Open Road: The Mazda Museum

Cars, especially classic cars or ones with really out-there designs, are pretty cool.  I like seeing these vehicles up close and being able to learn more about them, but I always imagined that this was best done in person.  Apparently Mazda thinks this isn't necessarily the case.  Though the company has a physical museum in Hiroshima, Japan, they have also elected to display some of their history online for the rest of the world to see.  The result is a pretty impressive collection of images and information.

Mazda's online presence includes a few different components:  a timeline-style history, several special exhibits and a huge gallery of images and information on past and present cars.  The history section contains a fair amount of information, which is not too overwhelming but can also be a bit dry.  A photograph of some aspect of that time period accompanies each entry.  The special exhibitions are pretty unique - you can learn about the fortieth anniversary of a signature Mazda engine, the company's innovative designs shows of 2006 and 2007, and the design challenge they sponsored six years ago - and by including a number of images and video to explore, they provide a lot of supporting material for these topics.  I especially like that you can sign up to get email alerts about new special exhibits, rather than having to check back frequently to see whether anything has changed.

The best part of this museum, though, is the vast collection of pictures and stats on Mazda's cars.  This
gallery is broken down into four sections - one each devoted to classic cars, concept cars, innovations that the company pioneered and photographic highlights from the company's history.  Images accompany all the entries in each category, along with each car's vital stats and a few paragraphs of information.  I was most interested in looking at the cars, but I can appreciate that the other information provided would really delight a car fanatic.

Putting together everything that is provided online, I think Mazda has done a pretty good job of placing interesting and relevant content in a format that appeals to the virtual visitor.  Sure, the experience of being close to these cars and seeing how they relate to the space around them is not something you can replicate in the virtual world, but realistically very few of us will every make it to Hiroshima.  This really is the next best thing - and believe it or not, the Mazda museum does provide an experience that's almost as good as seeing the cars in person.


The Mazda Museum
Website:  www.mazdamuseum.com

More Than Tires and Blimps: The Akron Art Museum's Online Collections

When you think of art museums, you probably don't think of Akron, Ohio.  And when you think of Akron (if you do at all), you might only remember that it's where Goodyear is headquartered.  But I discovered recently that Akron does in fact have an art museum - one with some fairly significant works (like Andy Warhol's silkscreened Elvis) and a rather impressive online presence.

The Online Collections of the Akron Art Musuem contain selected works from fifteen different genres the museum displays, most of which are within the realm of modern art.  There are also currently three sections devoted to new works within the museum, each focusing on a different artist.  Each exhibit contains several dozen pieces, with the museum providing the title and composition for each one along with a brief description that provides information on the artist and locates the work within the context of its movement.  The amount of information provided is really great - the descriptions are engaging, informative, and neither too long nor too jargon-y.  Visitors to the online collections can also view additional, cross-referenced information on each artist as well as share artworks via Facebook or email.

What I like most about these online collections, however, is their sense of both ambition and realism.

According to the online collection's opening page, their goal is to eventually have all the museum's artworks up for display on the internet.  They acknowledge that the physical museum's gallery space constraints allow for "only a fraction"of the objects they hold to be displayed at any one time.  I really admire their willingness to be open with the public about where the majority of their collections spend most of their time while in the museum's ownership, as well as their desire to make the most of the limitlessness an online collection could provide to the public.

In all, I think the Akron Art Museum could be a model for how art museums can make themselves more accessible to a wider audience while also making the entirety of their holdings viewable.  Sure, this museum probably has many fewer objects than many well-known art institutions, but it has a staff of less than thirty.  If they can produce such an impressive online collection, with plans to digitize everything in the hazy future, then surely this level of presentation and information is duplicable for other, more well-resourced organizations.

I look forward to the Akron Art Museum becoming a leader in this field.


The Akron Art Museum's Online Collection
Website:  www.akronartmuseum.org/collection

Papal States: The Vatican Museums Collections Online

With the Pope's resignation looming, now is an interesting time to look at what the Vatican's museums are doing online.  But first - did you know that the Vatican had an extensive museum system?  That was certainly news to me, although I guess that all the wealth and objects they've accumulated (taken?) over the centuries had to go somewhere.  And, considering that this Pope decided to get on Twitter, it makes sense for the Vatican's collections to have an online presence.  Surprisingly, for an institution that is very old and sometimes seems to be stuck in the past, the Vatican's virtual museum is quite impressive.

Unlike the Louvre, whose online museum I've written about previously, the Vatican seems to have given many of its physical collections a home on the web.  There are ten different collections that can be accessed online, and each of these collections is housed among a number of rooms.  Most rooms, in turn, have several different artifacts that can be viewed, which means that in total there are hundreds of objects to look at.  Some of the Vatican's most prominent holdings, like the frescos in the Sistine Chapel, are gathered in a "Not to Be Missed" section.

