The museum's online exhibition "Breakthrough" is both an opportunity and a challenge

Editor's note

The continuous epidemic has accelerated the "cloud culture" created by "Internet +" into the lives of the general public. During the Spring Festival, as museums everywhere were forced to close, online exhibitions became the only way for museums to display. With more than 2,000 online exhibitions in 1,300 museums across the country, it is widely welcomed by the public for its rich and diverse cultural content and display methods, and has formed a "closed offline and blossomed online" situation.

Today's edition publishes three articles, observing online exhibitions from different perspectives, with a view to sparking more thinking and discussion.

Multi-channel and multi-platform centralized display and inspection

Online exhibitions are nothing new. With the rapid development of the Internet and the advent of cultural consumption, relevant departments in China have introduced related policies such as the "Internet + Chinese Civilization Three-year Action Plan" since 2016, encouraging the development of virtual museums and building application-oriented displays. Exhibition thematic database. Under the construction boom, online exhibitions have developed into a "standard configuration" for museum digital services, and have even become a "rule" for measuring museum development.

Under the prevention and control of the epidemic, the National Bureau of Cultural Relics encouraged cultural relic museum institutions in various places to carry out online exhibitions based on local conditions, use existing cultural and digital resources to launch online exhibitions as appropriate, and provide the public with safe and convenient online services. "Online exhibition platform" urgently expands a batch of online exhibition content and continuously pushes. As of March 3, the platform has included more than 420 online exhibitions in more than 300 museums, covering 31 provincial administrative regions across the country, covering categories such as history, art, natural science, and revolutionary memorials, which can meet the needs of different types of audiences .

More museums have displayed their existing resources through official online platforms, such as Weibo, WeChat, Douyin, and other new media channels. They will interact with exhibition scenes, graphic materials, and media resources through display terminals to lead the public to learn more about cultural relics. The essence of culture behind it. Provincial cultural and cultural units are also actively integrating, opening up, and sharing local cultural resources. Local cultural relics departments such as Jilin, Shandong, Shaanxi, and Beijing have also established online exhibition big data platforms for public use.

The original experience of authenticity can not be copied, so that the online exhibition has been laid out but "raised in deep boudoirs", and now this situation has been broken. According to the preliminary statistics of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, during the Spring Festival, more than 2,000 exhibitions were launched in museums across the country. This is a further extension of the museum's public cultural services, and it is also a centralized display and inspection of the results of digital work on public culture and cultural resources.

Exploring new breakthroughs in content, form and communication channels

At present, replicating the panoramic display of offline exhibitions is the main way for museums to exhibit online. With the help of digital technologies such as VR virtual reality, three-dimensional panoramic virtual reality, and three-dimensional webpage engine, it provides the audience with the convenience of self-selection, manipulation of images, mobile viewing, perspective switching, and detailed experience. Such as the Shanxi Museum temporary exhibition "Children of the Mountain Eagle-Special Exhibition of Andean Civilization", Hunan Provincial Museum basic exhibition "Changsha Mawangdui Han Tomb Exhibition" and so on.

Some museums also use the resources in the museum to plan and design exhibitions for online viewing only. For example, the Museum of Jilin Province "Residential Residence · Elegant Events-Painting and Calligraphy, Tea and Fragrant Things", carefully selected 14 collections of cultural relics in the courtyard to provide visitors with a guide to the leisure of ancient people; Shanghai Museum launched the Spring Festival theme exhibition "Fish" "Spring Letter" " "Ruyi" is full of simple and beautiful wishes; 29 museums within the United Nations and Tencent Museum officials within the China Cultural Relics News Agency have launched the "Swiss Rat Treasure-New Year's Zodiac Relic Pictures Exhibition", which focuses on the connotation behind the zodiac.

At the same time, we also see that behind the popular online exhibition is the public's cultural appeal for personalization and freshness. As a result, some museums have begun to try to break new ground in the virtual display of panoramas and explore new breakthroughs.

In terms of content, some museums have "upgraded" their offline exhibitions. This is not simply "make-up and beauty", but deep exploration and re-integration of related content. For example, the Shanghai Museum's "My Carp-The Shanghai Museum Collection of Wumen Book Artists' Book Exhibition of the Ming Dynasty" completely broke the original content framework of offline exhibitions, and abandoned the conventional way of viewing exhibits in a panoramic view. In the "Seeing Words Like Faces" section, click on the keywords to jump to each exhibit and guide the audience to think and understand through pictures, explanations and vernacular text; and the "Who in the cloud sends brocade books" section, the text is used to clarify As a center, interpret its relationship and relations with relatives, mentors and friends, and corresponding exhibits, and deepen the theme of the exhibition.

From the point of view of the form, in addition to digital display, graphic and text with short video and audio explanations are also commonly used in online display. What's more worth mentioning is that some museums have added interactive interactive online entertainment and fun game experiences based on the trend of social media and immersive entertainment to meet the needs of audiences and resonate. For example, the Guangdong Provincial Museum launched the online exhibition "From Rembrandt to Monet-Five Hundred Years of European Painting". Audiences can not only obtain and share online viewing reports, but also participate in topic discussions and master offline visit strategies. Another example is the Shanghai Museum, "Let ’s Take a Look at Flowers Together-A Special Exhibition of Ancient Chinese Flower and Bird Paintings", which has set up a game section specifically to meet the audience's entertainment and puzzle needs.

From the perspective of communication channels, the museum is more active in cooperating with social forces through online exhibitions, especially the online live broadcast following the professional commentators' viewing. Under the guidance of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, Douyin has launched nine online exhibitions with the National Museum of China, Dunhuang Research Institute, Nanjing Museum, Hunan Provincial Museum, Zhejiang Museum, Liaoning Provincial Museum, Shandong Museum, Shanxi Museum, Guangdong Museum and other museums. Live. Taobao Live Broadcasting is launching the "Cloud Spring Tour" event in cooperation with eight museums such as Gansu Provincial Museum, Liangzhu Museum, and Sanxingdui Museum. On March 1st, the Potala Palace also participated in the "Cloud Spring Tour" and made its first live webcast. This kind of online live broadcast, on the one hand, has become another new method for museums to "unlock" digitalization, and on the other hand, it has also expanded the channels for museums to self-promote.

Cold Thinking under Thermal Phenomenon

At present, the final effect of online exhibitions on museums remains to be seen, but relevant data has proved that online exhibitions in museums are "popular." Since January 28, the number of visits to the "Museum Online Exhibition Platform" of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage has grown rapidly, with an average of 40,000 visits per day and a total of 600,000 visits on the platform. Weibo topic # 云游 电影 # has reached 210 million views and 39,000 discussions. Taobao broadcast the "Cloud Spring Tour" event. On the day of the live broadcast, nearly 10 million people poured in, which is equivalent to the traffic of the Louvre in France for nearly a year.

Online exhibitions have brought huge social attention to museums, but not every museum can enjoy this kind of "treatment". The big hall is a must, and the small hall is left unattended. The gap between the two is very wide. In addition, under the heat, copyright, technology, and funding issues are more prominent. In addition, the uneven quality of the products and the common problems in the industry have also made online exhibitions questionable, and it is difficult to achieve the "tap water" communication effect, reflecting its development. limitation.

If the epidemic sounded a wake-up call for those museums that create online exhibitions that are "blunt", then after the bustle, it gave all museums the opportunity to attach importance to online exhibitions. What are the cost-effective online exhibitions? What are the differences between online exhibitions and offline exhibitions? How do online and offline exhibitions guide each other? How can online viewing experience be more attractive? It is an issue that cannot be ignored in museum development.

(Author: Miao Yuanlong Fei)