Khan Academy to Carry Extensive Content Created by Met Museum

Khan Academy to Carry Extensive Content Created by Metropolitan Museum Based on Its World-Renowned Collection

New Partnership Will Extend Free Online Learning Opportunities Globally

(New York, November 24, 2014)—Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Sal Khan, founder and Executive Director of Khan Academy, announced today the launch of a partnership that will provide expanded access for visitors around the world to the Metropolitan Museum’s online resources through Khan Academy.

Khan Academy seeks to provide free, high-quality education to anyone anywhere. It offers lessons in a variety of subjects, including math, science, and the humanities, and features lectures from noted educators. The topics and tutorials from the Metropolitan Museum that have been posted today on Khan Academy’s website include commentary, by a range of the Museum’s experts, that is presented in the context of its world-renowned, encyclopedic collection of works of art. This extensive content will complement and broaden Khan Academy’s existing art history content significantly. 

Mr. Campbell said, “Khan Academy is an impressive, forward-thinking partner with an extraordinary vision to reach learners everywhere. Together we can build on the Met’s robust program of online content to engage a worldwide community. I want the Met’s audience to reflect the global breadth of our collection, and this collaboration will bring us significantly closer to achieving that goal.”

“Museums are the keys to much of our world’s history and culture and help us understand how to contextualize and see ourselves,” said Khan Academy founder and Executive Director Sal Khan. “We couldn’t ask for better partners in helping us to achieve our mission of offering a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has produced and shared some extraordinary content by leading experts in their fields which give insight into human creativity from the earliest cave art to contemporary performance art.”

“Khan Academy is changing the world for the better, so we are absolutely delighted to partner with colleagues there,” add Sree Sreenivasan, the Museum’s Chief Digital Officer. “This is one of the most exciting digital projects we’ve been involved with at the Met. Just like our recently launched app, The Met, it serves to simultaneously elevate and make more accessible our incredible collection.”

The content that the Metropolitan Museum has made available on Khan Academy falls into three topics with 109 videos. The topics are:

• 82nd & Fifth.  Episodes of the Met’s award-winning online series 82nd & Fifth are now available on Khan Academy. Curators talk about works of art that changed the way they see the world: one curator, one work, two minutes at a time. (95 videos)
• Extravagant Inventions. On what did the rulers of late 18th-century Europe spend their money? On wars, palaces, and the arts—and also extravagant mechanical furniture. Both the King of Prussia and the Empress of Russia entertained themselves and their guests with ingeniously concealed and automated drawers as well as hidden compartments built within some of the most elegant desks and tables ever devised. (5 videos)
• Making, Finding, and Conserving. Go behind-the-scenes at the Met to explore how some of the world’s finest art was created, how it is conserved, and even how it was discovered. (9 videos)

Also available:

• An online and iOS game created at the Museum that focuses on its collection—Beyond Battle: Arms and Armor at the Met.
• And for educators, more than 100 connections to related lesson plans to assist teaching across content areas.

At The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the partnership is managed by the Digital Media Department, which is led by Sree Sreenivasan, Chief Digital Officer; with project management by Masha Turchinsky, Senior Manager of Digital Learning and Senior Producer, and content produced by departments and individuals around the Museum. 

At Khan Academy, the project is managed by Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker.

About the Metropolitan Museum
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, founded in 1870, is one of the world’s largest and finest museums. Its collections span more than 5,000 years of world culture, from prehistory to the present and from every part of the globe. The Museum’s 2.4 million-square-foot building has vast holdings represented by a series of collections, each of which ranks in its category among the best in the world. Last year, the Metropolitan Museum had more than 29 unique visits to its website (www.metmuseum.org) and more than six million visitors to its two New York locations—its main building along Fifth Avenue and The Cloisters, its branch for medieval art and architecture in northern Manhattan.

About Khan Academy
Khan Academy is a 501(c)3 non-profit with a mission of providing a free world-class education for anyone, anywhere. Khan Academy provides free online educational experiences (e.g., adaptive exercises, instructional videos, a computer programming platform, dashboard analytics, teacher tools) that support personalized education for users of all ages in a scalable way. To date, the organization has delivered over 440 million lessons and over 2 billion exercise problems. Currently it has over 15 million registered users and over 4 million exercise problems completed each day. In addition to content from prestigious institutions such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MIT and NASA, Khan Academy covers subject areas such as computer science, math, art history, economics, physics, biology, chemistry, and more. For further information visit www.khanacademy.org.