In addition, each collection, each room and each object is accompanied by text that is informative but not too long-winded (the individual objects also have their curatorial information presented).  This all adds up to a lot of beautiful images and a digestible and interesting amount of information about what and why the Vatican has all these things.

My only quibble with this virtual museum is that it's not so easy to navigate.  I suppose this has to do with how many layers it contains, and how many objects there are to work your way through.  Sometimes, though, it gets a little illogical trying to find your way around - for example, if you click on the "Virtual Visit of This Room" feature that some rooms have, all you get is a tiny, useless floor plan.

All in all, though, this online museum is pretty impressive, especially considering how old-fashioned and hidebound the Vatican often seems.  Although it makes me a little squeamish to think about how these objects were acquired, the fact remains that they are impressive artifacts and highly accessible to web audiences.  I never thought I would say this, but the Vatican seems to be one of the leaders in online museum collections.


The Vatican Museums Online Collections
Website:  mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/MV_Visite.html

French Style: The Louvre Online Tours

The Louvre is lucky.  It's one of the most well-known and recognized museums in the world, and it's probably never hurting for visitors (or funds).  It holds the world's most famous artwork (the Mona Lisa) and it now has two satellite locations:  one in the north of France and one in Abu Dhabi.  Given all these resources and prestige, you would hope that the museum would have a phenomenal online presence, including some sort of virtual experience.  Once again, the Louvre does not disappoint - at least in quality.

The online tours here represent two galleries:  the Rotunda, which displays the museum building's history, and the Egyptian Antiquities wing.  Launching either of these tours brings you to a digital rendering of each section of the building, which you can move around in by mousing over the floor until black arrows appear or by dragging left or right over the screen.  Descriptions of each room appear in a text box below at the bottom of the screen, and although you get only a short paragraph of details, it's just the right length to inform without overwhelming.

If you browse through the items in the galleries, you'll find that some of them show an "i" when you hover over them.  This indicates that you can click on these items to display a more detailed image and some information.  The images quality is excellent, and I'm glad the museum includes curatorial information (like age, composition and dimensions) for these artifacts, although some descriptive text would be appealing to casual visitors.

These two tours are excellent and make good use of technology and the Louvre's resources, so it's puzzling that more isn't on offer.  There are ten other sections of the museum that could also be made into virtual tours.  I'm also not sure why a third tour, of the Galerie d'Apollon, was displayed on the Louvre's website but was not working (the link took me to Google's French website).

These, I suppose, are goals to reach towards - perhaps more tours are being planned for the future.  Given the Louvre's status in the museum world, they have shown an admirable effort to make at least some of their collections available to the wider world.  I hope they can fix some of the flaws in these tours, and I hope someday to be able to experience more of the museum from the comfort of my computer screen.


The Louvre Online Tours
Website:  www.louvre.fr/en/visites-en-ligne

Faith, Hope and Love: The Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton Museum

When we think about the saints of the Catholic Church, we usually imagine mystical figures - like St. George and his dragons - or sadistically tortured adherents such as St. Catherine, who died on a spiked wheel.  Most of these figures lived a long time ago, and it's easy to think that sainthood is a dying tradition.  But in fact, more modern figures are being canonized even up to this day.  One of these newer saints, Elizabeth Ann Seton, is the subject of a small online museum.

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton has the distinction of being the first native-born American citizen to be granted sainthood.  During her short lifetime she made religious pilgrimages, founded of the first Catholic school in the United States, set up missions to help the poor, and created America's earliest Catholic women's religious order.  She was made a saint in 1975, and her legacy includes three American colleges:  Seton Hall University, Seton Hill University, and the College of St. Elizabeth.

How did I learn all this?  From the museum, which is highly informative without being boring.  Most of the pages contain no more than a few short paragraphs of text with images interspersed.  Rather than present tons of material all at once, the different periods of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton's life are broken down into sections and subsections that are well-labeled and easy to navigate.  The result is that you can learn a lot without being overwhelmed.

The only downside to this museum is its size - it's doesn't have very much content, and you can probably view everything in fifteen minutes or less.  There are educational resources offered - specifically, a CD with more information and activities - so you could potentially get more out of the museum.  But I think I'd rather the museum keep its size and its manageable content than expand and lose some of its charm along the way.  This museum just goes to show that it doesn't take mountains of information or flashy graphics to make an interesting virtual museum - just a well-crafted site and interesting material.


The Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton Museum
Website:  www.scny.org/setonmuseum

Science, Science Everywhere: The Museum of Science, Boston's Online Museum

I love science museums.  I work in one, I first got interested in museums while interning in one, and I try to visit as many as I can across the country (and the world).  So when science museums start putting content online and creating digital exhibits, I get pretty excited.  I think informal science education is fantastic, and the more that can be widely shared, the better.  So I'm happy with some of the Museum of Science, Boston's online offerings, but some of it just isn't that interesting.

