MOVIO: Online virtual exhibitions

 
Virtual exhibitions must be regarded as important strategic activities which should be part of the current activities carried out by cultural institutions (museum, archives, libraries and government services).

The MOVIO project, coordinated by ICCU, is developing an open source kit for realizing online virtual exhibitions; it addresses to Italian cultural institutions, which, with the aid of this tool,  can valorize both the masterpieces and also the less known or ‘invisible’ assets preserved in their own collections.

The MOVIO project applies to all cultural institutions, both the private and public ones, putting into action valorizing and spreading of knowledge through:
  • the realization of permanent and temporary exhibitions
  • the exploitation of sites, portal and web applications able to efficiently represent the institute own identity and activities and to carry out cultural and scientific information and publishing
  • cooperation with both internal professional figures and external consultants (museum curators, archaeologists, art historians, archivists, librarians, web designers and editors, computer information technicians, etc.)  specifically devoted to activities aimed at the valorizing and spreading of knowledge.
The goals that have been reached through the MOVIO project are:
  • the realization of an open source software enabling cultural institutions to create virtual exhibitions and high quality thematic itineraries, and making it easier to retrieve the existing digital contents which are still not enough valorized
  • the realization of a software in which technology serves content valorization and not viceversa
  • improved basic skills in information technology of all professional figures involved in valorizing cultural heritage
  •  the realization of several online virtual exhibitions which can serve as good practices for all those cultural institutions which aim at carrying out similar initiatives
  • the possibility also for smaller institutions, like small museums, non-profit cultural associations etc., to use quality kits in order to make their own cultural holdings - which often  suffer from little visibility due to lack of personnel and resources - available online
  • spreading through the web of cultural digital contents relating to famous masterpieces but, above all, to cultural assets which are often rather inaccessible, if not ‘invisible’, with the aid of various digital objects (texts, images, audios, videos, 3D, animation, etc.) and technologies aimed at promoting interaction with users
  • fruition of cultural contents carried out by remote users, at any time and place, fostering whenever possible the users’ involvement in enriching digital cultural contents proposed by the institutions.
The kit translates in practice the guidelines included in the handbook Mostre virtuali online. Linee guida per la realizzazione, a very important outcome produced thanks to the cooperation between the Central Institute for the Union Catalogue (ICCU) and the Central Institute for Archives (ICAR), also with the contribution of the Technological Observatory for Cultural Heritage and Activities (OTEBAC), which aims at illustrating the progress reports concerning online virtual exhibitions coming both from concrete experiences developed up to now within various Italian institutions and from the examination and analysis of the existing products at international level as well.

MOVIO is a 24 months lasting project financed by the Fondazione Telecom Italia within the 2011 call concerning the valorization of invisible assets.
 
Further information are available on the project site