About The Infinite Museum

Art defines us and transforms us. It may be the most human thing we do. It sends us across time and space, connecting us to our past, to each other, to ourselves and to the infinite. Art museums, in a way, are laboratories for making these connections, mixing elements (art and people and ideas) together in a unique alchemy—an alchemy of seeing. The application in your hands now is a powerful tool for creating new experiences with art. It’s both serious and playful, introspective and social. The Infinite Museum is a tool for creating meaning through art—your own meaning.

The application offers you a prompt to get you thinking in new ways. It might be an instruction, an interesting idea, or a provocation. Some prompts send you to a particular work of art. Others can be used anywhere in the museum. Following a prompt is an invitation to experience something new, to think something new, to feel something new. It requires no preparation, just that you be curious. When you follow a prompt, you’re invited to be transformed and to share your transformations with others. Don’t rush it. Find a prompt that intrigues you, follow it, and see what happens. Be open, be ready, let it in and let it out. More than fifteen hundred prompts await you, with more being added all the time. Many of these works of art have been around for a long, long time, and whether you’re meeting them for the first time or the hundredth, The Infinite Museum will introduce you to them in new ways. They’ve been waiting for you, waiting to speak to you. You animate them, they’ll animate you, and together you’ll add a little bit of beauty to a world that sorely needs it. You’ll discover the world—and yourself. You may find yourself seeing the world outside the museum in new ways as well. Get ready.

The Infinite Museum is the brainchild of Dr. Timothy Berg and was written and created by students under his direction in a Fall 2014 seminar at the Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry at Ball State University. You are invited to learn more about our creative team by clicking the “Meet the Team” link to the right. You are also invited to respond to prompts with your reactions, insights, and creativity, and you’re invited to submit your own ideas for prompts. In order to contribute you need to follow a simple registration and login process.  Doing so allows you to respond, submit prompts, favorite prompts, see your favorited prompts, and share directly to social media sites. See our Help page for more information. In your hands, The Infinite Museum can continue to live up to its name, helping us see and experience art in an infinite number of ways.  For more information about the creation of this application, please contact Dr. Timothy Berg at tdberg@bsu.edu.