Virtual Museum Experiences at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Rijksmuseum, and the Benaki Museum
Cover photo: Art Institute of Chicago official mobile app. Source: Potion.
In this episode, a panel of AMT Lab contributors review their experiences with virtual museum engagement technology for institutions including the Benaki Museum in Greece, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands. The featured panelists are Angela Johnson, Emily White, and Junyu Sun.
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Transcript
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B: Hello, AMT Lab listeners, and welcome to a special episode of Tech in the Arts, the podcast for the Arts Management and Technology Lab. My name is B Crittenden, and I'm the Technology and Interactive Content Manager. In this episode, I'm joined by a panel of AMT Lab contributors, including Angela Johnson—who you might also recognize as AMT Lab's Podcast Producer—Emily White, and Junyu Sun. Each panelist reviews an experience they had with virtual museum engagement technology for institutions like the Benaki Museum in Greece, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands. We hope you enjoy it.
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Welcome, everyone. Today we have fantastic panelists, each of which has firsthand experience with virtual museum experiences, so they'll be sharing their reviews of these technologies and experiences with us here today. So I'm going to ask each panelist to introduce themselves, starting with Angela.
Angela: Hello, I'm Angela and I am the Podcast Producer for AMT Lab. You all know me. [Laughter] And I reviewed the virtual tour for the Benaki Museum in Greece.
Junyu: My name is Junyu, and I reviewed the Rijksmuseum app in the Netherlands.
Emily: Hi, my name is Emily White. I reviewed the Art Institute of Chicago museum app.
B: Emily, let's start with you. Can you describe that experience, kind of talk about the technology and the functionality?
Emily: So the Art Institute of Chicago app is a location aware museum guide app. So it really works best in the museum. And what's really cool about this is that I believe they use bluetooth to locate you in the museum so that your phone knows which artwork you may be standing in front of and it helps guide you through a tour. And you can put together your own tours, follow the pre-created tours. It's pretty cool, and it's also available in five languages so it's accessible to a lot of international tourists as well.
B: Cool. So, you actually delved into this yourself. Do you have any sort of initial thoughts about what your experience with that was?
Emily: So I was not able to actually travel to the museum to use it, so I did find that the functionality was limited for a virtual visit, which is not great in the pandemic when it's hard to actually get into the museum. So I was a little disappointed by that. But I did think that it was really good that I could still access some audio tours, see information about some of the artworks, and I like that it aggregates your audio guide, your map, your membership card, artwork info, and exhibition information all into one place. So it has basically every basic functionality you'd need from the website without having to navigate there, in addition to the bulky audio tour handset and the big paper map. It's just all in one place on your phone. I did dislike that users have to input a numeric code into the artwork lookup feature. You can't just snap a provided QR code, and so that opens up room for people to make mistakes, type the wrong number, something like that. Overall, I did really enjoy it. I took a little tour of "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte" by Georges Seurat, and I really enjoyed that.
B: Cool. Yeah, in terms of the artwork look-up, if you're actually on site using this app, I imagine you're, like, standing there in the middle of the crowded museum, like, trying to figure out what, like, numbers to put in and that seems stressful. Did you feel like it was engaging at all? Or do you feel maybe that wasn't quite the purpose of the app itself?
Emily: I think that its purpose is to be supplemental to an in-person museum experience, but I did still feel pretty engaged by it, and I think I would have felt more engaged if I had been in the museum space. I can see it being a really handy tool to have around. I can see myself using it basically the entire time to sort of direct my tour and direct myself for a museum. And I can see myself maybe relying on it as a first-time visitor, as well. Sure.
B: Sure. Cool! Thanks. I'm going to kick it on to Junyu now. As we just heard, he has reviewed the Rijksmuseum's app. So, Junyu, if you could describe that experience a little bit, talk about the technology and the functionality.