First, the good.  Prominently featured are videos and audio clips about subjects as varied as NASA, magnetism and nanotechnology, which are good tools to draw curious amateur scientists in.  There are a couple of really interesting exhibits - on Ancient Egypt, nanomedicine and oceans - that do a pretty good job of recreating a museum-going experience online.  Particularly well done are an exhibit about Leaonardo da Vinci, which lays out a lot of information and images in a very approachable form, and a section on scanning electron microscopes, which is pretty bare-bones but absolutely lovely in its presentation.

But these sections are buried deep within the online museum.  The audio and video clips I mentioned above, while enlightening, aren't really what online museums should be focusing on - after all, sitting and watching or listening are pretty passive and minimally engaging activities.  The other featured content includes a pretty boring exhibit on alternative energy (a few pictures of solar cells spread among paragraphs of text isn't all that exciting) and some links that take you to pages about living lab projects going on in the physical museum.  I found these pages very frustrating because they're not at all like exhibits - instead, they read like the websites that universities put up about their various research labs.  There's not much educational content or contextualizing of the project, just profiles of the researchers and progress timelines.

These project websites seem like newer content, and if that's the case I would recommend that the Museum of Science, Boston stick to formats like its older online exhibits.  Pictures from powerful microscopes are incredibly cool, and so are da Vinci's sketches and games that let you act as a cancer doctor.  Interspersed that with some media clips and you've got a pretty good online science museum.


Museum of Science, Boston's Online Museum
Website:  www.mos.org/museum-online

A Walk in the Park: California State Parks' Online Museum Collections

As I've mentioned before, I'm a huge fan of federal and state land programs.  I grew up going to many national parks for vacations, and I'm now lucky to live in an area with many beautiful state parks and forests nearby.  In recent years, many of these administered lands have begun to create exhibits and programs to accompany their natural splendor, and some are even creating online museums.  That's exactly what the California State Parks system has done, and while it's a noble endeavor, it's execution leaves much to be desired.

These online collections consist of images arranged by category, and the array of topics is pretty impressive.  You can view nature photographs, images of historic structures, immigration documents, paintings, advertising materials, and landscapes, among many other objects.  The most fascinating are the certificates that Chinese workers presented upon their arrival to California - you can view twelve of these papers in detailed images.  Also interesting - assuming you're into the lives of the American elite - are artifacts from Hearst Castle.

Unfortunately, there's not much to these collections beyond images.  Few of the images contain meaningful descriptions to provide context for the objects or artwork - most simply communicate what the objects look like and what their dimensions are - and a good number have no explanation at all.  The only collection categories that had interesting texts accompanying their objects were Architect Julia Morgan:  A Blueprint for Success and Treasurers from a Pioneer Family.  I suppose that the information provided is sufficient for a researcher, but for a general audience most of the collections fall flat.

It's too bad, because as the land administration system for the most populous state, the California State Parks department could surely provide a lot of fascinating content.  There are some interesting subjects on display here and I believe a greater depth of information could really draw online visitors in.  As it stands now, though, I can't see these virtual collections really adding anything to the park experience.


California State Parks' Online Museum Collections
Website:  www.museumcollections.parks.ca.gov

Fashion Forward: The Museum at FIT Online Collections

I love fashion.  A lot.  What I love even more is historical fashion:  hoop skirts, flapper dresses, those gorgeous A-line gowns from the 50s, and on and on.  I've always heard that New York's Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) has a wonderful museum, but I've never had a chance to go in person.  So you can imagine that when I stumbled across FIT's online collections, I had to fight the urge to swoon.  I'll try to be objective in reviewing these collections, but it's going to be difficult.

The best feature of FIT's online presence is the sheer number of objects on display.  You can view hundreds of objects, from the 18th century to the present day, in highly detailed photographs.  For many objects there are multiple images available, each showing a different view, that can be viewed in higher resolutions.  All objects are labeled with the materials they're made of, their date and country of origin, and what designer they come from (if known).  I especially like the descriptions that accompany each object, because for the most part they are short enough to keep your attention, yet still contain some interesting information - like how Vogue likened Chanel's first little black dress to a Ford.

Besides learning about clothes and accessories, there are also detailed biographies of every designer whose work is featured in the online collections.  These biographies are informative but a little lengthy and dry.  I wasn't too interested in reading more than a few, so I can imagine that someone less fashion-oriented might not care too much for this feature.

Although I really enjoy these collections, if I put myself in the shoes of someone who's not so keen on fashion I can see that FIT needs to add more features if it wants to attract a wider audience.  Beyond enlarging the images, there's nothing that's really interactive about the content.  There's also not a lot of variety - it's all clicking and looking - and no real connections between the objects.  It would be worthwhile to create exhibits highlighting how earlier eras influenced later styles and how designers drew on those who came before them.  3D views and interviews with living designers would also add a change of pace to what's already here.

