The past few years have shown just how important it is for arts and culture organizations to have a strong digital presence, and displaying online exhibitions can go a long way toward advancing this goal. While in-person visitor numbers are rebounding, the need for engaging digital resources is here to stay. For organizations committed to accessibility, it makes enormous sense to share online exhibitions with audiences across the world.

Museums recognize the benefits of displaying digital exhibitions and many on-site exhibitions would be well complemented by an online version. So often though, time, support, and budget are in short supply. Complicated technical projects drag on forever, strain teams and resources, require constant wrangling of content, and may even involve managing a contractor.

Here’s what Objects and Order believes: it shouldn’t take 15 meetings, 15 departments, or 15 months to put together a fantastic online exhibition. Museums can share digital exhibitions without committing themselves to overly complicated, expensive, bespoke projects, especially when they already have great edited didactics and curated sets of public domain or rights-cleared images.

Why Aren’t There More Digital Exhibitions?

We’ve added over 11,000 exhibition web pages to EXH.CAT, our color coded catalog of exhibitions at U.S. museums. In the process, we’ve discovered so many exhibitions that sound fantastic and that we wish we could see in person. Unfortunately, though, we’ll never be able to visit most of them.

While it’s helpful to read a description, view a selection of works, and maybe even check out a few installation shots on a landing page, it would be amazing if more museums shared an online version of their exhibitions. There are audiences (global audiences!) eager to learn about objects, creators, and collections.

So why aren’t there more digital exhibitions?

Reason #1: Producing a Bespoke Digital Exhibition is Hard

One-off projects can put an enormous strain on teams and resources, take an eternity to produce, and may require outsourcing at least some of the design and development. Technology changes, links break, and the site has to be maintained.

Reason #2: Producing an Online Exhibition Using a Platform is Limiting

If a museum produces an exhibition using a platform, templates can make projects look the same. All too often, they’re more like a presentation than an exhibition, forcing visitors to scroll down a linear, narrative path. And platforms may not let you map the domain to your own site, confusing visitors with a third-party URL.

Reason #3: Wrangling Content for Digital Exhibitions is Overwhelming

Content is everywhere: word docs, spreadsheets, pdfs, design files. Pulling everything together can feel impossible. Not to mention that securing rights for images and tracking down high-resolution photography can be challenging.

No wonder more museums aren’t producing online exhibitions. They can be massive, frustrating undertakings.

The Case for Digital Exhibitions

When an exhibition closes, so much disappears. When labels and section texts come off the wall, incredible interpretive content vanishes. So does the chance to experience visual dialogue between thoughtfully selected objects. All that scholarship and storytelling? Gone.

Your organization is committed to sharing more online, and you wish you could display a digital version, but…

Teams are already juggling so many projects and everyone is stretched to their limit.
You know it would take forever (and just think of all those meetings and emails).
You can’t recreate the experience in the way you really want to; a linear presentation isn’t the answer.

But it doesn’t have to be so time-consuming or expensive.

Creating digital exhibitions is worth it. There is tremendous upside to sharing an online version:

Makes an exhibition experience accessible to so many more people
Global audiences can learn about your objects and collections
The interpretive content that teams spent so much time and dedication producing can live on as an evergreen resource

Museums already have fantastic, edited interpretive content. Yes, some of it may need to be finessed for use online (for example, omitting phrases like “in this gallery” or “the work in the next room”). However, if your didactics were designed with general visitors in mind, most text should transfer nicely to a digital setting. Let’s face it, if gallery labels are too long and too full of complicated jargon, then they probably shouldn’t have made it on the wall in the first place.

Museums also have curated groups of professionally photographed public domain or rights cleared images. While it may not be possible to display images of every single object displayed in a physical exhibition due to rights restrictions, why not highlight the images you can share? You might still be able to include interpretive content for works you aren’t able to reproduce.

Creating Fantastic Digital Exhibitions

At Objects and Order, we believe that museum technology shouldn’t just help improve workflow, it should empower creativity and facilitate action. That’s why we’re building a solution to help museum teams create and share responsive digital exhibitions.

This fall, we’re expanding the MOON Object System. Soon you’ll be able to select data, media, and content for your objects and launch an online exhibition in record time. With all your assets in one space, at your fingertips, you’ll just choose objects for display, add sections and content, style the look and feel, and publish. You’ll finally be able to share digital exhibitions without all the hassle.

We know that exhibitions are unique. We don’t think online presentations should all look the same, and we think you should have the freedom to customize your projects. And shouldn’t your visitors have an online experience that lets them choose their own adventure, not just scroll down a forced narrative path? Imagine how much audiences will learn about your objects, your collections, your museum, and your mission through outstanding online exhibitions.

Sign up for a free Objects and Order account for updates on the launch of our exhibitions builder!

Ready to Explore Online Exhibitions?

Do you have an exhibition that would be a perfect candidate for a digital version? Or are you curious about how our exhibition builder can help your museum?

We’d love to hear from you—reach out and let’s collaborate!