How can closed museums still be visited?
In the midst of a plethora of digital offerings, each of them competes with unprecedented virtual tours and breathtaking stories illuminating the history of the works, in order to attract the art lover confined to his sofa.
Read also: Coronavirus: ten museums around the world to discover virtually from your living room
Walks in the rooms, advanced zooming in the paintings, tutorials for children and adults, readings, workshops, conferences, podcasts: everything is on offer to showcase the collections and educate in art thanks to ultra-modern software.
Read also: Containment: 5 exhibitions to visit from your living room
To capture attention, museums must give the internet visitor the impression that he is investigating an enigma himself, that he is the first to dive into the mystery of a work, that he is walking alongside the art historian and participates in its questions.
Saturday evening, for the traditional Night of Museums, the Minister of Culture Roselyne Bachelot was to open the ball of virtual festivities - no visit “
in real
” this year, confinement requires -, inviting the public to follow her to Paris in two house-workshops appreciated for their intimate atmosphere, the Gustave Moreau museum and the Musée de la Vie Romantique.
At the Louvre-Lens, Internet users will accompany the museum team on flashlight tours.
And the Beaux-Arts de Lyon select the most beautiful owls and owls from its collections so that they invade its social networks.
The public is invited to tweet these nocturnal birds with the hashtag # NuitDesMuséesChezNous.
"
The use of new media is an opportunity to stimulate the spirit of creativity, curiosity, entertainment and sharing
", analyzes Catherine Pegard, president of the Palace of Versailles.
And the confinement has forced a "
reinvention
", especially "
with the youngest
", underlines Serge Lasvignes, president of the Center Pompidou.
A podcast on the history of the Raft of the Medusa
Among the “
Louvre investigations
”, a podcast combines art and crime around Théodore Géricault's Raft of the Medusa.
Romane Bohringer and the navigator Isabelle Autissier recount this shipwreck in the style of a police investigation.
A series of podcasts invites you to dive into affairs like the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911. The VR (virtual reality) app "
Face to face with the Mona Lisa
" continues to be a great success: 16,000 downloads.
On social networks, the Quai Branly Museum reveals, in three video episodes, the mysteries of the Olmec civilization, exhibited in its now closed rooms.
He also launched the #BestOfBranly operation, highlighting his iconic works, by inviting Internet users to share their favorite work in the museum in response.
At the Center Pompidou, the video game
Prisme7
(soon available in Chinese) offers interaction with 40 works.
And the “
Quèsaco
”
webseries
showcases a few works, in an offbeat tone, attempting to respond in two minutes to visitors who ask: “
But what is it?
".
Among its many offers, the Palace of Versailles has chosen to share behind the scenes of its worksites, in particular that of the Royal Chapel and the crafts that work there: a website, live on Facebook, a web series, videos. ..
On the occasion of an Enki Bilal exhibition, the Hélène & Édouard Leclerc Fund in Landerneau (Finistère), offers exchanges via Zoom with historians and artists, in the presence of the famous comic book author.
A platform dedicated to Van Gogh
Elsewhere in Europe the same frenzy of initiatives reigns: in his series of videos “
Uffizi on Air
” on Facebook, curators from the Uffizi in Florence show the secrets of the masterpieces and the public can interact.
Dutch museums have launched VanGoghWorldwide, a digital platform that brings together 1,000 works by Van Gogh.
And the Prado has released an application to view 400 works from the museum on a smartphone or tablet.
Virtual visits, especially from foreigners, have increased exponentially everywhere due to confinement.
Thus, during the 71 days of the 1st confinement, the louvre.fr site received 10.5 million visits, against 14.1 million for the year 2019. And visitors from the United States then represented 17% (against 16 % from France).
Virtual tours in English total 10 million views, and the various accounts of the largest museum in the world have exploded: 9.2 million subscribers today.