Not that I'm complaining - I could easily spend a few hours or more combing through these collections in wonder.  But I realize that I'm a special case, and that the collections' current format seems designed to appeal to researchers and those of us who are already fashion converts.  It's my feeling that caring about clothes doesn't have to be a snobbish, elite pastime, but can be enjoyed by anyone who like colors and textures and the way they look on the human body.  The Museum at FIT Online Collections need to be spruced up a little bit if they want to convey that message.


The Museum at FIT - Online Collections
Website:  fashionmuseum.fitnyc.edu

Visiting the President: The White House Museum

Twenty years ago I got to tour the White House, but since I was only five years old I remember absolutely nothing.  Nowadays, because of increased security, it's difficult for an average citizen to be able to visit the President's home.  But if you're curious about the layout of this famous building and its grounds, and you don't mind wading through some dense information, the White House Museum is a pretty good resource.

The museum can seem a little intimidating at first, because when you enter the museum you're greeted with a page full of text and numbers (seriously - the square footage of the White House is listed, along with the number of bedrooms and bathrooms).  The museum's creator must have realized how boring this page looks, because helpfully included are links on the side to some of the building's more popular rooms.  If you scroll to the middle of the page, you can find interactive maps of all White House's wings.  There you can click to arrive on a layout of each floor, which provides a much more interesting museum experience.

The layouts are labeled with all the rooms in the White House, and each room has its own page.  Some of these pages are text-heavy, but most present just enough information.  Included with each room's page are a good number of photographs with brief, informative captions.  Many of the photographs are from the past decade, but there are quite a few historical images, some dating back to the nineteenth century.  The White House grounds are presented in a similar manner, and they're definitely worth a look, if only so you can realize just how many amenities the President has at his residence.

Aside from those two sections, the museum has only one other part, and it turned out to be my favorite.  There is a small gallery of art and furnishing in the White House, and the images of these artifacts are excellent.  A short description of accompanies the objects, as well as a link to the room where each is located.  It's quite interesting to see and learn about a few of the historical pieces that surround the President.

This museum is not connected to the government in any way, but is instead a private effort.  It's pretty amazing, then, to have all these images and information at your fingertips and laid out in an appealing way.  The text definitely needs to be whittled down, but aside from being too wordy this museum is really worth a look.  If you can't make it down to Washington, D.C., this might just be the next best thing.


The White House Musuem
Mission:  To provide a place to explore the history and heritage of the home of the president of the United State of America.
Website:  www.whitehousemuseum.org

FRABOOM Goes the Dynamite

An online children's museum sounds intriguing, doesn't it?  After all, children are becoming more and more adapt at navigating technology, and some would argue that they need to be computer literate as early as possible in order to succeed.  So it would make sense to introduce an online museum to children - they could learn to navigate around the internet and engage with content at the same time.  It sounds good, in theory.  It's just too bad that FRABOOM Online Children's museum doesn't deliver in practice.

The opening screen of FRABOOM shows a cartoonish exterior of a Grecian-style museum building, with five different sections to choose from.  You'll find, though, that you can only navigate to two of them - the games and a "Play Now!" link that asks you to become a paying member.  I'm guessing that all the other parts of the museum would become available as soon as you purchase a membership, but it seems a little dishonest to put for-pay content on the homepage.

I'm not sure I would even want to become a member, because the quality of the exhibits in FRABOOM leaves a little to be desired.  Although I would be interested to see what the U.S. Presidents and Dinosaurs sections look like, I can't really say the same for Talk With a Tooth Fairy Live! or an entire exhibit devoted to the mouth.  Although the topics featured on the museum's map are all pretty standard kid-friendly topics, they seem a little generic and bland.  There are thousands of places on the web where kids can learn about insects or the ocean for free, so if parents are going to be paying for content it had better be pretty spectacular.

Aside from the exhibits, the bonus features aren't too compelling.  There is a section of interactive books that are animated as they're read aloud, which is a cool feature, but there are only four shown on the virtual bookshelves (and only one is available for free).  The museum's games are intended to be educational, but in playing them I found it hard to discern just what I was supposed to be learning.  There's also a selection of so-so cartoons, but do children really need more television to watch?

As you can tell, FRABOOM leaves a lot to be desired.  The potential is there, in the form of some of the exhibits' content, but the momentum is lost in rehashing topics that have been done to death for kids and pushing too much flashy, minimally educational content to the fore.  The need to pay for most of the museum's content is also a huge drawback.  If you're going to shell out cash to see exhibits, you might as well purchase a membership to your local, physical children's museum and go as many times as you like.  I can guarantee there will be more creativity and less gimmickry on display.