Junyu: Yes, and actually I have never been to Rijksmuseum, and when I entered that app and it lets you choose if you are inside the museum or not. And if you are inside the museum, then the main function of this application is guidance and audio tour or the function of buying some gifts. And if you are not in the museum, the function is quite relatively simple, like visitors can see some high resolution images of each work and its related information. You can also register for a Rijksmuseum account and you can bookmark your favorite pieces. And also you can buy tickets on it.
B: So, much like the Art Museum of Chicago app, this was mostly to supplement your experience at the museum, but there are some ways you can minimally engage with the artwork from afar. I'm going to ask both of you: are you able to access this on the web in, like, your browser? Or is it, like, solely an app?
Junyu: I think some parts of its function are on its website. And on the website, the function of it is named Rijksstudio, and you can only visit the picture of each piece and no other function. But I need to mention that when you try to buy tickets in that application, it will redirect you to the website, so you need to use your browser to open that ticket-buying web. I don't think it's a good design. I think it needs to be integrated.
B: Right, because then if you're trying to have your entire experience in this app, and then you get launched out of it just to buy tickets, it's a little clunky.
Junyu: Yes, and I think it's also maybe not that safe. If the function is integrated in the app, you can secure your payment. But if you need to open another browser, it's not secure.
Emily: Like the Rijksmuseum app, the Art Institute of Chicago museum app does kick you off the app to go to the browser to buy tickets and membership, but there is some overlap in the content on the website and the app. You can't access features like the audio tours, the map, and the numeric artwork lookup in the website, but you can still see the visitor information and you can search the collections in a different way. So, yeah, there's a little information overlap, but there are some functionalities that are limited to the app. Yeah. Junyu, can you talk a little bit about your general thoughts, your experience with the app? Did you like it? Did you dislike it? Did you feel engaged by it?
Junyu: I think I liked Rijksmuseum's app because I love the pieces in this museum. Also, I think the audio tour is special for this app. The audio is stereo in this app, so it's kind of like the ASMR thing. That's really cool. Like, one piece, the name is "The Milkmaid" by Vermeer, and when you visit that one, you can hear the sound of milk pouring out from your left ear to your right ear.
B: Cool...
Junyu: And also, it supports 10 languages, and it's good for foreigners like me, non-English speakers. And also it's a museum in the Netherlands, so the main language for it is Dutch, but it also has the full content for English.
B: That is really cool that they have that really high quality, immersive audio feature. That's pretty cool.
Emily: The Art Institute of Chicago audio is not as fancy as the Rijksmuseum's, unfortunately.
[Laughter]
B: Yeah, cool. No, that's a really cool feature. Okay, Angela. So, I'm excited to hear about this because it is a little bit different. It's not necessarily an app, so if you could talk a little bit about what your experience was.
Angela: Sure, yeah. As you said, it wasn't an app. Mine was just a virtual tour. It was on the Benaki Museum website. I figured if I have to do a virtual tour, I might as well be in Greece because I'm not getting to Greece anytime soon anyway. So, I am a sucker for immersive virtual tours. I don't like it when it's just, like, "here are the pictures that are in the museum," because I feel like a museum experience is, like, being inside the building and, like, curation is a lot about, like, how things are displayed and how we're viewing it and what story are you trying to tell with what things are put together and put in the room. And you really get that with this tour and also just with more immersive virtual tours in general.
