Art lovers enjoying digital museum tours at home free access to special exhibits when their doors are closed or in-person visitor numbers are limited.
The following written content by Alex Marshall
LONDON — Since the National Gallery’s blockbuster “Artemisia” exhibition opened in October, art lovers have had to jump through hoops to see it.
Travel restrictions have kept international visitors away, the fear of catching the coronavirus hangs over the city’s public transportation system, and rolling lockdowns — or the threat of them — have made life in England uncertain. The latest national shutdown closed the museum entirely from Nov. 5 to Dec. 2.
If those circumstances make a visit to London sound unappealing, there is an alternative: a “virtual tour” of the show on the museum’s website.
In that half-hour video, Letizia Treves, the show’s curator, takes viewers on a walk through the gallery, pausing in front of a host of Artemisia Gentileschi’s huge, brightly lit paintings, picking out tales from the painter’s life as the camera zooms in on the sometimes gory details of her work.
Since the start of the pandemic, digital tours like this have proliferated, giving viewers at home free access to museums while their doors are closed or visitor numbers limited. The online offerings range from scrappy clips filmed on iPhones and broadcast via Facebook to slick interactive websites.
But what makes the National Gallery’s virtual tour stand out is that to watch it, visitors have to pay.
“Clearly, a film doesn’t substitute for being here,” said Chris Michaels, the National Gallery’s digital director. “But it’s a new way of letting audiences in,” he added, “and of us generating income, obviously.”
The National Gallery began the tour last month. It costs 8 pounds, about $10.70 — a ticket to enter the show in person costs £20. It comes at a time when museum finances in Britain are stretched, with many institutions laying off workers.
A few days after the National Gallery introduced its paid digital tour, another London institution, the Design Museum, released a “virtual experience” of its own. Based on its “Designs of the Year” exhibition, the tour, which costs £5, lets users move around a photographic reproduction of the show using their mouse. When they click on an item — like a self-sanitizing door handle that could help limit the spread of the coronavirus — a box pops up with more information about the object’s use and how it was made. Read more from NY Times.
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