Why the #MET Is Expanding Into the #Metaverse With #Roblox

Roblox users can now score digital versions of Van Gogh’s famous straw hat for their avatars. While they may not have the fashion cachet of the digital Dionysus bags available to players of 2021’s Gucci Garden experience, Van Gogh's hat makes up for it in cultural currency.

These new wearables—alongside digital suits of armor, Medusa hair, and Egyptian Pharaoh masks—are part of a new collaboration between Roblox and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of #Art.  

The Met has teamed up with the gaming platform for Replica, an augmented reality quest-based app (available for iOS and Android) that’s linked to a Met experience within the Roblox metaverse. The app—created with technology partner Verizon—guides visitors via an interactive map to 37 selected physical artworks spread around the museum, which they can further discover by scanning the pieces in question.