Please Touch the Art

Via the Explorator of Dave Meadows at Yahoo Groups we are directed to an article of November 2, 2003 by Carol Kino at the New York Times entitled Please Touch the Art

As Kino relates, a new method of "virtual" visits of museums can be seen at the Art Institute of Chicago in an exhibition entitled "Dreaming in Pictures : The Photography of Lewis Carroll", a virtual method first organized by Douglas R. Nickel for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

This method can be called a "virtual book", probably first developed at the British Library in 1998 as a temporary display called "Turning the Pages". That this method is state of the art might even be inferred from David Small's use of small interactive displays for the recent opening in Manhattan, New York City Museum of Sex.

Similar "virtual books" have been used at the Detroit Institute of the Arts by Matt Sikora and then at the Philadelphia Museum of Art for the exhibition "Degas and the Dance".

William Noel at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore also uses a virtual book to display nine rare books.

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (I link here to the School since the museum website is not accessible as of this writing) in its coming Exhibition "Gauguin Tahiti" will also include digital kiosks.

The Museum of Modern Art, New York City, has used virtual-book kiosks.

Look also at the Russian Avant-Garde Book 1910-1934 online.