I can’t show you the sites I reviewed, but here are 3 winning examples from 2010: Electrifying America; Polio Pioneer; and Out of the Box, Into the Oven.

The context for the student web sites was National History Day. This is a yearlong educational program that guides students to learn about interesting issues, ideas, people, and events of their choosing — and to express it via a creative and original performance, documentary, paper, web site, or exhibit. Teams of 2-3 students followed guidelines to create “a collection of web pages, interconnected with hyperlinks, that presents primary and secondary sources, interactive multimedia, and historical analysis… an accumulation of research and argument that incorporates textual and non-textual (photographs, maps, music, etc.) description, interpretation, and multimedia sources to engage and inform viewers about your chosen historical topic.”

Meanwhile, in the museum world, virtual exhibits are created by curators and education/outreach staff, and loosely fall into two types:

• Story-driven exhibits — In the virtual analogue to a physical museum, visitors are drawn through a story, guided through sections and subsections, filled with text and multimedia. These can be costly to produce if they have a lot of pages or extensive multimedia, but are inexpensive on the simpler end (as the student exhibits show). A decade ago, there was a boom in richly multimedia virtual exhibits as museums and publishers rushed to make virtual exhibits. That boom quickly tapered off, as sky-high develop costs did not lead to revenue, and virtual exhibits are now produced less often. The virtual exhibits at WebExhibits are mostly story-driven.
• Object-driven exhibits — Another approach is to focus on objects. Collection management software can stitch together objects and captions, giving visitors a web pages to browse. The premise is that if software is fed enough data, browsing objects online can approximate the experience of wandering the archives of a museum. Previously limited to deep-pocketed museum who could afford in-house software developments or commercial licenses, open source software like Omeka and CollectiveAccess now allow museums and archives to put collections online less expensively. Even WordPress can be used to navigate a collection (each post is an object or topic.) On a smaller scale, museums can accomplish a similar, limited goal using photo sharing sites like Picasa or Flickr photos, or even sharing photos within Facebook. A great example of using a blog/Facebook format is “Letters of Note.”

Students have been making web sites for National History Day and other annual contests like ThinkQuest since 1996. Kids do this in their after school time. Student projects avoid adult intervention, and so they suffer from typos, misdirected emphasis, awkward layouts, and limited research. But these flaws could all be easily remedied in a non-contest setting, if students were supervised by a historian or curator, and perhaps a design mentor.

If cheap, imperfect exhibits can be made by kids, there has to be a lesson for the establishment. But what’s the lesson? Should museums have summer internships with teams of kids? Should they partner with existing youth outreach projects? Or should they make more short & sweet virtual exhibits, which will not get bogged down with complex contracts, tedious planning and budget creep?

If museums don’t increase their investment in virtual exhibits, there is evidence that others will step up to the plate. Software companies are moving into this space. For example, see our recent post about “The virtual vs. the real: Giga-resolution in Google Art Project” where Google collected deliciously high-resolution photos, metadata, and interesting captions, to create a new kind of online art exhibit. And in the sciences, our blog post “Making of science apps: Not the usual suspects” talks about how eBook publisher TouchPress has created two interactive eBooks, on the periodic table and about the solar system, which are effectively hand-held virtual exhibits.

Virtual exhibits are cost effective. It costs only a few pennies to serve a WebExhibits visitor, in contrast with a typical U.S. museum’s cost of $23 per visitor.

The “exhibit” format is trusted. Americans’ mistrust of the news media is at a two-decade high. However, a 2008 IMLS study found that museums evoke consistent, extraordinary public trust among diverse adult users — more than government, commercial, and private individual sources. Virtual exhibits harness that trust with a curated museum-style approach.

Virtual exhibits are popular. In a 2009 study of 150 museum and science center professionals, 88% of respondents said that computer-based exhibits were “popular” to “very popular” with their visitors. This echoes IDEA’s success with the WebExhibits.org online museum.

