on-site developers and designers to update the website with new and improved features.

Outgoing Loans Map

Every year Newfields loans out objects from the IMA Collection to be exhibited in cultural institutions around the world. The Lab created an interactive map that shows the past, current, and future status of these objects.

The Mariners’ Museum online collections

The Mariner’s Museum and Park of Newport News, Virginia, approached the Lab to build their online collections from the ground up. We integrated their collections, archives, library, and the collections from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), into a searchable website with information-rich object pages and cross-referencing between collections.

Digital In-Gallery Experiences

The Lab is always looking for new and unique ways we can support the goals of curators and interpretation staff at Newfields. We develop a wide range of interactive activities for the IMA Galleries, including:

Business Analytics Initiatives

The Lab serves as the technology lead on a variety of business analytics initiatives. Collaborating with stakeholders across Newfields, the Lab develops data pipelines, establishes standards and best practices for ensuring clean data, and builds dashboards and digital tools that facilitate data analysis and decision making in support of Newfields' mission and core values. While most of our business analytics projects are internal in nature, the Lab is exploring opportunities to share Newfields' data publicly with projects such as the Sustainability Dashboard.

Linked Art

The Newfields Lab team is a contributing partner to the Linked Art community project, with representation on the Linked Art Editorial Board since 2019. Linked Art is a community of museum and cultural heritage professionals and institutions collaborating to define a metadata application profile for describing cultural heritage, and the technical means for conveniently interacting with it. The Linked Art project was preceded by the American Art Collaborative, of which the Indianapolis Museum of Art was a participating museum.