Utrecht Computer Science student inspires Centraal Museum

The preparations for the exhibition ‘De Tranen van Eros’ (The Tears of Eros) in Utrecht’s Centraal Museum took more than a year and a half to complete, and assistant curator and UU alumni in Art History Maia Kenney was ecstatic about the result. But then the coronavirus hit, and the exhibition of the work of the Dutch surrealist Johannes Moesman had to close its doors to the public after just four weeks. Maia: “We had planned for around 80,000 visitors. This was truly horrible.”

Salvation

Simon Dirks heard about the story, Maia is an acquaintance of his, and felt he had to do something. Simon is an Computer Science student at Utrecht University, and has a passion for art. “I believed that we could save this exhibition with the help of technology”, he explains. So he got to work and found a tool (Google Tour Creator) that makes it easy to create a virtual tour of any chosen environment. His lecturer Toine Pieters didn’t hesitate when asked to loan Simon the 360-degree camera needed for the project.

The great thing about this approach is that you can really wander like you would when you actually visit a museum.

Digital wandering

Maia was enthusiastic when Simon told her about his plans, but she still needed the museum’s approval. Several proposals had been made to digitise the exhibitions, for example by recording video tours, but in the end it was Simon and Maia’s interactive digital tour that was chosen. “The great thing about this approach is that you can really wander like you would when you actually visit a museum”, says Maia. Museums around the world are eagerly experimenting with digital exhibitions, as this map shows.

Free admission

Simon and Maia set up the entire tour in just one weekend. Maia selected the 40 most interesting works of art and provided the explanatory text, and together they used the 360-degree camera to create the images that Simon then integrated using Tour Creator. The virtual tour of De tranen van Eros has been open to the public since mid-April, and around 6,000 visitors have viewed the exhibition.

 Part virtual tour Centraal Museum

Out-of-the-box

The project has been an eye-opener for both Maia and Simon. Maia: “Simon inspired me to think about the museum differently than we’d been accustomed to. Thanks to him, I didn’t just accept the closure, but rather started looking for other opportunities.” Simon was mainly fascinated to work together with someone from a completely different field. “I’m interested in how technology can contribute to public involvement in museums, but the art world is entirely new to me. In that sense, this project was a good learning experience, and now I can reveal that my Master’s research will definitely deal with that relationship.”