Museum collections shouldn’t be this hard to explore.
Your visitors experience only a fraction of what your collection has to offer.
Digitization created the possibility of exploring collections beyond the limits of exhibitions and physical space. Yet for many museums, that promise remains largely unrealized.
What if digital collections could become destinations in their own right?
Digital collections can do more than store basic information and return records.
They can help visitors follow their curiosity, uncover connections, revisit discoveries, and explore collections in ways that aren’t possible within the limits of exhibitions or physical space.
They can become enduring spaces where every visit offers new opportunities to deepen a relationship with your collection.
That’s the future inspiring everything we build at LexMuse.
What makes a digital collection worth exploring?
Meaningful Connections
make relationships visible across a collection
When connections become visible, collections become more than isolated records—they become pathways for exploration.
Structures institutional knowledge so collections can express what they know—and visitors can explore what they discover.
Structured Language
helps collections express what they know
Discovery is no longer a destination. Each object, idea, and connection becomes a new starting point for exploration—an invitation to keep going.
Expansive Discovery
invites visitors to follow their curiosity, uncover patterns, and explore beyond what they came looking for
Creating what’s next.
Whether you’re beginning with a single collection or thinking across an entire institution, LexMuse helps museums create digital collections that support search, enable discovery, and invite exploration.
Every engagement is grounded in your institution’s knowledge and shaped around your collection, your goals, and your visitors.
Strategic Consulting
Whether you’re exploring an idea, evaluating an opportunity, or navigating a complex challenge, LexMuse helps you move forward with greater clarity and confidence by identifying meaningful next steps that align with your collection, your goals, and your visitors.
Discovery Assessment
Grounded in the Museum Digital Discovery Index (MDDI), evaluate how visitors currently experience your collection, identify where exploration breaks down, and uncover opportunities to create richer pathways through your collection.
Collection Discovery Layer
Building on the systems and technologies you already use, LexMuse creates a connected discovery layer that brings together structured language, meaningful relationships, and intuitive pathways through your collection—supporting richer public discovery experiences while giving museum teams new ways to explore, understand, and activate their collections.
Meet the Founder
For nearly two decades, Bernadette Houston has worked with visual collections, developing structured language and discovery systems shaped by how people search, discover, and explore.
Her work with museum collections brought that experience into sharper focus. She fell in love with what museums make possible—and became increasingly aware of the gap between the richness of those collections and what people are able to experience online.
LexMuse grew from a desire to close that gap, helping more people encounter the ideas, beauty, and humanity museum collections hold while creating digital experiences that invite lasting relationships with art.
Digitization was just the beginning.
Now digital collections deserve to be designed with the same intentionality that museums bring to the gallery experience.
Let’s build a digital collection worth exploring.
If you’re a museum professional ready to create a digital collection that’s easier to search, more meaningful to explore, and designed to inspire ongoing engagement, we’d love to explore what’s possible with you.