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Raynham Hall Museum has announced the official launch on December 2 of an augmented reality app created to enhance tours of the museum. The experience, called “1776AR,” begins in the museum’s education center, with four digitally-created portraits that come to life when guests interact with them using an app downloaded to their phone or tablet. The experience leads guests indoors and outdoors, finishing inside the historic Townsend house.
“1776AR was designed to reveal the amazing people and stories of our past to people of today who are comfortable being connected with the latest in augmented and extended reality technologies,” said Harriet Gerard Clark, the museum’s Executive Director. “The storytelling medium has changed, but the relevance of our collective past has not. We need to know our past in order to know who we really are.”
1776AR is the result of the vision and leadership of the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, combined with the expertise of 360XR, a U.S.-based company that has provided technical and creative services to fulfill the Gardiner Foundation’s vision, in cooperation with multiple Long Island historical sites.
“We are delighted to help the Friends of Raynham Hall re-interpret this important historic site,” said Kathryn M. Curran, Executive Director of the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation. “RDLGF’s confidence in the educational outreach offered by Raynham Hall is such that we have chosen this site to be the initial offering for our augmented reality experience, 1776AR. This exciting and innovative program is now available to bring this and other of our historic sites to life.”
The Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, established in 1987, supports the study of New York State history. Robert David Lion Gardiner was, until his death in August 2004, the 16th Lord of the Manor of Gardiner's Island, NY. The Foundation is inspired by his personal passion for New York history, and encourages the preservation, collection, restoration, and exhibition of documents and artifacts of this history, as well as educational programs focused on this history.
