GeoMuse[UM]

About GeoMuse

Lien Tran and Dr. Diana Ter-Ghazaryan, during their professorships at University of Miami, developed GeoMuse[UM] with a team of University of Miami NERDLab students and William Jattin (UM Web Developer) and in partnership with colleagues from the Lowe Art Museum. The project was funded by the Andrew W. Mellon CREATE Grants Program, which supports innovative projects for teaching, learning, and scholarship that feature cultural resources from University of Miami Libraries and the Lowe Art Museum.

The platform, more generally referred to as GeoMuse, can be replicated for use in other contexts. Our team plans to expand its use to Florida International University next, with plans to go beyond universities and beyond South Florida. If you’re interested in adapting it for another context, please contact us.

The University of Miami instance of GeoMuse is proudly called GeoMuseUM.

Press

GeoMuseUM web app in front of Quadriplate V
GeoMuseUM web app in front of Quadriplate V sculpture next to the Lowe Art Museum on University of Miami’s Coral Gables campus

About GeoMuseUM at the University of Miami

GeoMuseUM is a guide to the Public Sculpture Program at the University of Miami’s Coral Gables campus! The University’s Sculpture Park comprises more than thirty artworks by leading sculptors from around the world. These sculptures are in the collections of the University of Miami and the Lowe Art Museum, which maintains their care. GeoMuse offers a virtual and interactive experience, encouraging you to locate and learn about these sculptures as you enjoy the beautiful surrounding scenery.

University of Miami community members and visitors can use the GeoMuseUM web app to connect with UM’s main Coral Gables campus through the exploration of the sculptures both in-person or virtually. If you are on the main university campus, you can use GeoMuseUM to place your current location in relationship to the sculptures. The app allows visitors to learn about the sculptural art and artists and even be inspired to create. In Fall 2020, students from the Frost School of Music composed original pieces inspired by the sculptures, some of which are available within GeoMuseUM. Stay tuned for even more student musings, coming in Spring 2021.

In Fall 2020, Drs. Melvin Butler and Brent Swanson asked students in their introductory musicology course, whether they were attending classes in-person or virtually, to visit GeoMuseUM and find a public sculpture to inspire an original musical composition. The online tool not only allowed virtual students to ‘visit’ campus and learn/engage with the sculptures online, it also allowed in-person students to discover where these sculptures were, visit in person, and be inspired by the art in context. Many students used the natural sounds surrounding a sculpture’s location to inspire them, some even integrating this audio into their original compositions.

Visit a sculpture’s page within the app to see if an original student composition has been shared on GeoMuseUM!