Virtual museum
A virtual museum is a digital platform that emulates many features of traditional brick-and-mortar museums, enhancing the accessibility and interactivity of cultural and historical resources. These virtual spaces aim to enrich the museum experience, allowing for personalized interactions and making exhibits available to a broader audience. While often associated with visual media such as images and videos, the definition of virtual museums is flexible and can encompass digital archives and libraries. The concept gained momentum with the advent of the World Wide Web in the late 20th century, allowing museums to create online representations of their collections.
Virtual museums can be seen as "museums without walls," providing opportunities for individuals to engage with art and artifacts from anywhere in the world. They facilitate multi-sensory experiences that can include sound and moving images, offering a richer educational experience than traditional displays alone. While virtual museums expand access to cultural treasures and can document even the most delicate items, experts believe they will not replace physical museums. The tangible experience of viewing original artifacts and artworks in person remains irreplaceable, highlighting the complementary nature of both virtual and physical museum experiences.
Virtual museum
A virtual museum is a digital, electronic information format that replicates many of the characteristics of a brick-and-mortar museum. The purpose of a virtual museum can be to enhance or enrich the physical museum experience, to make the physical museum experience personalized and/or interactive, or to make museum resources available to a wider audience.
The definition of virtual museums is fluid. Digital archives and libraries are sometimes considered to be part of virtual museums. However, the term usually applies to visual material such as images, videos, etc. The concept of virtual access to museums was considered a potential development throughout the twentieth century, but became a reality with the development of the World Wide Web in the latter part of the century.
Background
A museum is a permanent location dedicated to gathering, protecting and preserving, researching, sharing, and displaying items of significance to the heritage and culture of a people or place. They are usually non-profit and may be connected to colleges or universities, government agencies, or other institutions with a mission of preserving information and items of significance and interest.
The word museum comes from the Greek mouseion, which meant "seat of the Muses," referring to the supernatural beings believed to be responsible for inspiring art and literature. The word became museumin Latin and originally referred to libraries and other places of study. The term was first applied to a university building at Alexandria built by Ptolemy I Soter, an Egyptian ruler.
Prior to the 1600s, the word museum was applied to private collections of art, memorabilia, artifacts, and other objects of significance held in personal collections by wealthy people. In the seventeenth century, owners began opening their collections to others, and the concept of a public museum began to develop. Over the next two centuries, museums were established to share information and objects of artistic, historical, cultural, and scientific interest.
The word virtual comes from the Latin word virtus and became the Medieval Latin virtualis, which eventually was changed to virtual. It meant "possessing certain virtues or capabilities related to natural inherent characteristics." In 1938, the meaning of the word shifted when French dramatist Antonin Artaud coined the term la realite virtuelle, or virtual reality, to refer to his view of the interplay between theater and life. Nearly twenty years later, American inventor Morton Heilig developed a device he called the Sensorama that allowed people to experience different events by combining sight, sound, smell, and physical sensations such as wind. These two usages helped establish the use of the word virtual to refer to situations in which simulated experiences create a sense of having experienced something first-hand.
The 1990 opening of the World Wide Web, a way to access the Internet that had been developed beginning in the 1960s, paved the way for the creation of virtual museums. This means of connection to the web of networks allowed a wide variety of entities to share and use information, pictures, videos, and more in new ways. Before long, it was possible for museums to use computer displays in their buildings to allow visitors to see and interact with images in ways that were impossible before, and for people who had never set foot in a museum to see many of its displays.
Overview
Those in the museum world sometimes describe virtual museums as museums without walls. This is often true, but leaves out the fact that physical museums with walls also often include virtual aspects. For instance, a contemporary museum display on dinosaurs may include large dinosaur skeletons, fossilized impressions of their footprints, and a computerized display that allows the museum-goer to see what those dinosaurs and their world may have looked like. The exhibit may also include footage of the archaeologists at work recovering and preparing the bones for display. This form of virtual museum allows for a richer, more informative experience for the visitor. Many museums around the world have included some aspect of virtual museum technology in their displays. Others include virtual experiences on their websites for those unable to physically access their museum.
Walking up to a piece of history, a famous work of art, or an object of scientific significance in person has a great deal of value. However, virtual museums that are housed solely on the Internet do have a number of advantages. Anything that can be seen can be photographed, scanned, or digitized so that it can be incorporated into a virtual museum. Even objects that are too delicate for display or that are of limited interest can be documented and incorporated, potentially providing a wider range of exposure for these items.
Virtual museums widen exposure in another way, by allowing anyone with access to a computer to see information and displays at many of the world's most prestigious museums. A person can see exhibits and artifacts regardless of how far away they are physically, further expanding the educational value of the museum. For instance, the ability of the Internet to connect a person in one place to sites in other locations means that a person interested in the works of a particular artist may simultaneously view paintings in different museums on more than one continent, take a virtual tour of the artist's studio, and see images of the landscapes featured in the paintings, all without moving from the computer.
Technology can also be multi-sensory, adding sound and moving images that are impossible in the static displays in old-style physical museums. This allows the virtual museum to bring a new dimension to the museum experience. They have greater reach, provide a wider range of experiences, can exist anywhere that has Internet access, and are much harder to destroy than physical artifacts, artworks, and displays. However, experts feel it is unlikely that virtual museums will ever completely replace brick-and-mortar museums because they cannot replicate the experience of seeing artifacts, one-of-a kind artworks by masters, and other objects with deep historical and cultural significance.
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