FRABOOM - Online Children's Museum
Website:  www.fraboom.com

Ancient Artifacts: The Penn Museum Online Exhibits

The Penn Museum, which is a part of the University of Pennsylvania's campus, is one of those dusty old museums that contain some really interesting hidden gems.  How much you enjoy the museum depends on your level of patience - are you willing to shuffle through display cases that haven't changed much in fifty years?  If not, you might dismiss this as just another dry scholar's museum.  But if you do take the time to look closely at everything, you might find yourself pleasantly surprised.  The museum is now trying to show the world how interesting it can be through a few online exhibits, though I'm not sure how well they're succeeding.

There are ten exhibits you can browse on the Penn Museum's website, but for some reason the presentation of these exhibits isn't at all consistent.  The best allow for 3D viewing of objects in the collection and the exhibit halls they reside in.  Some also have interactive maps showing where University of Pennsylvania teams unearthed featured artifacts.  And some do a good job of linking the objects shown in these exhibits to the content of the physical museum's permanent displays.

But these positive aspects really only hold true for three exhibits:  The Real Story of the Ancient Olympic Games, The Ancient Greek World, and Egypt:  A New Look at an Ancient Culture.  The other seven exhibits leave something to be desired.  They tend to be long-winded, featuring long blocks of text interrupted only by a sparse few images.  Some take a rather too familiar tone, using a voice that seems much too casual and colloquial for exhibit content.  And one exhibit, The Real Me:  Therapeutic Narrative in Cosmetic Surgery, read like a very long Vanity Fair article slapped up on the web in a tiny blue font.

Over all, the online exhibits are pretty disappointing.  Compared to other physical museums that put content on their website, the Penn Museum is sorely lacking.  It seems strange that such a well-respected museum would neglect consistency and the curatorial voice, not to mention an element of enjoyability, in their online museum presence.  I do hope they get around to sprucing up this content, and soon, or they risk coming off as just another stuffy university museum.


The Penn Museum Online Exhibitions
Website:  www.penn.museum/online-exhibits.html

Remembrance: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Online Exhibitions

That most of us have learned about the Holocaust, in school and through our families and possibly our religious institutions, is testament is how hard we have worked to ensure that the horrors of this mass persecution aren't ever repeated.  By teaching each other about this tragedy and the awful acts that were committed, we hope to make such violence and prejudice repellent.  That's the aim of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and now through its online exhibits anyone can learn, in depth, the many different aspects of this genocide.

The Holocaust usually conjures up images of Jews being persecuted, which was its primary intention - but it's easy to forget that there were many other facets of the German rise to power.  The Holocaust Museum's multitude of online exhibits cover, basically, everything.  Want to know about the 1936 Berlin Olympics?  There's a huge exhibit about that event.  Curious about survivors who continued their lives in the United States?  You can view many oral histories about this migration.  You can also learn about religious leaders who opposed the German government, Nazi propaganda and Holocaust denial.

Some of these exhibits are highly detailed - the one about the Olympics, for example, goes on for pages and covers just about everything you could possibly think of.  Some are just a few short paragraphs, like the page about people of African descent in Nazi Germany.  This inconsistency is a little annoying, because you don't know if you're going to get a avalanche of information and photos or just a few bits of information.  I was also frustrated by the setup of the online exhibitions, because if you got caught down the rabbit hole of a particularly detailed exhibit, it was difficult to get back to the main page displaying all of the exhibits.

But the online exhibits do plenty of things incredibly well.  There are a wealth of images, video, and oral histories to browse through.  The museum also lets you browse its ID program (which presents photos and histories of specific concentration camp victims) online.  Plus, the shear number of topics is really amazing because it reminds you just how devastating the Holocaust was to so many groups of people.  It's this type of presentation and remembrance that helps us keep in mind how devastating this period in history was, and why we should never forget it.


The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Online Exhibits
Website:  www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online

Almost There: Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History Panoramic Virtual Tour

The Smithsonian museum system is, in my opinion, one of America's national treasures.  Comprising nineteen separate institutions plus a zoo and nine research centers, its collections are magnificent and highly varied.  And because it's run by the federal government, you can visit any part of it for free.  But if you've never made the trek to Washington, DC (or if you went there but somehow managed to not go to any part of the Smithsonian), you might never get a chance to see any of this.  But fear not, because the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) now has a virtual tour you can access from the comfort of your own home.

The NMNH's tour is pretty impressive.  You start in the building's rotunda and are treated to a lifelike 3D panoramic view of what's inside.  From there you can move around to all the exhibits - nineteen in total - via hotspots marked as arrows.  Clicking these arrows will take you from one gallery to the next, and in each section you can zoom in or out, rotate, and move up or down.  Galleries can also be accessed on a map in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, where the hotspots are labeled and clickable.

