A second life for museums

Have you read this month’s Museum News? There’s this article about virtual/interactive museums in Second life. I tried it too, and so should you!

First thing in the morning, I started with the International Spaceflight Museum. After using the widget that drives you around the precinct and getting inside a couple of space shuttles, I realized the whole visit would probably take about 2 hours… which is far beyond the amount of time I’m able to concentrate on a given thing.

Therefore, I pursued my museum quest with the virtual Starry Night, in other words a museum fully dedicated to Vincent Van Gogh (which was by far my favorite). The nice thing about that one was the many 3D reproductions of Van Gogh’s paintings such the one on the left. Very Good tutorials of how to walk around and what to see first.

But this is not it! in a minimum of time, I also traveled to Austria, saw Mozart’s house, went to some zoo, to the Dresden Gallery, to a Viking village, to the Adam Ondi Ahman LDS Visitor Center and a bunch of other lame wannabe educational and art centers…

The conclusion of this little hour trip inside Second Life:

Quite interesting to see how this new medium is being used as an educational back up for existing physical cultural institutions… (But I guess anyone could start a gallery, not only existing museum) I’d be curious to go back by the end of the year to see what has changed (especially the designs).

I’m also questioning the goals and missions of such virtual institutions… sure they’re developing a network among the 20-30 y.o. and under or so… but I doubt they can inspire them to get away from their computers and go to a physical museum. Then again,… only time will tell us.