From Now On
The Educational Technology Journal

 

Vol 5 . . . No 5 . . . January/February, 1996

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Virtual Galleries vs. Virtual Museums

What's the Difference?

Should our school build a virtual gallery?
Or should we construct a virtual museum instead?
What's the difference?

Once schools get over the honeymoon phase of Web page development, during which most seem satisfied with self-description, promotion and display, some move on to ask questions of purpose.

Why are we doing this?

One of the best reasons to build a Web site is the opportunity it provides to engage students in making and sharing meaning. Young people gather, display and interpret artifacts and information around some topic such as local history, acid rain, forestry or fishing. This article explores and contrasts the potential of virtual galleries and virtual museums to involve students in such constructivist learning.

For more on constructivist learning.Go by Web to Columbia Simply stated, galleries focus on display. Explanation is relatively limited. "What you see is what you get."

Museums, on the other hand, place a greater emphasis upon theme, interpretation and explanation.

Galleries on the WWW provide schools with a fine opportunity to display and publish student writing and art. Museums can take us much farther, offering a chance for students to plan, develop and publish a multimedia collection around some question, topic or era which deserves exploration and illumination. Students act as curators and designers.

Virtual museums surpass galleries in their capacity to support constructivist learning.

In some respects, galleries are the "end of the road" for student work. Museums are the student work.

Examples of Virtual Galleries

To develop a clear sense of what a virtual gallery might offer a school, it pays to visit a dozen sites, some of which are adult galleries intended to display and market the work of professional artists and some of which are school Web sites proudly sharing the art and writing of students.

Adult Galleries

Gray Wolf Virtual Gallery...Entrance
We begin our tour with a "walk-in" gallery which employs a three dimensional effect to give the visitor the ability to move into a second room and "approach" a wolf photograph by clicking on its miniature hanging on the wall. Created by Gray Wolf Publishing, the effect is somewhat akin to VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) as employed in Virtual SOMA (http://www.planet9.com/) but it is a bit slow for any who employ a 14.4 modem. There is no text to accompany the large JPEG files.

Coastal Maine's Virtual Art Gallery
Our next site offers vivid images of work by painters, sculptors and photographers all displayed on a single page with large graphics and a paragraph of descriptive text accompanying each work. The text also provides contact information for those who wish to reach the artist. The art work is very impressive and enjoyable, but one wishes for a menu system and thumb nail miniatures rather than the slowly loading large works. One can safely leave the room to make popcorn if waiting for the 14.4 modem to reveal these beauties.

Note:
By now you have probably begun to notice that Web Galleries are often created by small Web-businesses with the intent of helping artists market their work. They may have more in common with small art galleries than they do with the impressive stone mansions we sometimes associate with museums.

Erik Johnson's Virtual Gallery
This site is AMAZING. Erik provides several very good menu options to explore his work. One choice is his Virtual Tour. He describes this as "an evolving and experimental walkthrough a truly virtual gallery." How I ached for a fast connection to step through these sequences. It was good enough for me to suffer through the 14.4's sluggish pace.

You may also select from sketchbooks, traditional media and electronic media. This is an exciting spot which seriously exploits the power of the technology.

School of Architecture's virtual gallery
This is the School of Architecture's virtual gallery at the University of Miami offering examples of student work produced in the school's computing in design courses. Your choices:


Modeling and Rendering
Graphics
Student Folios
Animations

When I visited Student Folios, I was presented with a list of student names, each of whom would offer pages showing their work. It turned out that my first choice, Tina Soo Hoo, displayed "knock your socks off" graphic design and architectural work, but I wanted more information built into the menu to inform my choices.

The quality of images here is superior. They are dramatic, fresh and well worth the visit.

TSVG: Featured Artists
The Thames Street Gallery provides a very efficient menu system which begins with text and offers both thumb nail and full size versions of original works of art which are for sale. Although I am generally a proponent of minimalist design for menu pages, in this case, utility is paramount. You have a good selection of art to view but little of the "gallery" feel.

The Virtual Gallery
This gallery, whose home base is in the Netherlands, advertises the work of painters by offering first a list of names and then a page for each artist which contains one small example of the artist's work along with a list of other works which provides a title and describes their size, the media, and the price. Next to each work is an icon - a palette - but no thumb nail. It is difficult to decide which to open, but much of the work is excellent. This site also, like the previous one, offers a good selection of art to view but little of the "gallery" feel.

Virtual Image Archive: /Art/Online-Galleries
If you are not already tired from our "gallery walk," you might try some more adult galleries listed in this big list offering some hundred more, or . . .

Explore these school galleries.

School Galleries

Bellingham Schools Student Art Gallery
http://www.bham.wednet.edu/art.htm
This site offers colorful computer-generated art from elementary students.

Blackburn High School Student Art and Writing
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~bhs56
This high school in Blackburn, Australia, offers a fine display of student art, music and writing.

Kennedy Student Art Gallery
http://www.isd77.k12.mn.us/schools/kennedy/openhouse/artgallery.html
This elementary school in Mankato, Minnesota offers a huge scrolling list of bright, colorful, dynamic student art with great little thumb nails to help you decide which to open more fully.

Student Art Gallery/Art From Crotched Mountain Students
http://www.cmf.org/gallery.html
Art is an integral part of life at Crotched Mountain, a special school for children on a mountain site in New Hampshire.

