The document discusses how museums are shifting from a focus on collections to prioritizing visitor experiences and community engagement. New technologies like augmented and virtual reality, motion capture, and the internet of things are being used to create more interactive and personalized experiences. Museums are also striving to better represent and connect with diverse communities through partnerships, educational programs, and making their collections and processes more transparent. The future of museums involves building ecosystems and networks to share cultural heritage digitally and bring communities together both online and offline.

1. The Recurated Museum:
Museums, Identity, Community
Sytze Van Herck & Christopher Morse

2. How can curators plan exhibitions without imposing their views on visitors?
What does a curator need to take into account when displaying art?
E.g. visual supports/techniques, such as: dining the number of artworks displayed, etc.
Open layout
Collaboration
Visitor Input
Environment Audience
Accessibility
Categorisation
Storytelling

3. Can cats build a community?
How has the internet changed
community engagement?

4. Has online content
creation changed
museum practices?

5. More Experiences, Less Information
Information is everywhere.
Instead inspire self-learning.
Experience economy. Stage to
create memories.
Competition. Create the “wow”
experience.
Millenials consume experiences.
Participatory exhibit design.
Relevance is about engagement.
Answer “so what?”-question.
Experiences are transformative.
New understandings of world and
ourselves
(Peak Experience, 2017)

6. What was your most memorable experience over the past year?
Who would prefer receiving material goods over experiences? Who prefers experiences? Why?
“(...) happiness isn’t about possessions. Living an epic
and meaningful life is about creating, sharing and
capturing memories earned through experiences that
span the rich spectrum of life’s opportunities.
Experiences, for millennials, are about identity-
creation.”
(Peak Experience, 2017)

7. What, If Anything, Is a Museum?
The defining characteristic of exhibits is their physicality.
They exist in three dimensions. Websites, for all their wonders,
exist in two [words & images].
(Dillenburg, 2011)
How do you conceive of a virtual exhibit?
What should a virtual exhibit include? How should visitors interact with a virtual exhibit?

8. The museum world is rapidly changing
from being collection-centred to being
community-centred and for the public.
The concept of ‘museum experience’ is
the pinnacle of this historical shift, as it
implies a focus on the visitor and
connections between visitor and objects
rather than a focus on collections.
(Vermeeren et al., 2018)

9. Dialogical Engagement
Between Visitors &
Museum Collections

10. A first notable shift saw the museums move from a collection
focus to a visitor focus and from a mission for objects
preservation and access provision to a mission of offering
meaningful engagements with the collection and rewarding
learning experiences for their public.
(Vermeeren et al., 2018)

11. Rijksmuseum: Paint Job (2012)
by Brilliance After Breakfast

12. Expose: my favourite landscape (2010)
Kröller-Müller Museum

13. Local Communities &
Citizen Involvement

14. Citizen involvement was not only seen as a way to give voice to
communities and enable them to have a say in the way museum
exhibits were interpreted but it was also a way to link the
collections to the personal experience of these communities.
(Vermeeren et al., 2018)

15. Classification of Crowdsourcing Initiatives
(Oomen & Aroyo, 2011)

16. http://menus.nypl.org

17. http://menus.nypl.org/menus/28929/explore

19. https://portlandartmuseum.org/learn/programs-tours/object-stories/
Object Stories
Object Stories is a personal
storytelling project and exhibition
series hosted by the Portland Art
Museum.
The project interrupts the
traditional authoritative museum
voice into a platform where
Portland and the Pacific
Northwest’s many communities
can directly address issues
affecting their lives.
Portland Art Museum: Object Stories
https://portlandartmuseum.org/learn/programs-tours/object-stories/

20. Object Stories: Sound Beyond the Auditory – Chris Balduc
Portland Art Museum
https://portlandartmuseum.org/learn/programs-tours/object-stories/

21. DIY Tech in the
Museum & the Internet
of Things (IOT)

22. Not so long ago, objects displayed in museums were labelled
with printed boards. Subsequently, displays were introduced
providing general information about parts of exhibitions, audio
guides to guide visitors along displayed artefacts and, gradually,
also iPads as interactive labels next to exhibited objects. The
Internet of Things (IoT) movement (where objects, such as those
in people’s daily lives, become networked) can also be expected
to lead to museum experiences that become integrated in
people’s daily practices.
(Vermeeren et al., 2018)

