The Barnes Foundation has announced the expanded use of its innovative online learning technology, the Visual Experience Platform (VXP), through a new partnership with the Penn Museum. Beginning in fall 2025, the Penn Museum will host its popular Deep Dig classes and virtual lecture series, Archaeology in Action, on the VXP. The VXP is a first-of-its-kind online learning platform developed by the Barnes specifically for the teaching of visual material. Intended for adult learners and K-12 students alike, the VXP breaks from the static screenshare model, allowing students to interact with the digital image by zooming in on works of art, investigating details that are often not visible in person. With the VXPs deep zoom technology, the work of art is no longer a static image on a slide; it is a dynamic field waiting to be investigated. The explore feature allows students to interact with the work of art independently, moving around the digital image, zooming in on details, and focusing on whatever sparks their interest. Offering 360-degree views of galleries, synchronous and asynchronous delivery modes, and a searchable library of completed classes, the VXP affords students and teachers greater flexibility and more control over their learning experience. The Barnes first began hosting its popular online classes on the platform in January 2023. Between January 2023 and June 2025, the Barnes enrolled nearly 4,600 students in over 110 online classes hosted on the VXP, with 14 percent of students receiving scholarships. According to post-course surveys, 76 percent of students reported that the class was highly or extremely impactful on the ways they look at art, and 91 percent of students reported that the class inspired them to continue their learning. In addition to the Barnes own classes, the VXP is designed to host other cultural and educational institutions courses, lectures, and asynchronous content. The Penn Museum will be the first to license this innovative technology, with its classes and lecture series launching in October and November, respectively. Through the partnership, Barnes members will receive $50 off tuition for the Penn Museums Deep Dig classes, while Penn Museum members will enjoy the same discount for the Barnes online classes. The Barnes has been teaching about art for more than 100 years, and when we shifted our classes online in 2020 in response to the pandemic, we realized that if we were truly going to deliver a meaningful educational experience about art, or indeed any visual media, we needed a platform designed specifically for its study, says Thom Collins, Neubauer Family executive director and president of the Barnes. The VXP is the first platform to offer a truly interactive experience in the online study of art and visual media. It doesnt attempt to replace the in-person experience; rather, it enhances that experience, using technology to explore art and visual media in a way that simply cannot be done in person. We are delighted to expand the VXPs use through this new partnership with our colleagues at the Penn Museum, which will allow more students to learn online using our immersive platform. The Penn Museum is thrilled to partner with another renowned cultural and educational institution like the Barnes to offer our Deep Dig classes and Archaeology in Action lectures on their innovative VXP platform, says Christopher Woods, Williams director of the Penn Museum. Optimizing the online learning experience for our audiences strengthens our mission to amplify stories of our shared humanity and make archaeology and anthropology accessible to all. The VXP was inspired, in large part, by the progressive-era philosopher John Dewey, who played an important role in the development of the Barnes Foundation during the 1920s. Dewey argued that the most meaningful learning happens when students participate actively in the process, says Martha Lucy, deputy director for research, interpretation, and education at the Barnes. He and Dr. Albert Barnes both believed that a work of art is something to be experienced and discovered by the individual learner, not something that you just passively receive information about. This is why the VXP is so exciting: it allows users to explore the work of art independently and get right up close to its surface, to do the kind of close looking and critical thinking that was so important to Dr. Barnes. The Barnes uses the VXP for its live and on-demand online classes for adults and K-12 students and many educational programs for Barnes members and the public. In January, the Barnes launched its first on-demand classes for adults. Recorded on the VXP, each class, which consists of about five 10-minute-long videos, allows students to pan the surface of the artwork and interact with the digital image in a way that is not possible when viewing a typical video. The Barnes also recently launched a suite of new interactive, multilingual educational videos for students in grades two through 10. Recorded in the Barnes galleries on the VXP, each video connects a topic and a curriculum content area to the collection. Free to access, these videos are used to support in-class lessons or at-home learning, with topics including pigments and process (grades five to eight), illustrations (grades two to four), and Spanish and French language learning (grades seven to 10), all with corresponding worksheets. Additionally, the Barnes released an art integration lesson for teachers who want to learn how to use artworks to support learning in the classroom for other curriculum areas. Our goals with online learning have always been to expand our educational service, to grow new and diverse audiences, and to build new streams of sustainable revenue, adds Will Cary, chief operating officer of the Barnes. There is nothing else quite like the VXP on the market, a platform designed specifically for the teaching of visual material, and we are thrilled to begin licensing this pioneering software so other organizations can achieve these goals as well during this critical moment for the field. The Visual Experience Platform (VXP) is an initiative of the Barnes Foundations Knight Center for Digital Innovation in Audience Engagement and is made possible by generous support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Wind Innovation Fund. For more information, visit www.barnesfoundation.org.