I Visit Hundreds of Museums Virtually Using This Free App

Key Takeaways

• Bloomberg Connects offers guides to partnered museums and cultural institutions across the globe.
• Besides museums, you’ll find botanical gardens, historic cemeteries, zoos, monuments, theaters, and more in this app.
• Bloomberg Connects excels in preparing you for real-world visits, while its closest competition, Google Arts & Culture, focuses more on virtual collections.

You probably think that if you want to check out a museum, you actually have to go there. But that’s not the case anymore, thanks to the popularity of smartphones. Today, with apps like Bloomberg Connects, you can see and learn about collections from all over the world.

What Is Bloomberg Connects, and What Can You Use It For?

Bloomberg Connects is an app for iOS and Android that partners with museums and other cultural institutions across the planet to offer guides to their various collections and exhibits. When you open the app, you’ll see a list of nearby locations you can tap on.

Once you open each individual guide, you’ll be presented with a wealth of info about what you can find there, from current exhibits to the permanent collection, organized in various ways that should suit anyone’s preferences.

Curious about who’s buried in a nearby cemetery? Or do you want to see the latest hot exhibition a museum’s putting on? All these things are spotlighted in Bloomberg Connects, with plenty of pictures and essays to feed your desire for knowledge.

The app also includes maps of each location, so you don’t need to pick up a paper guide at the door when you visit. You can zoom in, which is helpful if you have poor eyesight, and the app also marks the highlights of the institution so that you can easily get to them in person.

What Places Can You Visit With Bloomberg Connects?

Like the Bloomberg organization, which serves as its sponsor, the Bloomberg Connects app is available worldwide. You can find over 550 institutions from over 24 countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and Italy.

The types of places available include museums, botanical gardens, historic cemeteries, zoos, theaters, historic houses, monuments, galleries, art walks, and even events like the Venice Biennale. Among these locations are heavy hitters like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Guggenheim. You can check out the full list on Bloomberg Connect’s website, where you’ll find dozens of small institutions too.

However, even if your interest doesn’t lie with museums, Bloomberg Connects has a few interesting collections to check out, like MTA Arts and Design. These are artworks you can see inside the New York City subway system if you’re curious. The app covers a lot of street art and other work you may encounter in your everyday life, like the Project Row Houses in Houston, the Street Art Museum in Amsterdam, and the NYC Health + Hospitals Arts in Medicine program.

How Does Bloomberg Connects Compare With Google Arts & Culture?

There are dozens of museum guides available, many of which are bespoke apps limited to a single institution like the Rijksmuseum or Museo del Prado. The one guide you’re most likely to have heard of and used is Google Arts & Culture, which covers over 2,000 institutions across the world and is available on the web or as an app.

Aside from covering far more places, Google Arts & Culture has an extensive collection of images from most of the institutions it covers, and you can easily search for specific keywords. It’s good for doing art research, looking for inspiration for your own work, or just doing virtual visits of collections.

What Google Arts & Culture isn’t great at is preparing you for visits to real-world locations. It’s difficult to find and browse the list of institutions it covers, and both the app and website are extremely cluttered with various experiments like VR experiences and games—although some Google Arts & Culture web games are worth playing.

In contrast, Bloomberg Connects points you to the nearest locations and tells you everything you need to know to visit, from basics like the hours of operation to guides spotlighting the temporary exhibitions on display. During your visit, you can even look up objects via a number or QR code and enjoy text or audio commentary.

There’s no clear "winner" between the two, as they essentially are designed to do different things. For art lovers, both services are worth having in your arsenal. But when it comes to what app you should have on your phone, Bloomberg Connects is definitely worth keeping around for your next trip.