Digital technologies are rapidly changing how culture is consumed, curated and designed, affecting both virtual and in-person art experiences. In this course, we will look at how museum professionals and curators are working online to create new types of cultural and spatial experiences.

Web-based exhibitions and content have seen a renaissance since the beginning of the pandemic as our lives migrated online at an accelerated rate. Startups and large corporate firms are racing to create infrastructure for the metaverse, while artists and curators are inhabiting and experimenting with new platforms to create and exhibit their work. Simultaneously traditional museums are seeing decreased attendance numbers, making it particularly urgent for institutions and cultural practitioners to consider the impact of virtual exhibition-making. Illustrated through examples and references, and accompanied by in-class exercises, course attendants will explore virtual exhibitions together and think through the questions that arise in showing art online.

Core topics include accessibility and affordances of virtual exhibitions, as well as questions of authorship and authenticity. To anchor the debates the course will introduce terminology and technical concepts behind spatial techniques such as 3d modeling, 3d scanning as well as virtual and augmented reality. The sessions are designed to be accessible for any museum professional, designer or artist interested in expanding their view of what exhibition-making is and can be..

Some sessions may use Miro (an online whiteboard). No prior experience is needed, but we recommend exploring it briefly beforehand here.

Image Futurenewmexico, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons