As we begin the new year in 2021, the COVID-19 public health crisis continues to impact the museum sector: intermittent closures, widespread layoffs, and a scramble to create engaging visitor experiences, inside and outside the museum. This article explores digital technology solutions that have helped museums with visitor engagement during the crisis.

2020 was all about digital engagement.

From business meetings on Zoom to family and friends on FaceTime, the planet has shifted to virtual experiences for professional and personal connections like never before.

Similarly, museums were forced to address their ability to engage audiences from a distance like never before. Prior to COVID, museum websites provided mostly general information like a directory listing for the real experience, its exhibits and programs. After being forced to close their physical spaces, the digital realm for museums came into sharper focus.

Audience engagement with museums in 2020 was overwhelmingly digital.

Did it peak in March? According to Google, “virtual museum tour” was one of the most popular search terms in March 2020, at the onset of COVID-19 in the US. However, the search term hit its peak in the third week of March, and interest began to wain after just one week.

Once closures became widespread, digital resources were prioritized to provide access to exhibits and programs during closures. YouTube and 360º technology were used to create virtual tours of the museum. Web sites were built to host new digital exhibits. Finally, some new platforms have created ways to use technology both inside and outside the museum with greater ease.

Museums 360º

One of the most immediate responses from the smallest to the grandest of museums was to create virtual visits using 360º photos.

Here the virtual visitor experiences what is sometimes a strange 2D version of space.

Virtual visitors learned quickly that the experience cannot compare to the awe-inspiring feeling one gets when experiencing Frank Lloyd Wright’s spiraling galleries in the Guggenheim, I.M. Pei’s dramatic glass pyramid entrance to the Louvre, or Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel inside the enormous Vatican museums.

The results fall flat, and the sense of being in the space is lost in translation. There is little, if any, didactic interpretation. Navigation can be difficult from platform to platform, and the visitor may end up staring at a close-up of the marble floor without exit.

The zoom features are helpful, but without intuitive navigation or a “virtual tour guide,” the overall experience is disappointing. This technology is best left to the real estate industry.

YouTube Videos

Another digital resource used to recreate the real visitor experience is YouTube. Though not a new resource for museums, the production of new videos from museums small and large increased substantially during 2020.

Like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, many museums used 360º videos to guide virtual visitors through the museum using videos on YouTube.

While offering a more structured way to direct visitors through virtual spaces than the 360º technology above, the experience is still not the same as standing in front of great art.

However, YouTube provides museums with a platform for content that can be used to engage new audiences in unique and targeted ways. Three examples below include MoMA‘s virtual view of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” with Anna Deavere Smith’s reading of a letter from the artist to his brother, Theo. The Rijksmuseum created a series of YouTube videos called “Is It Art?” which examine contemporary artistic creations with more traditional art forms from the museum’s collections as a way of drawing younger audiences into the decisions of labeling them “art”. Finally, London’s National Gallery used YouTube to create a 5-minute meditation with Odilon Redon’s painting as its visual background.

All of these videos deliver content to audiences far and wide. Their success depends on their dissemination. Most museums use their social media outlets to market this content.

Online Exhibits

Less pervasive but equally important are online exhibits. These digital stories provide virtual visitors with learning opportunities outside the museum.

For the curator and educator, these exhibits provide ways to organize and present collections in an evergreen format with the ability to edit and update content as the exhibit ages. The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery‘s exhibit “First Ladies of the United States” is a great example of this type of exhibit.

Free from the limitations of physical space, these exhibits allow museums to create more robust learning resources for the public. They often feature artworks that may not be visible to the public, even when open.

Many of these digital experiences incorporate audio and video media. Some use creative ways of presenting the information. What is unique about these exhibits is the lack of a physical exhibit. The experience is designed to be completely virtual. The Museum of Modern Art organized an online exhibit about drawing in the 20th Century as the permanent online exhibit reflecting the museum’s real exhibit which was on view from November 21, 2010, to February 7, 2011. The Smithsonian Renwick Gallery was forced to close Janet Echelman’s “1.8 Renwick” exhibit shortly after it opened in 2020. It created a website to show the exhibit online until it reopens in 2021. The Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum used a website to curate content for “Willi Smith – Street Couture” an exhibit that lives on thanks to digital communications.

The success of these online exhibits depends on each site’s accessibility and navigation. They can require substantial resources, including hours of research by curators, the scripting by educators, and time for production by technology teams. Their visibility depends upon the integration of the museum’s digital and marketing strategies.

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Smartify Virtual Tours

Guided tours lead by a docent or museum device audio guides were standard experiences before COVID-19 began to shut down museums everywhere.

Like the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, many museums have created audio tours of specific exhibitions. Most large art museums provided handheld devices in several languages. With the onset of COVID, docent-led tours and handheld devices have become obsolete. The health crisis has also made museums acutely aware of the risks involved with interactive exhibits – from audio guides to touch screens.

Smartify is a digital channel that delivers museum content to users’ devices via a web app as well as a mobile app. Started five years ago, the company currently hosts over 120 museum partners from around the world.

Prior to COVID-19, Smartify was focused on the mobile experience. The scan-to-learn technology allows users to scan the artwork to learn more on smart devices. With COVID-19, the company expanded the delivery of content to a web app so that the tours could be more easily disseminated through digital channels and social media outlets.

Using cloud-based software, museums are able to upload their digitized collections into the platform and then transform their content into meaningful stories using the tour building features. Tours can be designed for the general public, like the National Portrait Gallery’s tour above and they can be delivered in as many languages as the museum wants. Or, they can create audience-specific experiences using customized tours.

For example, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art used Smartify to create a wonderful ASL tour for its deaf communities using videos of sign interpreters. The British Museum created a tour exploring LGBTQ histories using its collections.

Finally, one of the best things about the Smartify platform is its universality. Once a museum reopens, the visitor can still use Smartify inside the museum to access the tours and more. The Belvedere Museum in Vienna used Smartify to replace its handheld devices when it reopened in the summer of 2020 in an effort to reduce the risk of the spread of COVID.

The resulting experience via the Smartify platform is well-designed and allows for media files to be added, making use of YouTube videos and external content to add to the robustness of the content.

Conclusion

In retrospect, museums have used as many resources as possible to continue to connect with their communities. From 360º virtual tours to Smartify, each platform adds new ways to reach audiences with their content whether on a laptop at home or on a mobile device inside a museum.

What is important for museums in 2021 is to continue to develop and deliver content via as many channels as possible. The ability to manage resources while providing a great visitor experience requires attention to the continued impact that COVID-19 will have on our lives into the new year and beyond. As they continue to evolve with their partners’ needs, digital platforms like Smartify provide museums with the best tools for any scenario.