Online Museums

The point about online museums and online galleries is that they really need to be transformed when they are made into virtual worlds.

I had a trip around the virtual Dresden museum in Sl recently. I hate to express disappointment particularly as it was recommended by someone really in the know. The virtual Dresden museum is too literal in my opinion, too true to the original, which may seem a harsh judgement. They after all clearly intended to do the virtual in this literal way.

We're waiting with bated breath for the arriveal of the upgraded Guggenheim. upgraded that is fromonline gallery to virtual Guggenheim. Designed by Asymptote architects of New York we don't yet know a whole lot about it other than you can expect it to look nothing like a museum. It will take full advantage of the virtual.

Meanwhile for those who want to get an early fix on what's out of this world - try the International Spaceflight Museum, an SL speciality museum. As far as we can tell this museum only exists online - and it shows a way forward.

The Virtual Cinema as Virtual Exhibit

This comes courtesy of The Georgetown Voice. It seems in DC Hirshorn Museum owners have begun an experiment in making cinema itself the subject of a virtual event- within the cinema walls, sort of.

“The Cinema Effect: Dreams” (the first exhibit in a two-part series, to be followed by “Realisms” in June) wants to explore the impact of cinema on our perceptions of reality and address film’s ability to transport us into a dream world."

The Hirshorn have transformed the museum’s second floor gallery space into a virtual series of theaters, with tall dark walls, low lighting and separate galleries for each film. Members of the public queue outside these mini-theatres as they would for a cinema.

Sounds groovy.

David Rumsey Pioneers Online Exhibits

This is surely one of the big stories in online exhibition and online galleries. Map collector David Rumsey has about 17,000 maps in his collection, many of the 18th and 19th century maps of North America.

Amazingly he has digitised all of these at full resolution and many are now on display in Second Life at Rumsey Maps islands. Rumsey has already teamed up with Google Earth to use 17 of his maps as Google earth textures. The online collections are themselves worth a trip but as an SL app it is peerless.

Rumsey also collaborates with a number of other image collections to bring their works into online galleries and exhibitions and to a wider public.

It's the type of pioneering work that points the way to how virtual worlds are going to enhance our appreciation of and access to historical documents and contemporary imagery. The online gallery and museum is transforming into the virtual gallery and virtual museums. We're beginning to see them emerge.

Exhibit Files

If you're in the exhibition, museum, or gallery business and you have a yen for the online and virtual end of that then you may want to take a look at exhibitfiles.org. This is a social network for the museum and exhibition industry. I'm not massively sold on the idea of social networks for niche markets or for niche sectors and industries but this is a good clean site without all the paraphernalia that makes social network such as drag on your time.

It's early days for exhibitfiles.org but take a look, join in.