fitzwilliam museum online exhibitions
Post on 18-Nov-2014
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Online exhibitions The Fitzwilliam Museum
definitions• when is an online exhibition not an online exhibition?• is “online exhibition” a useful concept?
audiences• what proportion of website users look at online exhibitions?• substitute or support for a gallery exhibition?
sustainability • who develops them?• what budgets are available?
Pharos
• authored resource
• written by art historian working for the education department in the Museum
• curated as if an exhibition
• thematic and chronological entry points into the collection
• well suited to some parts of Fitzwilliam’s audience
• potential to be dynamic – information branches – but limited by technical implementation
interactives
• Make use of multimedia to provide interpretation that would be difficult otherwise
• linear
• focus on process rather than object
• online demonstration rather than online exhibition?
podcasts – online exhibition tours
virtual exhibition?
produced by Duan Wu, Digital Studio, University of Cambridge
What was your reason for visiting this website?
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43.6% 76.7% 16.3% 24.3% 18.3% 9.9% 8.9% 2.0% 6.4% 8.4%
Look up visitorinformation
(such asdirections,
opening hours
Find info aboutexhibitions/
events
Research aparticularobject orimage
Learn moregenerallyabout thecollections
View onlineexhibition orother online
resource
Use the onlinecollectionscatalogue
Look up infoabout
Museum'seducation
service
Find out howto become a
Friend orPatron of the
Museum
Use the onlineshop
Other (pleasespecify)
• currently 35 online exhibitions on Fitzwilliam website – growing need to curate the collection of exhibitions
• the 5th most visited part of the website over the last year
• the most popular exhibition received 13,200 unique page views over the last year
• average amount of time on each page just under 1 minute
• 1st online exhibition on Fitzwilliam website in 2001 – legacy resources that were produced prior to re-designing the website
• a number of different staff work on the Fitzwilliam’s online exhibitions – benefits and challenges
• majority are relatively low cost
• template
• built into budget for larger projects
reasons for creating online exhibitions
extends legacyof researchundertaken forgallery exhibitionand reach new audience
marketing
pre or post-visit support for gallery exhibition
online exhibition regarded by visitors as one of the most important aspects contributing to their enjoyment of the Endless Forms site
“Glue” for online cataloguerecords, providing contextualinformation that is of value for anon-specialist audience
using online catalogue records
- direct call on database with results presented within context of online exhibition
presenting material in a way that may be difficult with the physical object
using interactive environment to demonstrate processes and effects
Utamaro interactive
aims
• give gallery visitors access to all pages of Utamaro’s 3 great books on natural history themes
• approximate the sensation of handling the books
• go beyond the beautiful images
• help users understand the context
• create gallery interactive, extending to web if possible
• access existing translations
• commission new translation of the Shell poems – significant scholarly impact
Utamaro interactive
production• decision to produce as Flash
presentation – lower cost and more flexibility
• new high resolution images created of the entire contents of the books
• need to rebuild for web use with lower resolution images
• decision to use mouse rather than touchscreen – more precision and allowed interactive animations
• during production decided to translate all 3 books to be more consistent
• translations facilitated with help from calligraphy specialists in Japan and shell identification by scientists in England, US and Japan
Utamaro interactive
application
• gallery interactive launched to coincide with gallery exhibition
• web version followed one month later and has since been updated to incorporate fuller translation of Shell book
• very good user feedback for gallery interactive and web version
Utamaro interactive
technical limitations
• not possible to set up so that click on one page would activate pop-up on facing page. Pop-ups sometimes cover the images that they relate to
• only possible to zoom on predefined areas
• the 3 books of different construction, with varying degrees of flexibility. The turning the pages effect is, however, the same in all
• ideally want tools to create new interactives rather than develop as Flash files
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