A new way to visit museums

A New Way To Visit Museums: Virtual Reality, the new tool in the tourism industry

Source: https://www.goethe.de/en/kul/bku/20949031.html - Photo: Städel Museum

Since several years, Virtual Reality is more and more present in different industries. It is a big innovation of the 21st century, used in a lot of sectors: for example video games, medical industry, flight simulator for airline… Tourism industry isn’t an exception, VR begin to play an important role for this sector too. Indeed, you can now visit sites or destinations without being there in reality! It constitutes a big change for the destinations and for the travelers.

But now, you can also visit a museum and see arts through VR…

Nowadays, museums need to differentiate themselves from others in order to attract more customers. Indeed, technology and especially virtual reality is one of the tools used by museums. This new experience is a new way to engage young as well as older visitors.

Many museums have moved forward into this virtual reality tool. In 2015, the British Museum was one of the first to try this experience thought a weekend event dedicated to Bronze Age object or virtual tour of its Egyptian Gallery . The National Museum of Natural in Paris have launched its new permanent virtual reality installation where people can zoom in on creatures or standing right in front of an elephant with the aim to understand its magnitude. According to Bruno David, president of the museum, with the traditional means it was impossible to demonstrate the same experience. Other museums go even farther, with the example of Kremer Museum which exists only as a virtual space.

 Source: https://blog.britishmuseum.org/explore-ancient-egypt-in-our-virtual-reality-tour/ 

   

Even if VR has many advantages for the museums as well as for visitors, it also raises some concerns about sustainability and funding.  Indeed, the creation of VR programs is expensive notably for public institutions. However, in response to an increase in the number of request in VR installations, the company HTC introduced an initiative called VIVE Arts which funds and develops VR content for museums and cultural institutions.  

As we can see, VR is a big innovation and can allow people to better discover museum and arts, for instance it can attract more young visitor who are not necessarily attacked by museums. However, we think that VR cannot replace reality and physical visits: people can find everything on the Internet and see it through virtual reality is the same as in a screen of a computer. It’s not the same thing that seeing for example a tableau in reality.

Moreover, we have to draw limits to VR in museum, with the example of Kremer Museum. This museum is only a virtual space, so can we really consider it as a museum?

What about you? Would you try a museum with VR experience?

  

Source: Cigainero, J. (2018, March 12). European Museums Get Adventurous With Virtual Reality. Retrieved from The New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/12/arts/european-museums-get-adventurous-with-virtual-reality.html