Virtual exhibitions

Last year we cre­ated our first vir­tual exhi­bi­tion on Art Nou­veau, a new fea­ture for Euro­peana to pro­mote some of its best con­tent in a Euro­pean con­text. The exhi­bi­tion was built using Omeka.

This year, we are re-using this con­cept to allow part­ners to high­light some of their finest objects in Euro­peana. Sev­eral part­ners in the net­work are cur­rently work­ing with us to cre­ate exhi­bi­tions of their own– we plan to launch the first ones before the summer.

When com­par­ing vir­tual exhi­bi­tions to phys­i­cal ones, the argu­ment is often heard that noth­ing com­pares to view­ing ‘the real thing’. Well, how could we dis­agree? The dig­i­tal rep­re­sen­ta­tion is by far not the same as walk­ing around a phys­i­cal sculp­ture, lis­ten­ing to a live per­for­mance, view­ing the orig­i­nal painting.

But….putting together an exhi­bi­tion from a vari­ety of insti­tu­tions can be done much faster in the dig­i­tal space than in the phys­i­cal world (although we do have our chal­lenges, too). It gen­er­ally comes at a lower cost. Peo­ple from all over the world are able to visit it. And it’s open 24 hours a day, for as long as we like it to be.

Apart from re-using the for­mat, we plan to extend the func­tion­al­ity, too. In the future we plan to offer more inter­ac­tiv­ity. Peo­ple can choose the order in which they like to see the objects, com­pile their own exhi­bi­tions and share them, or add com­ments to exisit­ing ones. Which muse­ums allows you to scrib­ble your com­ments on the wall next to a painting?

Com­ing in the next few months are exhi­bi­tions on Jew­ish Her­itage from Judaica, and an exhi­bi­tion on musi­cal instru­ments by the MIMO project.