VIRTUAL MUSEUM and REVIEW OF VIRTUAL MUSEUMS IN TURKEY. Research Assistant Arzu Cilasun, Yasar University, Department of Architecture

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1 VIRTUAL MUSEUM and REVIEW OF VIRTUAL MUSEUMS IN TURKEY Research Assistant Arzu Cilasun, Yasar University, Department of Architecture Museums can be defined in many different ways. According to Silverstone museums are in many respects like other contemporary media. They entertain and inform; they tell stories and construct arguments; they aim to please and to educate; they define, consciously or unconsciously; effectively or ineffectively, an agenda; they translate the otherwise unfamiliar and inaccessible into the familiar and accessible (Silverstone, 2004, pg.162). The definition and perception of museums for public has not been as clear as it is stated by Silverstone. Relationship between museums and public has evolved in many ways through the history. First museums were mainly the private collections of wealthy individuals, families or institutions of art and rare or curious natural objects and artifacts. They were often displayed in so-called wonder rooms or cabinets of curiosities. Most of the times only "respectable" ones could access to these rooms, especially to private art collections. The oldest museum in evidence was Ennigaldi-Nanna's museum which is dating from 530 BC. However the oldest public museum in the world is pretty young compared to Ennigaldi-Nanna. It was opened in Rome during the Renaissance. In fact, the real interaction between museums and public had started with the Age of Enlightenment. Many significant museums in the world were not founded until the 18th century. 1

2 In the 1980s museums influenced by the New Museology and began to change the way they conveyed the context information of the exhibits to the wider public. There was a shift in the museology concept towards considering that the context of a cultural artifact was more important than the item itself (Pearce, 1986; Washburn, 1984; McDonald, 1991; Alsford, 1991). Considering that the basic aim of museums is to transmit documents/ objects to visitors in an effective way, various exposition techniques have been tested. Starting with 19 th century, interactivity has been used in museums as an exposition technique. The first example was in Berlin where the audiences were activating the models. In technologic environments where experimental practices have been used, the users have to make decisions, get feedback in return, and discover different thoughts. (Keene, 1998, pg.52) Curators had used various kinds of expositions techniques such as video projections, light and sound shows, simulations etc. starting from those years and nowadays virtuallity is much more common in museums. Virtuality is not being used only for effective exhibition but also for widening accessibility. Today, museums back demands are accepted as world s common heritage so that many museums are digitalizing their materials. In this way, people can access to the information over internet, no matter where they are. By taking advantage of internet potential, virtual museums were created and now there are thousands of them and their number are rapidly on the increase. Actually the term virtual often is associated with the idea of a duplication of reality. As a result, virtual museum has become a useful synonym for multimedia products and websites capable of providing new and fresh experiences of a specific museum 2

3 heritage or creating a large system of interconnections among different museum collections (Giaccardi, 2006). The idea of virtual museum was first introduced by Andre Malraux in He proposed an imaginary museum concept where there are no walls, location or spatial boundaries so that one who is interested can access its content and objects even from across the planet (Stylani, et al., 2009). When carefully thought through, actually all museums are virtual since they extract each piece/object from its original environment and transferred to a new site. In museums, objects relationships with its original environment and time are recreated. So museums are virtual because they collect pieces and switch them to something else. By looking at the definitions and explanations above, one can mistakably conclude that any internet application of a museum can be called virtual museum. A web site which only has images or a web site which lets the users to take a virtual tour are not enough to be named as virtual museum. Actually digitalized images of a museum that can be visited over internet are only simulations of the museum which constituted by using information technologies. Simulations are reproductions of the originals and don t have unique properties. Then what is a real virtual museum? A real virtual museum brings together similar objects which are physically not close to each other in real world and make connection between different collections. 3

4 Virtual museums on the internet, which are developed as extensions of physical museums, are grouped in three categories by International Council of Museums (ICOM); the brochure museum, the content museum and the learning museum (ICOM, 2004). The brochure museums inform visitors about the visiting hours, location, calendar of events etc. Their basic aim is to motivate visitors to see the physical museum so they work more like a marketing tool for a museum. The content museums main aim is a website created with the purpose of making information about the museum collections available. In content museums, object itself is on the origin and they re similar with information databases. Since the basic aim is not to educate, content museums are more suitable for the ones who are already familiar with the content itself. The learning museum offers different points of access according to the visitors age, background and knowledge. The information is presented in a context oriented way. Learning museums aim is to motivate the virtual visitor to learn more about a subject of particular interest and visit the site again. ICOM (2007) defines museums as A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment. This definition is also true for virtual museums as well since they are capable of doing all of these. In fact, virtual museums can also act in a complementary and auxiliary manner. They are worldwide accessible and a research 4

