Art Museums and the Internet: The Emergence of the Virtual Museum
María-José Moreno
Ejournal of Art and Technology
Issue 5.1
Introduction
Throughout history, art objects have been placed in a variety of spaces. For instance, works of art have been part of churches, caves, libraries, parks, streets, malls, galleries and museums. In each of these environments, art objects have acquired a variety of functions and meanings (e.g., religious, ritualistic, commercial, decorative, historical). Moreover, these spaces have embedded art in different social structures and processes that involve the art object, the creator and the viewer.
The virtual museum is the most recent cultural space to have emerged in the art world. The birth of the virtual museum dates back to the 1990s with the advent of the Web. Since then, hundreds of virtual museums of art, science, history and archeology have been created on the Internet. Within the arts, there are virtual museums that focus on famous artists (e.g., Picasso, Dalí, van Gogh, Rivera), art movements (e.g., Impressionism, Modernism, Surrealism), national or regional art, social identities (e.g., women artists), art forms (e.g., net art, photography, folk art) and contemporary artists.
What is a virtual museum? A virtual museum can be defined as an interactive virtual space that provides information and exhibits cultural objects in digital format. Virtual museums vary in their degree of virtuality, depending on the type of cultural objects they exhibit. While many virtual museums show digital copies of real works of art (that is, reproductions of artworks that exist in the physical world), some virtual museums display artworks that are created in cyberspace and have no physical embodiment (e.g., net art, digital photography).
Due to its low cost and simple organization, the virtual museum has been in many cases a means of creating museums that cannot exist in the physical world. While some virtual museums constitute reproductions of existing museums (e.g., the web sites of the Museé Louvre in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and the Museo del Prado in Madrid), many virtual museums exist exclusively in cyberspace and have no physical counterpart in the real world (e.g., Museo Virtual de Artes El País (MUVA) of Uruguay, the Web Museum of Paris, and the Museo Virtual del Surrealismo). These virtual museums have made possible the collection of artworks that belong to numerous galleries and museums around the world. For instance, there are virtual museums that exhibit national collections that would be impossible to display in a real museum or gallery due to legal and economic factors. (For example, the Museo Imaginado of Spain displays digital copies of Spanish paintings that belong to collections outside of Spain.)
It is obvious that, due to their digital nature, virtual museums constitute a departure from real museums, which have been traditionally conceived as buildings that preserve and expose cultural objects. The purpose of this essay is to examine how the contents and social functions of the virtual museum differ from those of real museums. Although there exists an extensive literature on virtual museums, most studies focus on virtual museums that constitute web sites (reproductions or extensions) of real museums. I have found very few studies that analyze the case of entirely virtual museums of art, particularly the social dimensions of this phenomenon. In this paper I will therefore focus particularly on the case of virtual museums of art that exist exclusively in cyberspace, that is, on virtual museums that do not reproduce real museums. Moreover, I will discuss the impact the virtual museum has had in the structure and dynamics of the art world, that is, in the relations between the art object, the artist, the museum and the public.
The social function of the virtual museum
Art museums have been officially defined as institutions with a dual mission: the preservation and investigation of art works and the education of the general public. As the International Council of Museums (ICOM) specifies, an art museum is a ‘non-profit making, permanent institution in the service of society and of its development, and open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates, and exhibits, for purposes of study, education, and enjoyment, material evidence of people and their environment’ [14].
Yet despite this dual social mission, art museums have traditionally focused on the preservation and study of collections that constitute the base and identity of these organizations and guarantee their prestige and legitimacy. Museum administrators have generally considered the educational and public mission a complementary or secondary function to collection and preservation, despite the fact that during the last decades many museums have expanded their public mission as a response to professional standards and economic pressures [24; 26].
These official missions of the museum have also been tied to other social functions. As historical documents reveal, art museums have also had the function of defining social identities. Art museums have historically been instruments of social differentiation and institutions associated with the upper classes or with those social groups who possess cultural and economic capital [4; 5; 10]. Moreover, many museums have also been spaces dedicated to the construction and promotion of national identities [13]. For instance, according to historical accounts, the foundation of the first museums in Latin America coincided with the independence and formation of the different Latin American nations.
Placing the art museum in virtual space transforms to a large extent the basic functions of the museum. Similar to real museums, many virtual museums specialize in the construction and dissemination of national and regional identities. However, although virtual museums also constitute spaces of historical documentation, it is obvious that in contrast to real museums, virtual museums do not have a preservation or conservation function in a physical sense due to their digital nature.
What then constitutes the basic social function of virtual museums? Because of their digital format, virtual museums have the primary function of providing visual and written information about art. They are fundamentally exhibition and public spaces. Although digital reproductions lack the physical presence of real objects, virtual technology provides a more effective and quick method of finding and processing information about art than real art museums and books. The virtual museum can display and make accessible a considerable number of artworks and information to a larger and more universal public than real museums. It is also accessible anytime from everywhere. In the case of virtual museums that display digital reproductions of real artworks, the visiting public can examine digital copies of masterpieces belonging to numerous collections, even those that are not accessible to the public in real museums due to their rarity or fragility. Furthermore, the multilayer format of virtual museums gives visitors the opportunity to choose the level of information that is most adequate to their level of expertise.