So, it's a little bit like a video game, like you can, like, navigate around and you can go to different rooms. One thing I really liked about this one...because, with a lot of immersive tours, the navigation is just really tricky. I think I've tried to do the VR Rijksmuseum virtual tour, and it's immersive, but it was really hard to move through different rooms. I just...I couldn't figure out how to move. And this one, occasionally, it was just hard to figure out where you are and you get lost a little bit, but at the bottom, there’s just, like, pictures of all the different rooms and you can just click on the picture and go to another room. So you get the immersion and you get the kind of video game experience, but also, like, you don't have to do that if it gets too complicated or if you start to get lost or anything. And there's a map, which will show you where you are in the museum, which I really liked just because I get lost. [Laughter] It just made it so much easier and clearer and it, like, doesn't lose anything with that; it just allows for simplification. In the Benaki Museum, they also—not for all of the artifacts, but for a lot of them—you could click on it and there was a little audio description of the artifact. And it was in several different languages. Obviously, it's a Greek museum, so they had it in Greek. But they also had it in English, which was nice, and a few other languages, too. It wasn't as high quality as the Rijksmuseum, but it was pretty good and I appreciated that. I think if I could change one thing it would be to have more artifacts have that because there are plenty of them, versus, like, "Oh, but I want to know what this is and I can't because there's no description of it." But it was still a cool feature.
B: Yeah, cool. Did you feel particularly engaged in the experience? Or were you kind of distracted, just kind of clicking around? Or did you really, like, feel that immersion that you were looking for?
Angela: Definitely, at first, I felt really engaged with it, because you get that kind of exploration. And I'm like an ancient art history nerd, so I really enjoyed the content of the museum. I was really engaged at first and then, you know, after, like, 10 minutes, I got a little bored and was just kind of clicking around all the different rooms and then I was like, "Okay, cool, I'm done with this." But it was nice for a while. It was definitely, at least, initially engaging. I don't know how they could have made it more engaging. I think that, for a virtual tour, it's hard to be engaging for more than maybe 10 or 20 minutes just because there's only a certain number of things you can do and once you figure out what's going on, you look at all the artifacts you want to and then you're kind of done.
B: And it's a pretty small space?
Angela: Yeah, the Benaki Museum has, like...in person, there's, like, a bunch of different, like, museums that are all under the Benaki Museum sphere. But I was looking specifically in the ancient Greece one and, like, the ancient world museum area, which wasn't huge.
B: You all have hinted at some pros and cons of your particular experience, but I wanted to go around and give people another chance to cover any, like, pros or cons that you have that you haven't mentioned yet or that you want to mention again. So, Emily, are there any pros and cons that you wanted to be sure to mention about the Art Institute of Chicago app?
Emily: Sure. So, I did like that it has that cool location awareness feature. Usually, if you're using any location services within a building, it'll just tell you that you're in that building without a lot of precision. But I really like how it allows you to navigate in the building, and I hope to one day actually be at the Art Institute of Chicago to experience that. I also liked that the audio tours include transcripts for visitors who are deaf, hard of hearing, or prefer to read. I also enjoyed that it has everything in one place that you would need. So, again, you don't have to worry about folding and unfolding your map, you don't have to worry about checking out an audio tour, and it has a lot of the stuff from the website also on the app. I didn't like that...again, most features are only meaningful, useful on an in-person visit. Well, I think that there were some places to improve. For example, it didn't have games or activities for families and teens and anyone who prefers a more active digital engagement experience. So I think adding some activities is one place where there's room to grow. And then I think also connecting it to social media: if you want to perhaps share that you're there at the museum or share an art experience that you had there at the museum, that would be an interesting feature to add that I think would also help drive engagement sort of just in this Instagram age.
B: That's a really good idea. Are there any other ways that you would improve on it if you could dream an improvement for this particular technology?
Emily: Well, I would also make sure that all content is available in all of the app's languages. There are still a couple of gaps there with some of the languages. So everything's available in English and I checked French also, and it seems to be pretty good. But I don't speak any of the other app's three languages so I didn't feel that I was qualified to do an audit there. It did have a notice at the beginning of opening the app that not all information is available in all of the languages. That is an area to improve, as well, as well as just having some sort of QR code or, better yet, computer vision feature to be able to just use your camera in the space to snap a picture of an artwork or its QR code and get information on it.
B: For sure. Alright, Junyu, it's your turn to discuss any pros or cons that you have coming out of using the Rijksmuseum’s app, and then, yeah, if you want to mention anything that you would improve upon.
