A Museum is a Museum is a Museum...Or Is It?:

Reaction to and Action to:

A Museum is a Museum is a Museum...Or Is It?:

Exploring Museology and the Web.

Lynne Teather, Ph.D.

Traditional vs. the New

The museum, historically in the olden times, was to show collections that targeted the elitist social groups. The creation of menageries, as an example, showed extensive collection of living artifacts transferred from their natural habitat to amuse and enlighten the privileged and educated class. The social class during that time, is hindered by time and travel to view these wonderful creatures in their natural environment and thus for their convenience given the sight to marvel them in captivity. The same can be seen for non-living artifacts, taken from their places of origin, so that the rich and the wealthy can view, dwell, and reflect on these collections, preserved in time and space, in a place of convenience and its archive the result of social cultivation from the upper class.

Following the age of Renaissance, were the hierarchy of man is prevalent in social classes, discriminate of royalty and peasantry, following the perpetuity of social segregation, as governed by centuries of feudal chaste, museums are mere constructs to display the elitists rule. The demise however has been destroyed over the past century, when the birth of modern society developed mass production, new systems of governance and economy changed the roles of museums altogether. Ever since education and economy has been distributed to the masses, museums prime purpose has changed as well.

The museum today has no longer been to serve the upper chaste. Instead the collections and its archives are now for the eyes of the public and generally for everyone. Democratically the masses which enjoy the once luxury in the olden eras, can view the artifacts, reflect and learn from its creation and processes which then continue as tangible signs of a developing civilization.

The Global Presence has Factors

With the birth of the global village as Marshal McLuhan forseen, the community now shares a new frontier is further expanding the reaches of the traditional museum. Rather than confining the artifacts of the museum in a three dimensional space, the new virtual museums give a new array of sensation and direction. These museums are now open for free collaboration and pave way to new classifications of curation , giving out unique blends of collections that are never before classified.

Listing below are from what I observe as factors that lead to the development of the virtual museums and its progression online:

1. Marketing – traditional physical museums, constructs of holding artifacts of historical, scientific and artistic value to this modern age, want to expand it presence to the public in order to increase the flow of viewers into its space. Museums can be funded privately and to ensure its upkeep, sustainable revenue is a considering factor.

2. Educational value – the advent of education by giving the viewer the feel or experience in a museum by showing an array of images that can attract their interest is another factor in spaces virtual progression. Museum websites provides the sensory teasers, basically in a visual format of the artifacts they contain, to enable viewers to be lured into ultimately visiting its physical space. The raise of interest, the call of curiosity and the sensory museum experience is what an online viewer can crave for; as a gallery showing the various artifacts is shown in the website’s pages are displayed. Education is now of voluntary interest, but yet can be collaborative in form.

3. Convenience – not all viewers however have the luxury of visiting an art museum from half across the globe to view its collections. The online galleries enable people from Asia to glance images of artifacts in North America, or other regions that are made remote, by distance or economy. The websites though can lure visitors from its regional domain, can also raise interest for the convenience of a viewer thousands of miles away.

4. Economy – the feasibility of travel just for curiosity and search for knowledge just to visit an museum such as the Smithsonian and the Louvre can be very hindering for a citizen of the 3rd world. Even if the intent of the museums is to empower the masses with the wealth of knowledge of its archives and collections, the cost relative to its region and its economy defeats its purpose if the museum chooses to remain physical and tangible. Thus websites enable viewers to grasp the feel of the pieces, in a limited sensory scale, thru visual and spatial content.

5. Inventory – the problem of most museums is holding its curation of works and its exhibits on a temporary stance, not able to show everything due to the lack of space. Huge spaces within museums are employed to store its valuable artifacts in order to preserve them for the next show. Virtual museums enable the viewer to see these artifacts in the choice of categories and classifications at ease, to even see items that were stored and vaulted for another exhibit in due time.

6. Conservation – all the travel as well as the effort to bring artifacts into exhibits, its curation, and its production requires management, finances, and travel. The websites allow savings in the conduction of such for both the viewer and the physical space by relieving it with stresses of increased spending of fuel and resources for travel, use of marketing and exhibit materials and dependency to physical resources, allowing conservative measures to take place. Even the storage of materials in real space versus the digital format is obviously conserved to the manner that it can fit into a computer hard disk.

7. Interactivity – the viewer also needs not travel in a linear activity such as a guided tour, but can choose the path taken by interactively choosing the section and classification of artworks he/she desires. This departs the use of a linear approach to present work, and dynamically have the viewer react to self discovery by allowing them freedom to choose their path.

8. Spatial Relation and Scale – these are some of the inadequacies that limits the sensory array of the museum experience. The items shown are mere scanned or photographed images, which removes the perception of real space, and in contrast to visual feel, the actual scale of the artifact in relation to the viewer. Although it is possible to navigate into the very magnification of the artifact to its minute detail, the perception of real scale is not felt and its satisfaction for me is very artificial. Modern virtual spaces also have the one of the most unfriendly navigational access, which takes time to master and even if did, can be very cumbersome.

9. Sensational Feel – visual and auditory material can be easily hosted in the website, however other sensory perceptions are limited due to its intangibility. Multimedia has always tried to compensate this with the use of graphics and simplified interfaces, yet the scent of an old painting and the rough texture of a raw metal structure is what complete the museum experience. There is no real replacement for an actual visitor to satisfy the sensory perception with a simple touch or a whiff, a validation that the artifact is indeed real and tangible in all aspects.

Applications to the Design Process:

Knowing the limitations of online content to showcase museum collections, we can work around these factors to effectively create a museum experience. An online exhibit can have captured performances that a viewer can watch over and over again, iterating its educational and perceptive value. A viewer can post documentary comments and even collaborate with others in a virtual community launched by the museum to participate in shaping or constructing future exhibitions in its galleries. The factors can comprise a component to “front-end” exhibitions to effectively market to its target audience while maintaining a smaller group that can afford to be in its physical conduction.

In the design process, one can document the step by step process of the artwork, post in communities for a running critique, to the extent the artwork achieves perfection due to its collaborative nature. The construction is now a larger body, which increases the formation of education through experience, in a different mode of communication, in this case online.

The factors can also be a component for decision making to mirror its content, not just too basically market. The exhibition can achieve permanency rather than temporary lease due to its nondependent nature to true space and time. Captured video and images perpetuate its original content to its viewers.

There is much to gain with the new frontier. The next mission is to see what other things individuals have explored in undertaking an online approach to museums.