This setup is fascinating, because it really is the next best thing to actually being there.  The dioramas, the artifacts, the taxidermied animals - each of them is right in front of you in all their magnificence.  At some of the exhibits, you can even click on a camera symbol to get a close-up view of a particular specimen.  And since this is a virtual tour, you can spend as long as you like looking at everything, without the crowds and noise of a real museum.  The NMNH has even put several past exhibits online, plus a few views of the museum's grounds.

The only thing I found frustrating was the lack of interpretation on the tour.  In theory, you could zoom in on any of the information panels in the gallery until they were legible.  But in reality, only about half the panels were photographed in a resolution that allowed you to read them.  And those that are clear enough to make out distinct words can be difficult to view - you have to navigate precisely, so that the text comes into your field of vision, and you can easily bypass them if you don't look hard enough.

It would be nice to have information about what's in the galleries readily available - that would probably make this virtual tour perfect.  But even though that's not currently available, I still have to recommend the NMNH's panoramic tour as one of the best virtual museum projects I've seen.  It's made from pretty advanced technology, but it's not full of bells and whistles and gimmicks that take away from the museum's purpose.  It simply recreates the experience of browsing through the museum and seeing its many wonderful objects.


Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History Panoramic Virtual Tour
Website:  www.mnh.si.edu/panoramas

From Sea to Shining Sea: National Park Service Virtual Museum Exhibits

I grew up in a family that loves the U.S. National Park system, so I've had the chance to visit many parks, monuments,  and historic sites.  These places are interesting and definitely teach you a lot about American history and the natural wonders of the United States, but they can also be very remote.  Luckily, if you want to visit one of these sites but don't have time to travel, the Park Service's Virtual Museum Exhibits can bring the parks to your computer.

So far, only a handful of sites have any sort of online exhibit presence, so you might not get to learn about a site you're most interested in.  The sites that are online display pictures of artifacts they have, along with interpretive texts and maps.  All pictures can be viewed in detail, and in some cases the site provides links for you to request a copy of the image.  A few sites, mostly ones based around outdoor scenery and natural formations, also offer video.

But while it's certainly interesting to see historical artifacts and learn about, say, civil war battles and Native American culture, it can quickly get boring just reading and looking.  This format might hold up for really engaging sites like Alcatraz, but I'm convinced that only the most die-hard presidential history buff wants to scroll through pages and pages of text on Harry Truman.

Dinosaur National Monument is the only site to offer truly interactive features in its virtual exhibits.  On their website you can see a movie about the monument, view a 3D dinosaur skull from different angles, and take a virtual tour of an artist's depiction of the prehistoric West.  Features like these help keep a visitor's interest, and it would be great if other sites could incorporate something similar into their online exhibits.

It's definitely worthwhile for these few sites to have an online presence where they can display artifacts, images and information.  The Park Service is a treasure, in my opinion, and is unknown and underutilized by too many people.  But virtual exhibits don't have to be so static - after all, what's contained at these sites is pretty amazing, and visitors should be able to grasp that.  I wish that more sites would display exhibits online - exhibits that are fun and engaging for all kinds of visitors.


National Park Service Virtual Museum Exhibits
Website:  www.nps.gov/museum

California Dreamin': The Sierra Nevada Virtual Museum

California may be the biggest state in the U.S., but there are still 274 million Americans who live in some other state or territory.  For many people who grew up elsewhere (including myself), California can seem like a distant, glamorous paradise filled with beautiful people and all kinds of different landscapes.  Other places on the internet can help you find the Golden State's crop of celebrities, but if you're instead interested in the scenery, I can recommend the Sierra Nevada Virtual Museum for browsing and learning.

The sheer amount of information located in this museum is astounding.  You can learn about the art, literature, history, geology, ecology and topography of the area surrounding this mountain range, and also delve into the life stories of notable residents.  Almost every section has accompanying text, and those that don't have are interpreted by videos that combine images and audio clips (either from experts or from the time period being described).  You can also view art, nature photographs (I really liked seeing local petroglyphs), excepts from writings, and interactive maps.

What I especially enjoyed was the Virtual Field Trips, which use narrated video to explore well-known points of interest in the Sierra Nevada (like Yosemite Park and the Pacific Crest Trail).  I like that the museum really tries to bring nature to visitors, and that this section is presented as a series of field trips.  This really helps in bringing the museum's mission to the visitor and replicating a physical museum experience in an appropriate virtual format.

The one thing I didn't like about this museum is their over-reliance on film and animation.  It's great to include some video in the exhibits to keep visitors' attention, but it becomes a little overwhelming when nearly everything moves and plays music.  A few too many sections of the museum have both video and text, which becomes a little too much to take in after a while.  You should know that if you're using a raccoon with an annoying voice to introduce videos, you've gone overboard.

