In my
last post, I focused on virtual travel.
On this rainy Saturday, I decided it would be nice to visit a museum
without having to get in the car or put my mask on. And there are so many options …
The Museum Computer Network (MCN, advancing digital
transformation in museums) has put together an extensive list of
museums containing virtual content, which it claims to be continually updating. The list includes portals, virtual tours and
online exhibits, e-learning, content created for kids, online collections,
science collections, history collections, and digital archives and libraries. Almost all of the resources are available for
free. As an additional resource, MCN
also links to the 75 Best
Virtual Museum Tours Around the World, featuring art, history, science and
technology exhibits.
I explored a few of the options on the museum list and was
blown away.
The Louvre
Museum (Paris, France) website allows you to visit the museum from your
desktop. Pick a gallery, and you’re
taken on a personal tour. Some of the
tours are a slide show mimicking your actual walk through the space, and some
are 360o
videos. The tours highlight the art on
display, as well as some of the Louvre’s stunning architecture. Clicking on the “i” button next to specific
displays brings up detailed information about that part of the exhibit. The only thing missing is the café and
croissant.
The virtual tour of the NASA Langley Research Center includes a
series of slides and a short narrated video of each major building on the
campus. Many of the buildings can also
be visited via a 360o
photo. This virtual tour could be a
great way to “host” a field trip for K-12 students studying the history of
space travel. Followed by watching JFK Moonshot, a virtual recreation of
the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first man on the moon.
The Städel Museum (Frankfurt, Germany)
has created an interactive
time machine, in which the virtual visitor is guided through 200 years of
the museum’s history. You can see a
painting in the current collection as it was displayed 200 years ago, and learn
about the history of the painting and how critics’ opinions and analysis of the
art have changed over the years. With
additional software and use of a virtual reality headset, it’s as close to time
travel as you can get.
Many of the museums, like the National Museum of
Korea, have digitized their exhibits by taking a photograph of each item on
display, and linked that with information about the item. It is a little more cumbersome to navigate
these websites and exhibits, and you don’t get the illusion of being there, but
you can still learn a lot.
The MCN list of museums with virtual content is heavy on US
museums, but as you can see above, international “travel” is also
possible. But, for now, the rain has
stopped and I’m going to explore my own backyard.
