The archive · Games & Play · Marketing decision · 2023–2025
Verizon and The Met turn museum art into a real-world hunt that ends in Roblox
Verizon and The Met answered New York's 47% school arts cut with the first real-world Roblox art collection — find art, replicate it in AR, wear it.
Verizon · The Metropolitan Museum of Art · Roblox
What it had to solve
The New York Department of Education decreased spending on the arts by 47% over seven years. Verizon and The Metropolitan Museum of Art already had a partnership and a shared goal to inspire learning, but with art fading from schools they faced a blunt question: how do you get kids to care about art?
How it works
The New York Department of Education cut arts spending by 47% over seven years, shrinking the exposure kids get to art just as their attention moved to games. Verizon and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, already partners with a shared goal of inspiring learning, asked how to make children care about art at all.
The Met Replica answered by making the museum the field for a Roblox collection — the first ever real-world Roblox art collection. Educational clues sent kids to find original artworks in real life and replicate them in augmented reality, moving 5,000 years of art from the real museum into Roblox.
The payoff was personal: kids created their own avatars that became walking pieces of art history. The work is archived in the D&AD awards archive, with Roblox credited as entrant company and Verizon as the brand behind the experience.
Why it lands
- Roblox put the experience where its audience already plays, removing the need to convince kids to come to art first.
- The clue-and-find mechanic made the real museum visit necessary, so digital play drove physical discovery rather than replacing it.
- Replicating an artwork in AR turned looking into making, which is how the audience learns by doing.
- Personal avatars gave each child ownership of art history, so the collection ended as identity rather than content.
What it did
The museum itself became the game: finding the original was the reward loop, AR replication made ownership tangible, and the personal avatars let kids carry art history with them. The work is archived in the D&AD awards archive as an answer to how a generation losing art in school could meet it in the places they already play.
What you can take
When an audience has left an institution behind, take the institution to their world and make the real one the prize: a hunt that ends at the original object beats any campaign about why art matters.
Since then
The Met Replica joined the D&AD awards archive as a model for museum outreach through gaming, credited to Roblox as entrant with Verizon as brand. The project stands as a partnership answer to declining arts education: meet kids inside the games they already play and make finding the real artwork the point of the game.
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