But aside from this one flaw, the museum is a pretty good example of what can be accomplished through a virtual museum.  You might never think of talking about and displaying nature on a computer screen, and yet this museum does it well.  By using a multimedia approach, and covering lots of ground in a mostly engaging manner, the Sierra Nevada Virtual Museum really does bring California into your home.  It's the next best thing to being there.


Sierra Nevada Virtual Museum
Mission:  Sierra Nevada Virtual Museum is a multimedia, interactive online museum the rich history, culture, and natural history of the Sierra Nevada.
Website:  www.sierranevadavirtualmuseum.com

Friendly Skies: The Aviation History Online Museum

I've been to Kitty Hawk to see the Wright Brothers' airplane models.  I also went to Arctic Thunder 2010, a daylong air show at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage.  Beyond that, my knowledge of air transportation is limited.  So I was glad to find the Aviation History Online Museum because, at least in some cases, it provides a lot of interesting and engaging information.

The best part of this museum is its Aircraft gallery, which lists many different airplane models (alphabetized by manufacturer).  For almost every model, you can view photos and a few short paragraphs of information.  You also have the option to see a much longer and more technically detailed history of the aircraft.  I love the way this is set up with two different levels of information because visitors who are really into aviation will be curious enough to read the longer texts, while those who are novices will find the shorter interpretation to be a good introduction.

I also really like the Early Years section, which details all the different inventors whose ideas led up to the first airplane.  The information here is truly interesting and not overly long, and it's presented in a way that lets you see how each person piggybacked off previous discoveries.  The Theory section also does a good job of taking difficult scientific concepts and explaining them for visitors to understand.  There's also a nice selection of videos that show clips of the Battle of Okinawa, the history of TWA, and many other relevant subjects.

There are a few sections that might be tough for the average visitor to get through, like the series of articles posted to the museum.  They're long and too much like Wikipedia, and I imagine that only the nerdiest of aircraft enthusiasts would find them interesting.  The same is true for the section on engines and, disappointingly, the gallery featuring famous aviators.

All in all, though, this is an unexpectedly engaging museum.  It makes aircraft and the history of flight fun and accessible to visitors of all interest levels.  There's a lot of pictures and simple explanations for those of us who have never considered why we fly, and there's also plenty of technical information for airplane enthusists.  I would recommend this museum to anyone, because I guarantee you'll learn something and maybe even become more interested in flying.


The Aviation History Online Museum
Website:  www.aviation-history.com

As Rome Goes: The Ostia Virtual Museum

Roman art and architecture is beautiful, even if most of it is now crumbling.  But since many people haven't had the chance to visit Italy's historical sites (I've only ever been to Rome's airport), we have to rely on images of the these ancient splendors.  That's the function of the Ostia Virtual Museum, which is dedicated to displaying ruins and unearthed artifacts from this port within the Roman empire.

The breadth of objects you can view at this museum is impressive - the images are organized by medium, so you can view things made of glass, metal, terra cotta, bone and marble, as well as mosaics, stucco reliefs, fading paintings and what's left of ancient buildings.  The images are of varying quality (only some are in color, and most were taken pre-digital camera) but almost every piece has been photographed at various angles, so you can still get a good sense of what each looks like.

The text accompanying the images is better than many other virtual museums I've encountered, but not perfect.  In many cases detailed information is provided about where the object was found and what is depicted, and where there are black-and-white photographs some effort is made to describe the true colors.  It would be nice to know about how old everything is (if ages are indeed known), but more importantly I would like to know just how each piece fits into the Rome's story and culture.

This, I think, is the biggest flaw in the museum:  there is not enough historical context.  From just browsing the museum's website, I got the impression that Ostia was a coastal city somewhere in Italy.  It took a visit to Wikipedia to learn that Ostia is in fact a part of the city of Rome, and was a popular place for Romans to vacation in the summer.  This is information that should be readily available throughout the museum, along with explanations of why the art and architecture mattered in that time.  If you were unfamiliar with Roman mythology, for example, a lot of the art might seem confusing, and the museum provides no way to help understand the depictions and symbolism.

I don't want this criticism to detract from the greatness of this museum, because it's definitely worth a look if you're at all interested in seeing how the ancients lived.  If you like Rome, old things, or seeing well-known myths illustrated, there's plenty to view here.  For a novice, though, this museum could seem stuffy and intimidating.  A little more information here could go a long way.


The Ostia Virtual Museum
Website:  www.ostia-antica.org/vmuseum/vmuseum.htm

Digital Millenium: The Museum of Computer Art

When you think of art, you probably imagine paintings, drawings, sculptures, and other hand-crafted works.  You might stretch your definition to include performance and found-art pieces, but likely any piece you consider to be art is the result of physical creation.  But what about non-physical art:  works that were created by someone but do not exist in the real world.  Are those art?  Certainly they are, according to the Museum of Computer Art, which aims to collect and display this kind of virtual art.

