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