Museums and IT Technology

Kiichiro NakayamaFukuoka City Museum

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

Kiichiro Nakayama

Curator of Fukuoka Art Museum 1981-1994Curator 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.

Fukuoka City Museum

1 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.

http://museum.city.fukuoka. jp

2 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.

2 IT technology used at museums in futureb) Virtual museum in real museum

The Information Service Center of Fukuoka City Museum

2 IT technology used at museums in futureb) Virtual museum in real museum

A part of exhibition hall of Fukuoka City Museum

2 IT technology used at museums in futureb) Virtual museum in real museum

The system of visitors operating personal computer’s 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We, curators, must never forget a fact that contents become out of date soon, but that real exhibited items are always new.

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.

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.

3 Virtual museum in virtual space