23. Kung Fu Motion examines strategies
for encoding, retrieving and re-
enacting intangible heritage in ways
that allow these archives to be ‘alive’
in the present. The exhibition brings
together historical materials with
creative visualizations derived from
advanced documentation processes
including motion capture, motion-
over-time analytics, 3D
reconstruction, and panoramic video.
(Kenderdine, 2018)
https://sarahkenderdine.info/installations-and-curated-exhibitions/kung-fu-motion-epfl

24. Kung Fu Motion EPFL
(Kenderdine et al., 2018)

25. Tangible Data Souvenirs
(Petrelli et al., 2017)

26. Tangible Data Souvenirs
(Petrelli et al., 2017)

27. Building Museum
Ecosystems

28. Visitor Behavior

29. Visitor Behavior

30. Museum 5g: Preservation & Conservation
https://www.ericsson.com/en/news/2018/5/5g-zone-at-the-hermitage

31. IoT-based Museum Networks
Les Musées de la ville de Paris
online collection of over
100,000 digital reproductions
of artworks within the city’s 17
municipal museums. Accessible
via its collections portal:
http://parismuseescollections.paris.fr/

32. Diversity & Inclusion

33. Audio Clip ▶️
(Incluseum, 2015)

34. How can museums connect with communities not represented in staff?
Other than hiring a diverse staff, and without exploiting the labour of temporary workers.
Curators and conservationists are predominantly white which
creates a problem of understanding interests, contributions,
and needs of public.
Museums need to start thinking about diversity, equity,
accessibility, and inclusion in relation to collections, programs,
community engagement, partnerships, and board development.
(Sweeny & Schonfeld, 2018)

35. Connecting with Communities
Evaluate your audience. Understand who your museum serves and who it does not.
Engage communities the museum is not reaching.
Consider architecture and design. Consider the symbolic message that architecture
and design send to underrepresented groups.
Engage controversies. Opportunity for open public dialogue, explore underlying issues
and produce meaningful connections between museum and public.
Form partnerships. Reach different communities to diversify audience.
(Sweeny & Schonfeld, 2018)

36. Collections and Visitors
Empower education. Hire educators from the communities the museum is trying to
engage. Incorporate their expertise in accessibility of museum’s galleries and program.
Include curatorial transparency. Respect curatorial rigor by making the process
transparent. Do not sacrifice quality, instead communicate value.
Cultivate collaboration. Minimise tension between education and curatorial
departments through collaboration.
(Sweeny & Schonfeld, 2018)

37. Assignments
DEADLINE
27.02 Start the discussion
04.03 Read/Watch & Annotate
The Art of Relevance
Moving Beyond the Virtual Museum: Engaging Visitors Emotionally

38. Bibliography
Dillenburg, E. (2011). “What, if anything, is a museum?” Exhibition.
Marshall, M. T. (2018). “Interacting with Heritage: On the Use and Potential of IoT Within the Cultural Heritage Sector”. 2018 Fifth
International Conference on Internet of Things: Systems, Management and Security, 15–22.
Michelle Obama, “Activism”, and Museum Employment: Part I. (2015, May 12). The Incluseum.
Oomen, J., & Aroyo, L. (2011). “Crowdsourcing in the cultural heritage domain: Opportunities and challenges”. Proceedings of the 5th
International Conference on Communities and Technologies - C&T ’11, 138.

39. Bibliography
Peak Experience Lab. (n.d.). ”7 Reasons Museums Should Share More Experiences, Less Information”. Peak Experience Lab. Retrieved
February 26, 2020.
Petrelli, D., Marshall, M. T., O’Brien, S., McEntaggart, P., & Gwilt, I. (2017). “Tangible data souvenirs as a bridge between a physical museum
visit and online digital experience”. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 21(2), 281–295.
Sweeney and Schonfeld, “Interrogating Institutional Practices in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion,” Ithaka S+R, September 20, 2018.
Vermeeren, A. P. O. S., Calvi, L., Sabiescu, A., Trocchianesi, R., Stuedahl, D., Giaccardi, E., & Radice, S. (2018).” Future Museum Experience
Design: Crowds, Ecosystems and Novel Technologies”. In A. Vermeeren, L. Calvi, & A. Sabiescu (Eds.), Museum Experience Design (pp. 1–16).
Springer International Publishing.

40. Poster of #cats_the_mewvie on Imdb.
Gikoneko on Wikimedia Commons.
Nyancat on Giphy.
I can has cheezburger meme
on Webarchive.
Giphy
https://gph.is/1836Oyi
Giphy
https://gph.is/15oEEzy
Giphy
https://gph.is/1O2VYjp
Giphy
https://gph.is/2sjIJoL
Giphy
https://gph.is/g/4wMNm08