Lecturer: Dr. phil. Roland Meyer

Tuesday, 10:00 - 13:00

Begin Tuesday, 13.04.2021, online, Link will be provided via Moodle

The digital museum is here to stay. When Covid-19 forced museums around the world to close last year, many, especially smaller museums, had to improvise and quickly expanded their online presence. Now, more than a year after the pandemic, museums are still closed in many parts of the world, and digital channels have become essential for museums to communicate with their audiences.

In this seminar, we will explore the different virtual »spaces« of the digital museum: Online exhibitions and digital databases, social media and virtual tours, and phenomena such as gamification and virtual reality. We will also look back at the history of museum exhibitions and their relationship to technical media to better understand which aspects of the museum experience can be digitized – and which may never be. And finally, we will discuss how virtual spaces are transforming the physical spaces of museums and exhibitions.

Methods and requirements

The course will give students a critical insight into the various ways in which museums have become digital, provide them with an overview on the history of museum and exhibition spaces, and allow them to develop their own position towards the challenges which museums are facing today. The course will take place as a mostly synchronous online seminar, with assigned readings, small research tasks, regular reading responses, and recurring online-group discussions via video conferencing. Occasionally, guest speakers from the museum world are invited to share their experience. If possible, on site museum visits are planned for those who are in Germany. A reader will be provided via Moodle at the beginning of the semester.