Junyu: So, first I will say that the content in the app is really in high quality and you can zoom in and see every detail on each painting. And sometimes when you really visit the museum, when you try to visit a really famous piece, there's a lot of people in front of you and you cannot really see every detail, so I think this experience is even much better than you'd see in that museum. But it also comes at a cost. I would say the file of the picture is too big, and when you're loading it, it needs a really long time, and so do the audio things, so you need to wait for the content to load. And also, I didn't visit there, but I have searched for some information about its location technology, and I don't know if you guys know that Apple released a new product named Air Tag. This museum uses the same technology. It's called iBeacon, and it applied it several years ago. So it puts an iBeacon on each piece, and when you open your bluetooth on your phone, then you can locate each piece and where you are, so it makes the location really precise. And also, I think the app—it has a concise and user-friendly design, but I think the ticket-purchasing function should be further integrated into that application. And as well as the multilingual content: it supports 10 languages, but some content is limited for the other eight languages as I've seen so far.
B: Yeah. And just to jump back to what you said about the Apple Air Tag, it's like a small location device…
Junyu: Yeah.
B: ...that they're selling to consumers, they're selling to individuals. But it's cool that the museum used a similar product to help locate each of their works. That's smart. And I noticed that each of you has...in your experience, there is a pretty particular, like, location mapping feature to go along with each of them, which makes sense seeing as though you have to navigate a space. But it's good that that is one of the main functions. And then, Angela, are there any other pros and cons you wanted to mention? And then, like, how you would improve it if you could?
Angela: I mean, I talked about how I wish that there was more audio description for more of the artifacts because I think that would be cool. I also...like, they gave a pretty good description of the artifacts, but I would have wanted to know a little bit more about the history of a lot of the artifacts. Like, they give you a little bit but...I don't know, I just want more. But I guess that's, like, that's just a problem with museums, in general. But yeah, I kind of mentioned the navigation. It can be a little clunky when you're just trying to use the, like, buttons on the screen to move around the rooms.
B: And those are just arrows, right?
Angela: Yeah, and that can be a little clunky and it doesn't always load as quickly as you want it to. And obviously they counteract that by just having the pictures at the bottom, but I just think that it would be nice if it was a little bit more cohesive. But I think, overall, it's pretty good, especially compared to some other museums. I know that, like, The Met has kind of a similar one where you're walking through, but, honestly, this was one of the better ones.
B: Mhm. And I think it's worth mentioning that all of these experiences that you had were free, so that's another significant piece of this, is that the in-person museum experience typically is not free. So it's kind of like, why not try it out and see how you like it?
Okay, my final question for you all is kind of about where you see your particular experience, but also kind of that entire sort of genre of virtual museum interaction, like, where you see it going. Do you think it's going to stick around? Would you do it again? Would you recommend it to other people? And how do you think these kinds of experiences are going to evolve beyond the pandemic?
Emily: So I tend to be kind of an old school museum-goer, as in, you know, I've just got, you know, any brochure that might come with an exhibition, I've got the paper map, and I'm walking around looking at the text on the wall. I'd actually never tried an app like this before, but having done so—admittedly not in the museum, but having done so—I like it. And I'm looking forward to being able to use it actually in the museum, so I certainly hope it doesn't go away. And I hope that it sticks around and continues to evolve. I think that some interesting ways that it could evolve include, again, using computer vision to be able to identify artworks and therefore eliminating the need for inputting, you know, any search terms or numeric code. And then I also think it might be interesting to see how, say, if the pandemic continues to drag on and museum visitorship continues to be limited, especially in terms of, you know, number of visitors per day because of the capacity of the space, it would be interesting to see how museums beef up their apps to sort of offer maybe a better remote experience. So maybe some sort of VR tour, for example, especially on a mobile app that can be used with something like Google Cardboard so you can have your VR, looking-around sort of experience. And I also really think that there need to be some games, activities, scavenger hunts, something like that. And that's not necessarily a technological innovation but just, I think, just the user experience and user interface update as time goes on in these apps. It would also be helpful to integrate some way to make engaging social media content for people to post. After the pandemic, people are going to be like, "I left the house and I want everyone to see it on my social media,” and I think if the app had some way to not just have you take a photo of yourself at the museum but to create some sort of selfie with a character from a painting or something like that, or just some sort of other engaging social media content that people can then post, I think that's another really interesting direction to explore.
