Perhaps the most widely adopted mode of engaging long-distance or remote audiences in the 21st century is online exhibitions. Online exhibitions accessed through a museum’s website can vary significantly in complexity, interactivity, and purpose—some may exist as a complement to in-gallery exhibitions for those who are unable to visit the museum in person, or as an extension for those who have visited, while others may be exclusively online, designed with a remote audience primarily in mind.
Examples from the National Air and Space Museum's Out of This World online exhibition and Colonial Williamsburg's award-winning Historic Threads online exhibition.
There are multiple tools for museums seeking to create online exhibitions, including collections management software such as Open Exhibits, Omeka, Mimsy, and many more. Kaia London, Associate Director and Curator of Collections at the Mesa Historical Museum lays out several options in this presentation.
The Canadian Heritage Information Network has made available online a guide to creating quality online experiences for long-distance museum audiences. Among topics covered and suggestions made:
- considering what meaning online visitors are making (how virtual museum sites contribute to what people know and understand; why people come to the website and what they experience)
- using a more constructivist user-oriented approach to suit an individually-driven medium
- exploring topics with clear and simple yet emotional and powerful stories that give users a chance for personal expression
- making navigation and access as clear as possible
Klaus Müller (USHMM), in an article published in Museum News, further examines the issues and advantages in creating online exhibitions to reach long-distance audiences: accessibility, cost, interactivity, sociability, and more.
While not directly related to online exhibits, I thought this was a good place to mention the importance of digitizing collections and making those digital records accessible to audiences. That way, if a distance visitor winds up being interested in a particular object in an online exhibit, they can access more in-depth information on it. Additionally, if a distance visitor wants to learn more about *similar* objects the museums has (that may not be part of that particular exhibition), they can use the museum's online collections database to retrieve more information on the things they are interested in.
ReplyDeletePart of this process involves not only digitizing but also writing up reports on the objects, so I realize it's not an easy task. Given that the Internet is not going away, however, I think it is a task that more museums should be prioritizing.
Museum educators could also make great use of this resource - students could be taught how to use online databases to look for helpful information for their school projects, and educators could also use databases in fun and creative ways (scavenger hunts, social media - "vote for your favorite object and we'll put it on display", etc.)
Just a thought!
Courtney Prutzman
PS - For an EXCELLENT example of a museum that has made the vast majority of its collections available online, check out the British Museum.
Also, given the power of the Internet as a research tool, it would be foolish not to capitalize on the ability to make collections available for a wide variety of research (from children writing school papers through scholars across the globe looking for information on objects or specimens that pertain to their field.)
ReplyDelete-CP
I completely agree with Courtney - having collections available online is not only a way to further learning but also makes your institution relevant to researchers in a whole new way. Also, I think it's important to note that online collections information should be more than just what's on the label. More information about the object's provenance, its creator, or related objects would be great as well.
ReplyDeleteAlso, have you seen this? -->http://www.idea.org/blog/2011/11/29/put-3d-objects-at-your-visitors-fingertips-uvam-on-the-ipad/
ReplyDeleteBasically, it's an iPad app that allows you to digitally manipulate objects from the University of Virginia Art Museum. And it's free! From the article: "In fact, it’s better in many ways than peering at an object through a protective case because the objects can be spun through a full 360°, view under bright lighting, at high resolution."
While I always think the real thing will trump, this is a good substitute and could be useful especially in distance education (if the learners on the other end have access to a similar tool).
I have wondered why different countries seem to place different levels of importance on digitizing collections. There is a French website that lets you look up a work or an artist, figure out where the pieces are and see some basic information about it. On this site, you can type in Courbet, for example, and get a full list of which works of his are in which museums. This way, viewers could visit at a closer location if they so desired. At least when I was using this site, I didn't know of an American equivalent. Yes, American is a whole lot larger, but I still think it would be a valuable tool. It seems to me that American museums wanted to keep their collections more private (example: the whole collection is only accessible using TMS in the offices). Has anyone noticed this changing recently?
ReplyDeleteOnline exhibitions are also a great way to show collections that may not survive prolonged periods of display. The Old State House Museum in Boston has an extensive clothing collection which current gallery conditions prevent it from exhibiting. A former intern who was researching colonial clothing and accessories solved this problem by creating a great online exhibition using some of the beautiful but fragile pieces in storage. You can check it out here: http://bostonhistory.org/sub/bostonwomen/
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