From Richmond’s Monument Avenue to Italy’s Pompeii, Marion and Greg Werkheiser are making an impact around the world with their company, ARtGlass, which provides augmented reality (AR) tours at cultural and historic sites.

The College of Charleston recently awarded the couple of preservation and technology pioneers the Albert Simons Medal of Excellence for their work with ARtGlass. The couple was added to a long list of prestigious recipients in October, including King Charles III. Full disclosure: Rich Diemer, a member of the VPM Media Corp. board, is an investor in ARtGlass. VPM owns Style Weekly.

“The award is maybe among the most prominent in the preservation field, so it makes it particularly meaningful,” says Greg Werkheiser, adding that the prestige should go to their entire team. “And the fact that it was recognizing our work as lawyers, but also as folks who were bringing emerging technology to the cultural space, was particularly nice.”

The Werkheisers began ARtGlass almost seven years ago. They had been working in the cultural heritage space, representing Native Americans tribes, museums, governments, and folks trying to protect archeology, art, antiques, and similar cultural items.

“We were always fascinated by the intersection of the past and the future, and a lot of our career has been built around this idea that if you save the past and make it accessible, that is an essential ingredient to building a better, more just, more sustainable future,” Greg explains.

ARtGlass is an AR software designed to optimize the public’s enjoyment of different cultural attractions. But there is a difference between virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality, he explains: VR is a closed system where you wear goggles and do amazing things, like visiting a virtual world or playing a video game immersively; while AR adds a digital magic layer to normal reality. You put on transparent glasses — similar to quotidian reading glasses — and experience holograms of historical people, or simulations of what historic sites looked like at their peak and more.

ARtGlass provides the software to institutions for people to experience AR in different places. Among the sectors where it could potentially be used: touring attractions such as zoos, aquariums and theme parks; educational venues like universities and training centers; design and consulting firms who might use it for product launches; the hospitality sector, such as hotels and tour operations; and historical and cultural sectors like archeological sites and museums.

Starting out, the founders sought a merger between their interests in the future roles that technology will play and their ongoing preservation work. They evaluated working with drones, VR, satellites and 3D printing, but ultimately decided on AR, after finding two Italian business partners who were experimenting with the software.

ARtGlass is headquartered in Richmond and Milan, Italy. Setting up shop in Richmond was a purposeful choice, Greg notes, adding that a lot of the big angel investing entities in Virginia have supported them. “The exciting part for us is [that] it gets to be a, not just Richmond, but Virginia success story,” he says. “It helps us stand out a little bit more from the crowd versus just another great story out of California.”

You can find ArtGlass around town being used to explore prominent places like Monument Avenue, where users can see what everything looked like when the monuments were being constructed, or when they were taken down more recently in a historic moment. In Italy, there is a two-hour tour for Pompeii visitors to see what the landscape looked like before the volcano destruction.

There are dozens of sites around the world, and ARtGlass will soon announce its first deployment in the Middle East. Werkheiser notes that this is the first company in the world to bring wearable AR to the cultural sector at such a wide scale, with about 5 million people using it and reported 97% satisfaction rate.

The real breakthrough was the software’s accessibility and its ability to not require coding, he adds. That way, clients can organize and reorganize elements of the tour without being a tech specialist.  “It democratizes access to storytelling,” Greg says.

Fundamentally, he believes that preserving and sharing underrepresented stories make ARtGlass more than a business:  “We’ve got investors, and we’re cognizant about having to make money. But while that’s occurring, we’re also helping the world out by telling stories that haven’t been told as much as they had previously,” he adds.

Another aspect that makes the company different is a lot of its team is composed of women and women of color, which is rare in the tech space, the AR space, and the cultural heritage space. Also they strive to stray away from the typical stories of “old white guy lived here,” Greg says.

The Werkheisers have been together for 20 years now, building around seven enterprises over the years that operate within the fields of law, politics, and technology.

“Both of us have worked a lot in politics. What we learned from there is that society can only really be considered successful as measured by how successful it is for the folks that are struggling,” Greg says. “We live in a free country. Our view of success means that everybody succeeds.”