The Met Origins: A Spatial Discovery Interface for Connecting Audiences to Museum Objects Through Space and Time

Abstract

Museum collections worldwide are overwhelmingly organized by department, medium, or period, so where an object came from, and the journey it took to arrive, is rarely a way into the collection at all. We present the Met Origins, a web-based interactive that maps 6,008 geocoded objects from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's open-access collection to their places of origin. Rather than supporting retrieval of a known item, the interface is designed for discovery: users spin a 3D globe, filter across five millennia, and trace the documented routes individual objects took to reach New York. The same data is offered as both individual points and an aggregated hex-bin density view, so an apparent pattern can be checked against the underlying records rather than taken on trust. We describe the design and the structure it surfaces, including geographic concentrations and absences that reflect the institution's own collecting history rather than world art history. We frame, and propose to evaluate, whether this spatial, exploration-first approach helps general audiences perceive that structure.