Museums and IT Technology

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Museums and IT Technology

• Kiichiro Nakayama
• Fukuoka City Museum

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Museums and IT Technology

• 1 The past 20years of museums and IT technology
• 2 IT technology used at museums in future
• a) Digital archives of cultural
  assets
• b) Virtual museum in real museum
• 3 Virtual museum in virtual space

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Kiichiro Nakayama
Curator of Fukuoka Art Museum 1981-1994 Curator
of Fukuoka City Museum 1995-
I specialize in the history of art, especially
the history of Japanese paintings from the
sixteenth trough the nineteenth century.
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Fukuoka City Museum
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The past 20years of museumsand IT technology

• In those days curators came to purchase personal
  computers privately and use them for their work.
• There was a movement of making a database of
  materials possessed by all museums in Japan in a
  unified format.
• Museums make use of the internet only as a means
  of public relations, finding out that it is an
  efficient tool for publicity.

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http//museum.city.fukuoka. jp
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IT technology used at museums in futurea)
Digital archives of cultural assets

• All information of cultural assets cannot be
  digitized.
• In order to make digital archives meaningful,
  cultural property must be studied widely and
  deeply.
• Priority should be given, of course, to the
  preservation of real objects.

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IT technology used at museums in futureb)
Virtual museum in real museum
The Information Service Center of Fukuoka City
Museum
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IT technology used at museums in futureb)
Virtual museum in real museum
A part of exhibition hall of Fukuoka City Museum
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IT technology used at museums in futureb)
Virtual museum in real museum

• The system of visitors operating personal
  computers terminal set up at an exhibition hall
  has been already adopted by newly established
  museums or recently redesigned museums.
• It seems to me that IT technology is made use of
  at museums today in order to attract visitors
  only for its novelty.
• We, curators, must never forget a fact that
  contents become out of date soon, but that real
  exhibited items are always new.

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3 Virtual museum in virtual space

• There will be two categories. One is something
  like a book of collected paintings. This virtual
  museum belongs just to the person.
• On-line folklore museums may be worth setting up.
  A virtual museum would be useful for archaeology,
  too.
• They are something like virtual space similar to
  real museums.

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3 Virtual museum in virtual space

• Another virtual museum I have in my mind is
  digital existence from the outset. It exists only
  in virtual space. It is neither meaningful nor
  possible to change it to a real museum.
• Wide eyes are required to see new culture born
  through IT technology or the internet.
• Some of modern arts have digital communication in
  view. But since there are only real museums
  today, such idea has to be created into artworks
  with real space and material body.