Gallery of Art/All the Arts for All the Kids Art Gallery
http://host.fsd.k12.ca.us/art/gallery.html
The Fullerton (CA)School District welcomes the visitor to the "All the Arts for All the Kids" Art Gallery! In this gallery you will find a number of virtual rooms in which to explore the art work of resident and visiting student artists. While much of this site is under construction, the vision is clear and impressive.

Examples of Virtual Museums

To be considered a "virtual museum," a site should be much more than a promotional gimmick designed to sell items from the museum gift shop or to tempt physical visitors into the halls of the "real" museum. It should offer artifacts, text and information which supports serious investigation. It should honor the electronic visitor as a real visitor.

Unfortunately, many of the sites which advertise as virtual museums offer little more than marketing and schedules of exhibits in their buildings.

Some segments of the traditional museum community fail to appreciate the dynamic possibilities for virtual museum versions of their real-time, real-space museums to prepare nearby students for real-time visits and to engage others who might never, otherwise, visit in any way.

Many students who live far from the marble buildings would love to visit a virtual version of a museum as opposed to a textbook or encyclopedia "speaking" to the same subject. The medium has its limitations, yet there is much potential if we would entertain open-minded exploration.

The museums listed below are a small sample which offer a real learning opportunity independent of a "physical" visit.

As you visit, keep an eye on the balance between information and display. To what extent do these virtual museums devote more attention to theme, interpretation and meaning than the virtual galleries?

• Field Museum - Substantial and dramatic information on Dinosaurs & Masks
  http://www.bvis.uic.edu/museum/index.html
• Franklin Institute - Long renowned for its wonderful "hands on" science exhibits, the Franklin Institute is leading the pack of virtual museums with multimedia and superb online resources. Virtual exhibits on Ben Franklin, the heart and other science-related topics.
  http://sln.fi.edu/
• High Museum - Excellent collection of paintings and photographs.
  http://isotropic.com/highmuse/highhome.html
• Paleolithic painted cave at Vallon - Pont-d'Arc. Startling and dramatic images from the recently discovered cave. Brilliant photographs. Excellent text. If it were not for this "virtual museum" we would not be able to visit at all because the caves are "off limits" to protect the fragile paintings.
  http://www.culture.fr/culture/gvpda-en.htm
• Paleontology (California Museum of)
  Excellent introduction to the field supported with extensive virtual collection. http://ucmp1.berkeley.edu/exhibits.html
• Treasures of the Czars - The museum provides outstanding visuals and information.
  http://www.times.st-pete.fl.us/Treasures/TC.Lobby.html
• WebMuseum - An extensive collection with hundreds of excellent paintings along with quite interesting biographical and interpretive sketches.
  http://sunsite.unc.edu/louvre/

Mega-Lists of Virtual Museums

• Museum Computer Network List The Museum Computer Network maintains a hotlist of over 500 museums on the Web..
  http://world.std.com/~mcn

Examples of School Virtual Museums

Schools virtual museums are so new that it is difficult to find mature, fully developed examples. The sudden increase of school Web sites from dozens to thousands has happened within the last 24 month time period, according to statistics from Steven Collins at Web 66.

The museums listed below show clear evidence of the student as "worker" in the sense meant by the Coalition of Essential Schools. They also provide a major focus upon ideas and questions.

• Kinkaid's Backyard - The Story of a Houston Biome A Texas site where high school students tell the story of their "backyard" environment. Each student relates a category (birds, trees, the bayou, etc.) to the bigger picture - the ecosystem. A fine example of students "constructing" meaning.
  http://web-hou.iapc.net/~combs/backyard/default.html
• Ellis Island Elementary students in this Bellingham School, many of whom are first generation Americans, explore the topics of emigration, immigration, and national origin by sharing family stories, artifacts and research about others who have ventured far afield to find a new home.
  OUR IMMIGRATION WING - chronicles the stories students have written about their families' immigration to the United States.
  THE ELLIS ISLAND WING - offers photographs and interesting information about Ellis Island in New York City.
  THE NATIVE AMERICAN WING - offers information and artifacts from a member of the Lummi Nation who attends Alderwood Elementary School.
  THE MULTI-CULTURAL CALENDAR - shares student reports about holidays in different countries.
  http://wwwald.bham.wednet.edu/museum/museum.htm
• Oldies & Goodies: The School Museum List and Site. This site provides a global listing of all known school virtual museum sites. The list is brief as the WWW phenomenon is young and virtual museums are just catching on in schools.
  http://www.pacificrim.net/museum/list.html

The Roles of Students in Each

The most important issue for schools to address when considering either virtual galleries or virtual museums is the roles students might play in the design, development and ongoing management of those sites.

Virtual museums offer greater opportunities and more challenge than galleries as students may play a variety of roles (with staff supervision) analogous to those who work in traditional museums. They may wear the hats of curators, archivists, researchers, artists, educators and permissions specialists, among others.

Virtual museums are "high maintenance" compared to galleries. Once a gallery is designed and established, it requires little more than additive installations.

Because museums may be organized around themes and topics which are complex and difficult to embrace, the development process may extend over more years than any of the students will stay in the building. One can keep opening new "wings" and providing alternative paths for the virtual visitor to explore and experience the exhibit.

The development of virtual museums is an excellent introduction to the workplace realities of the Information Age, as teams and committees will be required to manage the work flow and collaborate on a creative, yet efficient process.

For an extended, step-by-step description of how school museums are constructed, Go to the article on Museum Building at Oldies & Goodies.

The best argument for selecting museums over galleries is their superior value as constructivist ventures.

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