From the Public Museum to the Virtual Museum. Communication in the Museum in Digital Environments. The Spanish Situation

2020 ◽  
pp. 65-81
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 1558
Author(s):  
Timmy Gambin ◽  
Kari Hyttinen ◽  
Maja Sausmekat ◽  
John Wood

The seabed can be considered as the world’s largest museum, and underwater sites explored and studied so far provide priceless information on human interaction with the sea. In recognition of the importance of this cultural resource, UNESCO, in its 2001 Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, determined that objects/sites should be preserved in situ, whilst also advocating for public access and sharing. The implementation of these principles is not without difficulties. Some states have opened up underwater sites to the public—mainly through diving, yet the vast majority of the world’s population does not dive. In Malta, 7000 years of human occupation is reflected in and on the landscape, and recent offshore surveys show that the islands’ long and complex history has also left an indelible mark on the seabed. Besides difficulties related to their protection and management, these sites also present a challenge with regard to sharing and communicating. Recent advances in underwater imaging and processing software have accelerated the development of 3D photogrammetry of submerged sites and the idea for a virtual museum was born. The virtual museum, UnderwaterMalta, was created out of a need to share the plethora of underwater sites located on the seabed of the Maltese Islands. A multitude of digital tools are used to share and communicate these sites, offering visitors a dry dive into submerged sites that would otherwise remain invisible to the vast majority of the public. This paper discusses the basic principle of the sharing of underwater cultural heritage and the difficulties that beset the implementation of such a principle. A detailed explanation and evaluation of the methods used to gather the raw data needed is set in the context of the particular and unique working conditions related to deep water sites. The workings of this paper are based on first-hand experiences garnered through the recording of numerous wrecks over the years and the creation and launch of The Virtual Museum-Underwater Malta—a comprehensive virtual museum specifically built for “displaying” underwater archaeological sites that are otherwise invisible to the general public.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathalie Casemajor ◽  
Guy Bellavance ◽  
Guillaume Sirois

Digital environments have expanded the forms of cultural participation. This paper has two aims: first, to elucidate the changing definitions of cultural participation in relation to digital environments; second, to examine the ways in which cultural policies respond to the new digital conditions of cultural participation. Focusing on Quebec (Canada), this paper is based on a critical review of grey literature in the public policy. We identified three main goals pursued by Quebec cultural policies regarding digital participation: 1) to produce and promote national cultural content; 2) to promote cultural equity; 3) to foster digital equity. The analysis shows that these goals partially exceed the scope of cultural policies to intersect with economic, educational, and youth policies. We also argue that policy frameworks and funding programs in support of cultural policies tend to legitimize an overlap of the social, economic, and political dimensions of cultural participation.


Author(s):  
Nataliia Zakharchyn

The article considers the creation of the legislative basis regarding the museums’ activity in interwar (1918-1939) Poland. Temporary organization of common government authorities in 1918 suggested subordination of museums of interwar Poland to the Ministry of religion andpopular education. It also describes changes in subordination of the museums and some features of law-making process. In April 1918, the Department of Art of the Ministry processed and offered the first project of temporary law on museums. According to the legislative proposal, state politics in the museum industry had to be implementedusing the special museum abstract within Department of Art. In the draft, there were a few types of museum identified: the main ones (national) and regional, educational and special. It was necessary to legislate on determining andidentifying main directions of the activity, to organizationally form the framework of their functioning, for the sake of museum professional work activization, controlling their activity, help with creation of new collections and support of some old ones. It is stated that his fact was understood by the representatives of the organizations that were either connected to museum industry or played a catalytic role in museum reforms in the interwar period, for instance, The Union of Museums of Poland.It was the Union that the draft law “Onthe trusteeship for the public museums” was prepared by. Apart from the draft law, the project of the implementing regulation to the bill regarding establishment and activity of the Museum State Council was adopted. In the article, the process of establishing the draft law is considered. The article reflects the representation of modified law “On the trusteeship for the public museums” in the Parliament of Second Rzechpospolita Polska. In the parliament, the draft bill was considered as a framework, which determines the concept of a public museum. According to the bill, Minister of religion and education implemented the trusteeship and control of the activity of the public museums and approved theirstatutes. The articlealso reviews the aims and tasks of the adopted law and further implementing regulations, particularly, on the establishment of Museum State Council.


