The Musée du Louvre recently launched a new website and an online database that includes more than 482,000 works. Tourists who cannot visit the halls of the Palais have the opportunity to follow specially curated virtual tours from the museum’s home page at Louvre.fr, through an interface redesigned to work best even on smartphones. Researchers and enthusiasts who want to study specific works then have a powerful research tool at their disposal, at collections.louvre.fr, where all the masterpieces are easily found on the basis of the author, the name of the work or the historical period.
The digitization of museum collections is a process that in many cases has been underway for years. However, the pandemic and the lockdowns have made clear the need for a further step: digitizing does not just mean creating (possibly open) databases to catalog and make collections accessible online. It also means rethinking the fruition mechanism, or the “user experience” of the visit, to borrow a term from the jargon of technology.
The Royal Museums of Turin, for example, have announced a new innovation and digital transformation plan that will lead to important changes not only for those who manage the galleries, but also for the public. With the GoDigital! Project, supported by the San Paolo Foundation, the Museums will adopt new tools and technologies, in order to rethink the interaction with the visitor. The first steps include the activation of a free wi-fi network in the Royal Gardens and the installation of digital signage, as well as a new website and a multi-platform web app that will guide the public during the visits and will be enriched with elements of augmented reality and gamification (a method of incentives and objectives based on mechanisms borrowed from video games).
All important news, especially thought of with a view to reopening. In the meantime, even without leaving the living room, the possibilities to visit collections and museums are already innumerable. We have selected five, Italian and non, purely on the basis of personal taste and the quality of the digital offer.
Egyptian Museum of Turin
Since last March 4th, the Egyptian Museum of Turin has activated a new three-dimensional virtual tour that includes some of the most famous sections, including those with the finds from the village of Deir el-Medina and the tomb of Kha. It is just one of the various possibilities of digital use offered by the Museum, which has set up one dedicated page which lists all the various online experiences available.
Vatican museums
For some time now, the Vatican Museums have offered the opportunity to visit their rooms with three-dimensional virtual tours. Tours are accessed from this entry page, while those wishing to search for specific works can do so by accessing the digital catalog of the Museums. There is also the Sistine Chapel. The technology used for virtual visits is not the most recent and we therefore recommend accessing via computer or tablet for a better experience.
The Guggenheim museums
The museums connected to the Guggenheim foundation have long ago digitized their collections as part of Google’s Arts & Culture project. To the collections and exhibitions of the Guggenheim in Bilbao can be accessed directly from this page. The sections that allow you to “look closely” at the paintings of the great artists in the collection, such as Mark Rothko, are very interesting, thanks to very high-definition photographs of the works. Even the Guggenheim Museum in New York is available online. Among the various digital exhibitions active at the moment there is a very interesting one on the glass works of Josef Albers, The entire online collection is a must for contemporary art lovers.
National History Museum
The Natural History Museum of London, one of the most famous in the world, has also been digitized thanks to the contribution of Google Arts & Culture. As with all other museums, it is possible to view finds and collections directly from the dedicated app for iOs and Android, or via web from this page. Very interesting is the exhibition dedicated to Mary Anning, the paleontologist recently played by Kate Winslet in the film Ammonite by Francis Lee.
State Museums of Berlin
With the hashtag #SMBforHome, the foundation of the Staatliche Museen Zu Berlin has launched a campaign to promote digital visits to the museums of its circuit. A complete list of the collections and rooms that can be visited online is available at this address. The offer includes live tours and links to digitized galleries as part of the Google Arts & Culture project.
Other museums
The collections we have mentioned in our list are only a tiny fraction of those already digitized and available online. Anyone interested in knowing new ones can consult this document in which Douglas McCarthy, Europeana’s Collections Engagement Manager, and Dr. Andrea Wallace of the University of Exeter constantly update a long list of museums and collections that offer their works in free access. The purpose is to keep track of the digitized and usable works without copyright for research purposes, but the list is also very useful for discovering museums and galleries from all over the world that can be visited comfortably from home.