5 revealed that 70% of people visiting a museum website would subsequently be more likely to go and visit the real museum (Loomis, et al. 2003). Virtual museums provide digital representations of cultural artifacts and database technologies with which multimedia information about the virtual museum artifacts can be stored and retrieved whenever is needed. Another benefit that we can get from virtual museums is that curators can experiment and test various presentation styles before deciding on the temporary exhibition. Space limitation is not an issue for virtual museums, so the curators don t have to limit the number of objects that will be displayed. Most of the time World Wide Web (www) is used for visual museums since it is very popular, fast, user friendly, low-cost and provides unrestricted round-the-clock access. The user can concentrate on the artifact without a possible disturbance from other users. Since they can be visited from any place and anyone, they provide access to people with disabilities as well. Another advantage of virtual museums is they overcome the space limitation problem. In physical museums artifacts generally are shown in display cases where there is only a limited amount of information about them is available due to lack of space. But since there is not such a problem in virtual exhibits, they can contain information that a display case cannot. In addition to information, virtual museum exhibitions also may provide the experience of observing and examining an object from all angles, which is not possible in physical exhibitions. Also virtual museums give users the opportunity to control the virtual tour and they can orient themselves according to preferences and interests. 5

6 A virtual museum establishes direct connection between curators and end-users. Actually the end-user can be categorized in three; the specialists, the students and the tourists. Virtual museums exhibitions contain a great amount of depth of information meant to broaden perspectives, satisfy needs and encourage a deeper understanding of virtual visitors of any of the listed categories. For example tourists may only interested in basic and distinguishing information, while students and specialists can find specialized research needs including the comparative study requirements. Up to this point, all the advantages of virtual museums have been discussed. But despite significant advantages, virtual museums also have drawbacks. For example sometimes advanced graphic systems present the image as true, giving the sense of misleading accuracy. During reconstruction, due to the missing elements sometimes scientists have to use their imagination or rely on similar cases. A good image can give the impression to the viewer that museologists know more than they actually do (Miller and Richards, 1995). Virtual museums come up with a necessity that may be challenging for some visitors, which is use of computer skills. In order to access information, visitors actually become users in this case. For that reason, the ones who face problems in using plug-ins and other applications (that need to be downloaded and installed) are automatically excluded. Another problem is that some virtual museums don t have a certain target community and aim. The design must be clearly thought through and the information must be 6

7 organized in order to construct a narrative, otherwise the curators purpose cannot be understood by the end-user. It should not be ignored that virtual museums are costly projects therefore in many cases; the biggest source of income is sponsors and funds just like the non-virtual ones. In addition to this copyright issue may cause problem in virtual. Although most of the times images are so small to be published, yet still the users should not informed about copyrights. While pro s and con s of virtual museum debates are almost obsolescent in many countries, Turkey is still very ambitious on this. Because of the public s insouciance in museums and low internet usage rate, these debates are quite new for Turkey when compared with Europe and USA. But as the internet usage become more common, first brochure museums of physical museums were established as an extension. Museums started to have websites which were usually weak in context, only providing limited information like visiting hours, fees and address. As time goes on, the experience and innovations stand out and today, the improvements on virtual museums in Turkey are quite promising. Since it s impossible to analyze every virtual museum in Turkey, only one variable is chosen to compare different museums. And that variable is chosen as the sponsor type because it has a rather large effect on the virtual museum itself. Without providing an exhaustive survey of virtual museums, one with state-funded Hatay Archeology Museum one with private sector and one with international collaborator are chosen to analyze. 7

8 The first real virtual museum of Turkey was constituted by Eczacıbaşı in 1999 and named Eczacıbaşı Virtual Museum Since it is the initiator, it faced problems like educating its own museum staff, professional designers which resulted in new qualified men for the sector. Eczacıbaşı Virtual Museum has blazed the trail for the others while updating itself rapidly and has prepared more than 200 virtual exhibitions and various research dossiers since then. Also it has organized a grand exhibition including 60 artists for the 2002 Istanbul Art Fair, as well as the first educational exhibition project starting the same year and continuing the following three years at the İstanbul Art Fair (Sanal Müze, 2009). The number of images displaying the artworks of hundreds of artists within these exhibitions exceeds , and it has reached nearly independent internet users and has become a significant source for art students (Sanal Müze, 2009). Eczacıbaşı Virtual Museum can be grouped in the learning museum s since it offers different points of access according to the visitors background and knowledge. For example in the learning by research section, there text and images that helps to explain the creation period and works of the artist. Reading the Works of Arts, How We Perceive, Analyze A Work Of Art, Knowing An Artist s World, Pictures And Stories and Book Suggestions parts are for visitors who are not very familiar with art. On the other hand Research Resources part provides the immediate connection to the focus of art of our country and the world. The image quality and information (such as title, artist, date and the story of the object) are sufficient to have a gripping tour for the visitors. International art links are also useful for the ones who are interested in getting more information. Also 8