Experience is more important than factual learning. Virtual exhibits are grounded in an experience-based learning model. Rather than focus directly on what users will learn, our first interest is what users will see and do with the virtual exhibit. Outcomes for the user—cognitive or affective—are a function of that direct experience. Unique outcomes will depend upon the user’s prior experiences and processing skills.

In 2003, Museo del Prado had a major exhibit on Titian, the leader of the 16th century Venetian school of Italian Renaissance painters. Organized in collaboration with the National Gallery in London, this ambitious project brought together 65 paintings from various European and American museums that were commissioned by the Duke of Ferrara.

• See IDEA’s WebExhibits Feast of the Gods bilingual collaboration with the Prado.
• See IDEA’s WebExhibits Feast of the Gods full exhibit.

“Primary exhibit Prado, 2003”

IDEA collaborated with Blanca Sánchez Velasco, Gabriele Finaldi, and Miguel Falomir to adapt a portion of Bellini’s Feast of the Gods WebExhibit into a bilingual presentation (translated by Juan Silva) that included reconstructed views of earlier versions by Bellini and Dosso Dossi.

“Complementary mini-exhibit Webexhibits”

To make the complex, multi-dimensional data easily accessible, IDEA developed innovative data display tools for visitors to use. For example, by simply placing the cursor over one part of the painting, information specific to that area became available, including the exact paint that was used and what an X-ray of the area revealed. Visitors could also zoom in to view sections of the painting for detailed study, and use a “spyglass” to compare an X-ray or infrared image to what’s seen with the naked eye. The classic style, rich colors, and textured backgrounds brought the masterpiece and its mysteries to life.

The exhibit also included a virtual reconstruction of Alfonso d’Este, the Duke of Ferrara’s private art gallery, or camerino. At the time, such 3D virtual worlds were new technologies, and provided visitors with a deeper understanding of how the paintings related to one another when they were hung in the original gallery in the 1530s.

The Prado described the significance of the exhibit as both a reflection of the artist’s work and the relationship between the artist and the Spanish monarchy:

Tiziano is the most extensive exhibition devoted to the artist’s work since the one held in Venice in 1935, and the first monographic exhibition dedicated to his work in Spain. H.R.H. the Prince of Asturias and the vice-president of the Italian Government, Gianfranco Fini opened the exhibition on June the 9th. Featuring a total of 65 works, it includes more than 30 paintings that have never previously been seen in Spain, such as the Venus of Urbino, which is shown outside Italy for the first time in its history.Between 1508 and 1510, the years when he produced his first works, and his death in 1576, Titian created one of the greatest oeuvres in western art, was the most acclaimed painter of his day and the protagonist of a type of painting that emphasised colour as its main expressive value in a way that would have enormous consequences for the art of the future. The Museo del Prado has the finest collection of works by the artist as a result of his unique relationship with the Spanish monarchy. It has now organised this monographic exhibition, one of the most complete ever to be devoted to the artist, comprising 65 paintings organised into five sections. These include the Venus of Urbino (Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi), Salomé (Rome, Galleria Doria Pamphili), La Schiavona (London, The National Gallery), Man with a Glove (Paris, Musée du Louvre), Tarquin and Lucretia (Cambridge, The Fitzwilliam Museum), The Flaying of Marsyas (Kromeriz, Archbishop’s Palace), as well as the masterpieces by the artist in the Museo del Prado’s permanent collection. Giovanni Bellini’s Feast of the Gods (Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art), which formed part of the spectacular group of mythologies that Titian painted for the Camerino d’Alabastro in the Ducal palace in Ferrara, will be one of the highlights of the exhibition.

The close relationship between Titian and the paintings that make up the Museo del Prado’s collection is the direct result of his favoured status with the Spanish monarchy. This means that at the same time that the exhibition is taking place, the Museum also offers the visitor the opportunity to see works by the two greatest heirs to the tradition of the artist: Rubens and Velázquez, a privilege that no other museum can offer.

The exhibition curator, Miguel Falomir, Head of Department of Italian Renaissance Painting at the Museo del Prado, has devised an exhibition which combines a chronological arrangement (allowing for an analysis of Titian’s stylistic development and his use of innovative narrative techniques) with sections devoted to his working practices.