This richly illustrated book offers new perspectives and research on how digital
culture is transforming museums in the 21st century, as they strive to keep pace
with emerging technologies driving cultural and social change, played out not only
in today’s pervasive networked environment of the Internet and Web, but in
everyday life, from home to work and on city streets. In a world where digital
culture has redefined human information behavior as life in code and digits,
increasingly it dominate…
Read moreThis richly illustrated book offers new perspectives and research on how digital
culture is transforming museums in the 21st century, as they strive to keep pace
with emerging technologies driving cultural and social change, played out not only
in today’s pervasive networked environment of the Internet and Web, but in
everyday life, from home to work and on city streets. In a world where digital
culture has redefined human information behavior as life in code and digits,
increasingly it dominates human activity and communication. These developments
have radically changed the expectations of the museum visitor, real and virtual, the
work of museum professionals and, most prominently, the nature of museum
exhibitions, while digital art and life in a digitally saturated world is changing our
ways of seeing, doing, our senses and aesthetics.
Overall, this book creates a new picture of the 21st-century museum field. As
museums become shared spaces with their communities, local, national and global
and move from collection-centered to user-/visitor-centered institutions, they are
assuming new roles and responsibilities tied to new goals for engaging their
audience, conveying meaning through collections, creating learning experiences
and importantly, connecting to daily digital life and culture integral to the museum
ecosystem. Our studies of recent exhibitions at museums leading change are used to
exemplify new directions, while they point to a reimagined vision for museums
of the future at the heart of which is the integration of digital culture and visitor
experience and participation in real and virtual space.