9 exhibitions vary as current, conceptual, sculpture and caricature as well as special sections for artists. So the information is presented in a context oriented way. Hatay Archeology Museum is both a physical and a virtual museum. In its virtual museum, the users can find visiting hours, fees and address of the museum as well as brief information about museum, collections and Hatay, just like a brochure museum. On the other hand visitors can access to all of its collection with high quality detailed images and even search in its inventory. This feature may be very useful especially for professionals and researchers. Since the museum doesn t provide different points of access according to the user, main aim is not to educate but to make the collection available in internet, we can conclude that this is a content museum. The museum can be enriched if it would have links to other mosaic museums which have similar artifacts or include entertaining services for various types of users. Discover Islamic Art museum is a virtual museum which was set up with the support of European Union. It s one of the branches of Museum with No Frontiers (MWNF) and supported by international collaborators. It has a pretty comprehensive permanent collection consisted on various times, styles and cultures. Besides that, it also provides information through its database and exhibitions. Website provides many useful links related with Islamic Art and also contains information for various levels of users. Artistic Information section provides brief information about history and art of different cultures. In addition to that museum entertains users by many services. For example users can make his/her own museum, or play games with the artifacts (categorizing and defining them). When 9

10 these issues considered, we can conclude that Discover Islamic Art museum is a learning museums since it motivates users to learn more about Islamic art and visit the site again. Digitalization has affected museums just like it affected our everyday lives. New museology concept and virtual museums has changed the relation between public and museums. The innovations and advantages of virtuality in museums are discussed as well as its drawbacks and it is realized that virtual museums can be very useful. In order to analyze virtual museums in Turkey, three different virtual museums were chosen. It is seen that having different sponsor types and various incomes are also effecting museum s opportunities and target audience, and interface. For example, in state funded museum, connection with other museums and outside links are pretty poor while international cooperative one has strong bonds and connections. Also the private sector and firm s vision is also very effective on the quality and proactivity. Eczacıbaşı, as an initiator on virtual museums, represents its own brand very well while renewing itself rapidly. Virtual museums may compensate Turkey s belatedness and backwardness on contemporary museums. Especially, in relation to the increase in usage of computers on education, virtual museums may be more commonly used to achieve information. Technology and digitalization is affecting many areas, inevitably transfer of information in museums is one of those areas. Museums showed a great shift with virtual museums fact. Virtual museums can be grouped in various branches according to their aims, general viewers and content, but fundamentally they all work 10

11 for the same purpose which is to share world heritage. In this respect, pros and cons of virtual museums are discussed in this paper over three virtual museum examples from Turkey. Three virtual museums, which all have different sponsor and content types, have been introduced, analyzed and compared. As a result, the improvements in Turkey s virtual museums found to be promising, and they can be very useful for increasing public attention and accessibility to museums. BIBLIOGRAPHY Alsford, S., Museums as hypermedia: Interacting on a museum-wide scale. In Proceedings of the ICHIM 91 Conference, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, October 1991, 1991, pp Giaccardi, E Collective story telling and social creativity in the virtual museum: a case study. Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2006, Design Issues Volume 22, p. 3. Hatay Arkeoloji Müzesi, Available at: [Accessed 2 March 2012]. ICOM News, no.3, Available at: [Accessed 2 March 2012]. Keene, S. (1998). Digital Collections: Museums and the Information Age, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Loomis, R.J., Elias, S.M.,Wells,M (Unpublished Report) Website availability and visitor motivation: An evaluation study for the Colorado Digitization Project. Fort Collins, CO: Colorado State University, available at: report.pdf McDonald, G., Alsford, S., 1991.The museum as information utility. Museum Management and Curatorship Vol. 10, pp Miller, P., Richards, J The good, the bad, and the downright misleading: archaelogical adoption of computer visualization. In: J. Hugget, N. Ryan (Eds.), Proceedings of the CAA 1995 Conference, Oxford, U.K., Tempus Reparatum, BAR Internation Series 600, 1995, pp Museum With No Frontiers, Available at: [Accessed 2 April 2012]. Pearce, S.M.,1986. Thinking about things. approaches to the study of artifacts, Museum Journal (1986), pp

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