This dynamism and accessibility that characterizes virtual museums is accomplished through several digital formats and software tools. Virtual museums can be described as hypertexts and/or hyperspaces containing nodes, links and tools [12]. For instance, virtual museums that exhibit digital copies of real artworks may contain indexes (by artist, time period, style, nationality), search engines (to find particular artworks or a selected group of them), virtual tours (guided or free), dual window modes (through which the user can establish comparisons or associations between artworks in terms of style or subject), zoom options (through which the user can examine details of the images) and collaborative environments (where users can interact and chat). Museum web sites vary however in the type of format used to display the information or database. Two-dimensional virtual museums generally present digital images of artworks accompanied by information (the name of the artist, the title of the artwork, the date and the medium) in a linear and multilayer format. (Some well-known examples of this type of virtual museum are the Web Museum, the Web Gallery of Art, and the Museo Imaginado). Three-dimensional virtual museums, on the other hand, simulate real museums by adding a sense of space to the virtual experience. (An excellent example of a three-dimensional virtual museum is the MUVA). In this type of museum site, the visitor navigates around the galleries and selects the collections he or she wants to contemplate. Two- and three-dimensional virtual museums therefore differ in terms of how the information presented is processed by the viewer. While in two-dimensional museums the user contemplates flat representations (similar to a book or photography), in three-dimensional museums the viewer thinks in spatial, perspectival terms (similar to a museum visit). However, in both of these virtual environments, the viewer is able to access and process a larger amount of information more efficiently than is the case when visiting real museums.
To understand the public dimension and exhibition potential of placing art in a virtual environment, a comparison must be established with the case of photography. In his famous essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,’ Walter Benjamin shows how technological media that mechanically reproduce art objects, such as photography, expand ‘the exhibition value’ of art while reducing the ‘aura’ of the individual work [2, p.224]. According to Benjamin, the mechanical reproduction of art (through photography, for instance) eliminates the presence or aura of an art object and detaches the art object from its cultural context and ritual function so that ‘exhibition value begins to displace cult value’ [2, p.225]. Yet, at the same time reproduced art objects acquire new social functions and practices (e.g., political) as a result of their exhibition value.
As in the case of photographic reproduction, the digital reproduction of art in virtual space expands the exhibition value of art and reduces the aura of the artwork. Virtual technology eliminates the physical presence of artworks, but makes possible the exhibition of art to a larger public. In cyberspace, artworks can be placed in innumerable contexts (the personal space of the users) and acquire new social functions and practices depending on the users' location and interest. However, the exhibition value of digital reproductions extends beyond the boundaries of photography. Virtual technology differs from photography in its complexity and dynamism because it expands the number of options available to the viewer and reduces the amount of time required to gather information. A virtual museum visitor can have access to almost any work of art around the world (even to those works that are not accessible to the general public in real museums) and can instantly place the selected artwork in its historical context through various search options. The user can also, in some cases, contemplate any combination of artworks or different views of the same artwork (for instance, through the dual window mode or search indexes) and make instant comparisons between artworks and artists. Moreover, virtual technology can recreate a sense of three-dimensional space that is lacking in the case of photography.
But the most significant characteristic of cyber technology that differentiates this medium from photography is its interactive nature. When art is digitally reproduced in cyberspace, it not only acquires an exhibition value, but also an interactive value. In the case of virtual museums that display digital copies of real artworks, the visiting public can navigate around any gallery and can, in certain cases, construct a personal gallery or collection from innumerable works of art (to a larger extent than photography does) through the various search options. Although virtual museums that digitally reproduce real artworks vary in their degree of interactivity, in some of these sites the virtual visitor can change the size and colors of a painting, rotate a sculpture, examine the details of the images (through the zoom option), or digitally restore, finish or construct a work of art that was never completed or realized. These options constitute excellent tools for the study of art.
Furthermore, the interactivity that characterizes virtual museums of real artworks may not only involve the viewer and the artwork, but also museum visitors themselves. During recent years, administrators of virtual museums have been trying to develop collaborative environments in cyberspace where users or participants can interact with each other and exchange views. Although these software tools are beginning to be applied to virtual museums of art, it is a more common practice among virtual museums of science. Some examples of software tools that have been applied to virtual museums in order to create two- and three-dimensional cooperative environments are WebTalk-I and II, Net2Gether and Microsoft Virtual Worlds [1]. In these so-called collaborative environments, users are organized into chat groups (similar to museum tours) that may be coordinated by a leader or ‘tour guide.’ (A well-developed example is ‘Virtual Leonardo,’ developed by the Museum of Science and Technology of Milan, where the software tool WebTalk-I was used to create a three-dimensional collaborative environment where users examine and discuss virtual representations of the machines designed by Leonardo da Vinci.)
The interactive nature of virtual space is also evident in the case of virtual museums of net art (e.g., the Net Art Museum, the Museum of Web Art). Net art can be defined as dynamic, nonlinear and interactive visual systems in which images are constantly mutating and redefining themselves or are transformed or redefined by the viewer, who selects from the options provided by the artist. Works of net art are undefined and unfinished images that are shaped by an interactive creative process. The essence of net art does not emanate from its presence (as is the case of artworks that have material existence), but rather, is based on its interactive, ephemeral and changing nature. The aura of the artwork and the traditional notion of authenticity based on the physical presence of the original (as discussed by Walter Benjamin) is eliminated, since in net art the original (the coding system of the computer) is of no interest to the audience and all copies are identical. The case of net art can be compared to photography, where as Benjamin states, the original is the negative (also, of no interest to the audience) and the notion of the ‘authentic print makes no sense’ [2, p.224]. In the cases of net art and photography, ‘the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility’ [2, p.224].