At this museum, art is categorized by its genesis.  You can view art that was created by manipulating pixels, by 3D rendering, or by algorithms and fractals, among other genres.  You can also search by artist or by the year the art was created.  For each artwork you can view larger images and interpretation by the artist, although it can be hard to get this information.  For some images, you have to click on a thumbnail of each piece just to see its title, and then click again to view any other interpretation.

The museum has also gathered several essays and other pieces of criticism about digital art on its website, which is helpful for the novice visitor.  Some of these are a little stuffy, but for the most part they're written to be at least somewhat helpful in understanding this new form of art.

The only thing I found really off-putting about this museum is the ads, which are incredibly distracting.  They're everywhere - on top of the pages, to the sides, even mixed in with text.  The homepage is such a cluttery mess that it's hard to tell what is and isn't part of the museum.  This is especially disappointing because the Museum of Computer Art tries hard to present itself as a formal museum, but this is greatly undermined by ads asking me to subscribe to People and check out Eastern European dating sites.

If you can get past this commercialization, though, this museum is worth checking out to learn about new forms of art.  There's a lot of art to browse, and enough supporting materials to help you understand why it matters.  If the Museum of Computer Art could only present a more professional image, it might earn its place as a virtual counterpoint to the world's physical art museums.


The Museum of Computer Art
Mission:  To promote digital art in its various forms and manifestations, including such categories as 3-D, fractals, photo-based, mixed technique, computer-drawn, surreal, video, etc.
Website:  moca.virtual.museum

Flowers in Your Hair: The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco

City by the Bay, Land of Hippies, the place where they riot when their baseball team wins ... San Francisco is known for all those things (and more!) today.  But for those of use who have never lived there, the city's past is probably murky.  So if you've ever wanted to know what events led to the San Francisco that we know today, the Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco wants to enlighten you.

The Museum is laid out in 68 exhibitions that cover every subject you can possibly think of and go back as far as the 18th century.  Within each exhibition are a number of articles, some accompanied by a few images, that cover different aspects of San Francisco's history.  These articles are written by scholars or knowledgeable hobbyists or are sources from the past, transcribed online so we can get a first-hand account from the people who lived through each era.

All of this information creates a vast, well-documented history of the city of San Francisco, and I'm guessing that there's not one question you might have that can't be answered by this museum.  I'm especially impressed that historical documents are woven in with the scholarly articles to give a multi-faceted perspective of the city's history.

But this is a format better suited to a book, not a museum.  After all, a museum isn't a lecture, it's an experience.  There is way too much text and not enough images (or other supporting items) to be of interest to the average visitor.  I wish this wasn't the case, because there is so much to be learned here, but the fact is that only the most curious would be able to stay on the museum's website for long.


The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco
Mission:  To bring the fabled history of San Francisco into the light of historical accuracy.
Website:  www.sfmuseum.org

Up in the Air: The National Museum of the Civil Air Patrol

I'm not sure about anyone else, but I only have a vague, fuzzy notion of what national security looks like on a personal level.  I can't name all the branches of the armed forces, and I don't know anything about non-militarized protective groups.  But after I stumbled upon the National Museum of the Civil Air Patrol, I'm a little more informed about at least one volunteer defense organization in the United States.

Created by the CAP Historical Foundation, the National Museum of the Civil Air Patrol consists of seven exhibits that detail the history of this organization, from its founding in the years before World War II to its present-day activities.  There is plenty of information available, but not too much text - I think these exhibits really hit the sweet spot of educating without overwhelming.  There are also plenty of photographs to accompany each exhibit, and they're all available enlarged in a separate photo gallery.

The only thing I'm not so crazy about is that the museum comes off as a little static.  It doesn't seem like there are any plans to add new exhibits or even update the existing ones.  There's also no links to outside content or any kind of supplemental materials for students or for those looking to further engage with this subject.  These would all be helpful additions, because if a museum wants repeat visitors who become loyal followers, it needs change every so often and do different things.

All in all, though, I believe this museum has done the best job I've seen in recreating the physical museum experience online.  It's not boring or too didactic, and it doesn't look like the work of hobbyist with some time on their hands.  It's professional, well-documented, interesting and informative.  It could stand to shake things up every once in a while, and perhaps speak to more and diverse audiences, but these are small critiques for a museum that really helps the uninitiated learn about what our fellow civilians are doing to help our country.


The National Museum of the Civil Air Patrol
Mission:  "To preserve the history and promote the proud heritage of the Civil Air Patrol and the WWII CAP Coastal Patrol."
Website:  www.caphistory.org/museum_lobby.html