2001 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 29-32
Author(s):  
Paz Fernández ◽  
Federico García Serrano

The main aims of the Museo imaginado project are to create a virtual museum of Spanish paintings held outside Spain, and a virtual special documentation centre on this topic, as a focus for other studies and research tools. Most of the important museums in the world contain masterpieces by Spanish painters and our target is to collect them together in a database which records their history, their provenance and the travels and trials they have undergone before arriving at their present destination. Today, the meeting up of technological skills and art history research has made it possible for us to make this information available to the public and to the academic world.


1958 ◽  
Vol 38 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 205-217
Author(s):  
G. C. Dunning

During the excavations conducted by Mr. L. F. Salzman, F.S.A., at Pevensey Castle in the winter of 1907–8, a deep pit was found and its filling dug out. The pit (called site VII) was located in the north-west quarter of the interior of the Saxon Shore fort, about 60 ft. south of the fort wall and nearly opposite the third bastion north of the Roman west gate. A short account of the pit was published in the excavation report, but the nature of the pit and the finds from it deserve more detailed study than they have yet received. The finds were divided between the Sussex Archaeological Society's Museum at Lewes and the Public Museum at Hastings; I am greatly indebted to the respective curators, Mr. N. E. S. Norris, F.S.A., and Mr. J. Manwaring Baines, F.S.A., for facilities to examine and make drawings of the objects, and permission to publish them here. Samples taken from the various wooden objects found in the pit were kindly identified by Mr. G. L. Franklin, of the Forest Products Research Laboratory, Princes Risborough, as noted in the descriptions of these objects. Acknowledgements for technical reports on the wattling are made in the text. Mr. Salzman has kindly supplied information and unpublished prints, valuable as a record of the bottom of the pit, of which the negatives are fortunately preserved at Hastings. Mr. Salzman has also read this report and approved of the interpretation placed on his findings. The following description of the pit and its contents is the result of correlating all the information now available.


2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerstin Poehls

More and more museums all over Europe are discovering migration as a topic for exhibitions. These exhibitions on migration question notions of objectivity or of European universalism. This article looks at a broad range of recent exhibitions and museums that address the topic of migration. Taking into consideration their varying scope and institutional context, this text argues that exhibitions on migration tell several stories at once: Firstly, they present stories of migration in a certain city, region or nation, and within a particular period of time. For this purpose, curators make extensive use of maps – with the peculiar effect that these maps blur what seems to be the clear-cut entity of reference of the museum itself or the exhibition. To a stronger degree than other phenomena that turn into museal topics, ’migration’ unveils the constructed character of geographic or political entities such as the nation or the European Union. It shows how, hidden below the norm of settledness, mobilities are and have always been omnipresent in and fundamental for European societies. Secondly and related to this, exhibitions on migration add a new chapter to the meta-narrative of museums: implicitly, they challenge the relevance of the nation - specifically, of both the historical idea that initiated the invention of the public museum (cf. e.g. Bennett 1999) and the political fundament of European integration today. They provoke questions of settledness, citizenship, or contemporary globalisation phenomena that are equally implicitly put on display. The consequent effect is a blurring of the concept of the nationstate. Finally, migration as a museal topic conveys a view on how the institution of the ’museum’ relates to such a fuzzy thing as mobility, thus provoking questions for further research.


Author(s):  
Md. Sadek Ferdous ◽  
Audun Jøsang

Recognition of identities and certainty about identity ownership are crucial factors for secure communication in digital environments. Identity Management Systems have been designed to aid users as well as organisations to manage different user identities. However, traditional Identity Management Systems are primarily designed to facilitate the management of identities from the perspective of the service provider, but provide little support on the user side to manage organisational identities. Public Key Infrastructures (PKI) is the primary tool in aiding users to manage such identities on their sides as well as to establish trust during online transactions. Nevertheless, the complexities and difficulties involved in managing and understanding such certificates from the general public’s point of view are overlooked. This causes vulnerabilities that open up for serious attacks such as identity theft and Phishing. Petname Systems have been proposed for managing organisational identities on the user side in order to improve the user friendliness and to strengthen security. This chapter provides an analysis of the Petname Model by describing its history and background, properties, application domains, and usability issues, and explains how a Petname System can be effectively combined with the PKI to recognise identities and impose certainty by validating the user trust on those identities. The chapter also presents an analysis on two applications that integrate the Public Key Infrastructure with the Petname Model.


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