Behind the continuous listing of new "cloud exhibitions", how is the concept of museums changing?

Zhejiang Museum's "Lirenxing" project is also expected to launch an offline digital exhibition next year, and the picture is the rendering

Due to the recent recurrence of the epidemic, some museums have had to temporarily close or restart the flow restriction policy. But museums are still exerting their influence in colorful digital forms, touching and infiltrating people's hearts and minds with culture and art. Moreover, after more than two years of development since the epidemic, the museum cloud exhibition is becoming more and more imaginative, constantly updating the industry concept, creating more development space, and allowing the public to see a new trend of kindness and vigor.

Cloud dissemination beyond the form of exhibition has become a powerful means of cultural interpretation

Remember that before 2020, the positioning of the museum's digital services is to serve the physical exhibition: to enhance the audience's experience when visiting the physical exhibition in the form of supplementary information, while minimizing the impact on the immersion of the exhibition, especially not to destroy the order of the exhibition. "Panoramic exhibition" is also a common form, but people are more concerned about this form, such as such a cloud exhibition has lost a large number of five senses information, and people are also worried that this form reduces the audience of physical exhibitions, so "panoramic exhibitions" are more regarded as "tools" for "recording" the physical exhibitions of museums.

At the beginning of 2020, the epidemic was raging, and many physical exhibitions in museums were closed or restricted, and various museums have "gone to the clouds" with exhibitions. A common practice we saw at the time was "panoramic exhibitions". This also continues the previous idea of digitalization of museums. But at this time, people saw the advantages of "panoramic exhibition" - in addition to transcending the limitations of time and space, the fatigue of viewing the exhibition was also reduced. Not only can the audience watch in a more comfortable environment with a more comfortable posture, but there is also an audio guide to reduce reading fatigue. The integrity of exhibit information is also a big advantage, a piece of exhibit background information, multi-angle pictures, and even it can be used as an analogy or associated exhibits can appear in the form of pictures. In addition, relevant audio introductions, and even audio and video and exhibition papers explained by the curator himself can be integrated into the exhibition.

The COVID-19 pandemic has turned the industry's concerns into acceptance, and its thinking has gradually broadened. Although the "exhibition on the cloud" loses the shape of the physical exhibition to the educational atmosphere of the museum and lacks the indispensable sense of context in people's cognitive learning, it is more effective in the organization of the museum's educational materials, and the introduction of media forms from other fields into the museum is also refreshing. Along these lines, the museum's cloud exhibitions are now colorful and have their own advantages. Whether it is a small program, a game or a light reading, as long as the systematic interpretation of museum knowledge can be completed, the cloud exhibition of the museum is becoming more and more diversified, and has long surpassed the exhibition form in people's traditional cognition.

In the video era, whether it is audio and video or live broadcast, it is an effective means of cultural interpretation. Among them, the live broadcast is more "short and fast" - the British V&A Museum held a cloud exhibition in Kuaishou, attracting 1.817 million views; the Forbidden City was live broadcast in the rain, with millions of viewers watching online at the same time; and the "Global Museum Collection Display Online Relay" activity launched by the National Museum attracted up to 3 million viewers. The finely cut videos have a better arrival effect - such as the "Forbidden City Invites You to See the Exhibition" series of videos, each episode is 20 minutes, and the curator takes the audience to visit the exhibition; the "British Natural History Museum" documentary quickly captures the audience's curiosity with wonderful shots; the "Daily Forbidden City" short video takes everyone to appreciate the details of cultural relics on the Weibo platform twice a week, accompanied by music and the audience to say goodnight to each other.

Lectures are an effective means of systematically understanding museum knowledge. We have seen that during the epidemic prevention and control period, the Suzhou Museum quickly added the content of the "Su Boyun Exhibition", which has a long lecture series and a seven-episode short film "Only Jiangnan", which truly achieves the role of cultural comfort and nourishment. If the audience for documentaries and lectures is adults, then online video lessons are gifts for children. The Museum School of Science and History at Fort Worth, the first museum preschool in Texas, realized that preschoolers were already equipped with the ability to learn science and natural history. During the epidemic, the teaching team of the museum school provided online teaching for children through the Zoom platform, assigning homework and providing guidance to students online. Teachers also made school baglets and delivered them to the students. Although the epidemic is raging, museums that cross physical boundaries bring warmth to children.

There are also games and light reading, light appreciation, "Father and Son" uses father-son love as a clue to take players to open the exhibits of the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. The aforementioned "Daily Forbidden City" project is also a collection of the Palace Museum that is pushed every day.

In addition, exchanges and mutual learning between civilizations are embracing more possibilities in the clouds. From September to December last year, the Pre-Columbian Museum of Culture and Jade in Costa Rica and the Palace Museum exchanged exhibitions , "The World of the Ancestors: Pre-Columbian Artifacts of Costa Rica" and "Danchen Yonggu: Six Hundred Years after the Forbidden City Was Built" appeared on each other's museum's homepages as a cloud exhibition. How rare is this form of communication for people who are quarantined because of the pandemic.

The deeply interconnected curatorial form breaks the concept of museum people

Jumping out of physical boundaries is indeed a prominent advantage of exhibitions on the cloud. This not only changes the way museums and audiences connect, but also changes the curatorial thinking of museums.

The "Lirenxing" project is a typical case. A year ago, the Zhejiang Museum united more than 30 museums to curate the "Lirenxing" cloud exhibition with the theme of ancient Chinese women's images, focusing on the collections of each museum, with more than 1,000 pieces. It would be inconceivable to have so many paintings gathered in one exhibition in the traditional way of physical display. Whether it is the difficulties caused by the exhibition hall factor or the financial factor, it is insurmountable, not to mention the communication and transportation impact caused by the epidemic. Zhejiang Bo easily crossed these obstacles using the cloud exhibition form, and museums did not need to worry about lending and transporting collections, just providing pictures and related materials to participate in the grand event. Digital humanities research and database construction with the theme of "Images of Ancient Chinese Women" have also stimulated new attempts at inter-library interdisciplinary business cooperation and data sharing.

Now this project is holding an offline five-hall linkage, back to the physical space, but also broke through the ordinary exhibition mode: whether online or offline, the five halls together to publicize the momentum; from the exhibits, the audience can not only see the exhibits of the museum offline, but also view the on-site pictures of the other four museum exhibition halls on the interactive screen of the exhibition hall, browse the exhibits Detailed graphic and audio information and the "Li Ren Xing" cloud exhibition content. In addition to joint publicity, there are also joint "bring goods", "online" cultural and creative displays that can divert offline purchases.

In particular, we note that "LiRen Xing" takes advantage of the digital exhibition's audience research, collecting audience behavior through embedded data collection points and creating user portraits. This is more real-time than the audience tracking and survey questionnaires commonly used in physical exhibitions - if the audience information labels and knowledge graphs are designed, they can quickly screen and analyze audience preferences, and feed back the layout of digital exhibitions and even physical exhibitions.

It can be found that from offline to online and then back to offline, the change of curatorial thinking can bring many surprises to the public. People's need for real environment and "physical evidence" is no longer opposed to the richness of the virtual world, but blends, complements and promotes each other. The ease and liveliness of digital exhibitions makes them closer to each audience; jumping out of physical limitations, it really becomes a platform for museums to connect, communicate and build together with each audience.

Author: Wu Meng (Deputy Research Librarian, Palace Museum)

Editor: Fan Xin

Planner: Fan Xin

Editor-in-Charge: Xiaofang Xing

*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.