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When the
World Wide Web burst on the scene in the early 1990s, Nicolas Pioch quickly
recognized its potential to transform the way art is experienced and distributed.
Believing that “more artistic stuff was needed on the Internet,”
Pioch launched the WebMuseum (www.ibiblio.org/wm)
in 1994—one of the first virtual museums on the Web dedicated to
displaying historical works of art. Today, over a decade later, the WebMuseum
is arguably still the most popular virtual art museum online with some
200,000 visitors logging into the site every week.
Since the early days of the Web, the number of virtual
museums has grown by leaps and bounds. A recent search on Google using
the key phrase “virtual museum” produced 628,000 hits. A quick
exploration of these results reveals that the label “virtual museum”
is subject to broad interpretation and encompasses a wide variety of Web
sites containing digitized collections of almost anything imaginable.
Some of the more unusual virtual museums that you will find online include
The Candy Wrapper Museum (www.candywrappermuseum.com),
The Museum of Burnt Food (www.burntfoodmuseum.com),
and The Grocery List Collection (www.grocerylists.org).
Sharing Valuable Images
Virtual art museums tend to fall into two broad categories: those that
are extensions of brick-and-mortar institutions, such as the Metropolitan
Museum Web site (www.metmuseum.org),
and those that exist only online such as The Virtual Diego Rivera Web
Museum (www.diegorivera.com),
Greenmuseum.org (www.greenmuseum.org),
and The Virtual Museum of Japanese Arts (web-japan.org/museum).
Some virtual art museums like the State Hermitage Museum (www.hermitagemuseum.org)
function with corporate support, whereas others like the American Museum
of Photography (www.photography-museum.com)
are the work of individuals with a special interest or expertise in art.
One goal that all virtual art museums have in common is collecting, preserving,
and sharing objects of aesthetic, cultural, or historical value with a
viewing public dispersed around the world.
Constructing Understanding
Although virtual art museums may contain valuable cultural information
and images, effective use of these digital resources to support student
learning depends on framing a good research question or task that challenges
students to apply what they find online in authentic and meaningful ways.
Having students simply go online to discover all they can about a particular
artist or artwork and then write a report too often results in rehashing
someone else’s research or, worse yet, “cut-and-paste”
plagiarism. Internet-based assignments, instead, should encourage students
to explore, gather information, think critically, and construct their
own understandings of the curriculum topic at hand.
Students as Critics
For example, the J. Paul Getty Museum Web site (www.getty.edu)
offers a wealth of art images, thematic exhibitions, video clips, and
accompanying text. Students can explore the museum’s collection
by artist’s last name, collection type, or subject matter. Depending
on your students’ grade level, you might ask them to choose works
of art from two different time periods that appear on the site to write
a comparative analysis. Images of the selected works can be copied and
pasted into Word or PowerPoint documents in which students discuss similarities
and differences between the two works in terms of function, style, form,
and content. To bring closure to the activity, have students share their
comparisons and collectively discuss the larger question of “How
has art changed over time?”
Another possible classroom activity using virtual art
museums involves students becoming “virtual art critics.”
This activity involves students choosing an exhibition currently showing
on a virtual art museum site for critical review. The Smithsonian American
Art Museum (www.americanart.si.edu),
for example, features over thirty virtual art exhibitions among the many
resources available on their Web site. Before students go online, introduce
the role of the art critic, provide samples of critical reviews to read,
and discuss what might be included in their written reviews. Once students
finish writing their reviews, their essays can be turned into Web pages
and posted on your department’s Web site with links to the corresponding
exhibitions for others to read online.
Springboard to Art-Making
A third virtual art museum activity involves having students use artworks
that they study online as springboards for their own artistic compositions.
When teaching a lesson on landscape art, for example, students could visit
the Virtual Museum of Canada’s (www.virtualmuseum.ca)
“Panoramas” exhibition and learn about the different ways
that artists in North America have interpreted the subject of the landscape.
As students browse the site, ask them to select a work that they find
appealing among those on display. These images can be printed out for
viewing offline. Then, have students write a one-page paper about the
works they’ve chosen using questions that you provide to guide their
analysis. Following the writing activity, have students create their own
interpretations of a landscape based on an idea or theme that the artists
they studied used in their work.
Students as Curators
For a more challenging activity, you might have your students become curators
on their own virtual museum by researching and constructing a museum-style
exhibition on a topic of study in the art curriculum. Constructing a virtual
museum requires students to explore a specific topic in depth; to locate,
analyze, and interpret selected artifacts and information; and to synthesize
their ideas and findings into a coherent, interactive presentation that
can be shared with others online. A good starting point is to have students
examine how collections can be organized around a theme by looking at
some of the museum sites previously mentioned. For guidance in planning
and implementing a virtual museum project with your students, see “Creating
A Virtual Art Museum” on the Apple Learning Series Web site (ali.apple.com/als/k6mult/projects/3045.html).
There are, of course, other ways to incorporate virtual
art museums into your curriculum just as there are many more virtual art
museums with valuable information for you and your students to explore.
A great place to find museum sites and special online collections is The
Museum of Online Museums (www.coudal.com/moom.php),
which is maintained by Coudal Partners and includes listings of links
to hundreds of Web sites organized by topic.
A shorter version
of this article appears in the December 2005 issue of SchoolArts
Magazine © 2005 Davis Publications, Inc.
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