The Arts Commission’s Art in Public Places program, which manages the City of Toledo’s public art collection via the One Percent for Art Program, is launching a new digital public art guide as a free resource via the Bloomberg Connects platform.
The guide is available as both a mobile app and web browser, with a wide array of features to equip all visitors to explore Toledo’s Public Art collection, including on-site tours, a live map showing user location for wayfinding within the collection, audio descriptions for selected works, and a slate of accessible features including translation and screen reader capabilities, transcripts, subtitles, alt-text, and more. Select works also include individual on-site accessibility notes highlighting transit, parking, seating, and other site conditions.
This guide is the result of an ongoing accessibility initiative for the Art in Public Places collection, informed by an accessibility audit completed in 2024 in partnership with the Ability Center, and supported by an Ohio Arts Council Arts-NEXT grant.
The guide contains more than 50 major sculptures throughout the city, and the commission aims to expand access to include other works in the collection including murals, benches, bike racks and signal box wraps.
In addition to the collection, the Bloomberg Connects platform includes guides to hundreds of museums, collections and exhibitions around the world.
The Digital Public Art Guide can be found at theartscommission.org/ public-art/digital-public-artguide More information about Toledo’s public art collection can be found at theartscom mission.org/public-art/col lection.