Junyu: I think the problem behind it is, like, when visitors are interested in this museum and they must download this app and install it on their phones…but when they are after their journey, or they just experienced everything, they just uninstall it, just like me. So I think some daily features need to be developed to keep the customers and visitors, like the social medias and like we are seeing that. And as the biggest museum in Netherlands, it’s also relatively good enough.
Angela: So my thing with virtual tours, in general, is that...well, for me, museums are very much like a social activity. Like, I want to, you know, get some friends together and we'll go to museum and we'll have a nice couple hours and it'll be a good time. But, like, you just don't get that with virtual museums. And, like, even when you get nice immersive ones where you get to look at artifacts and it's a good time, like I kind of said, like, it's engaging for 10 or 20 minutes and then you just kind of move on because you can look at other things on your screen. And looking, pretending like you're in a room, that can only be so engaging. But I think that, like, the way that I used it, actually, is maybe kind of a best case scenario, when you have, like, a museum that, like, you wouldn't be able to get to otherwise because it's in another country. Or maybe you just, you can't get there for whatever reason. Or maybe you couldn't afford to get tickets to it. I think that I like how virtual tours can provide accessibility and can just, like, provide people with opportunities they wouldn't otherwise have, and I think that's really good, but I think that, for most people, you could be doing anything else.
B: Yeah, I know a huge part of it is convenience because it is free. It's like, why not hop on to this virtual tour for 10 minutes? There's minimal cost associated with just, like, hopping on and checking it out. I'm kind of interested in, like, how we're valuing that time from an institutional perspective. Like, is it valuable for a museum to create this virtual experience to put online for people to use for free when, like, they're coming on and clicking through it? Like, is there a transaction there? Like, do you even get their information, you know, do they sign up for your email list?
Angela: I mean, I think it's a question of what the institution is valuing because, if their reason for existing...well, if it's more just about, we want to be able to, like, educate the public or provide access to these works of art, then I think that virtual tours and virtual museum experiences are totally worth it for an institution and for the public. I also think that it, like, just provides exposure. Like, now, if I ever go to Greece, I probably will go to the Benaki Museum. I've got to get to Greece, but, you know. It just, it provides people with like, just awareness that these institutions exist and, like, what you're getting should you go in person. And I think that's valuable, too. I mean, I think these are all cool, free experiences, and everyone should check them out because you've got 10 minutes, you know? You could be doing anything else, so why not do this?
B: Totally. Okay, everyone. Thank you for coming on to the podcast today. I'm definitely inspired.
Emily: I'll definitely be checking out the Rijksmuseum for that sort of ASMR-type, really high quality stereo audio. I mean, that sounds like a really fun way to pass the time while I'm taking the bus to class or something like that.
B: Yeah, I definitely want to check that out, too. I think that's really cool. That kind of thing is, like, exactly what a lot of arts experiences are missing. Like, really thinking intentionally about, like, "Okay, how can we improve this experience in terms of adding some sort of other sensory experience?" Yeah, so that's really cool.
Angela: Thanks for listening to the AMT Lab podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and to leave a comment. If you would like to learn more, go to amt-lab.org. That is A-M-T dash L-A-B .org. Or, you can email us at amtlabcmu@gmail.com. You can also follow us on Twitter at Tech in the Arts, or on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn at Arts Management and Technology Lab. You can find the resources that we referenced today in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.
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