In a message dated 01-12-19 11:06:31 EST, Bruce Wyman wrote:

<< Part of the time, I worked at the New England Aquarium and while at
 times the website has had virtual exhibit tours, streaming video, and
 supplementary exhibit material, we never saw a drop in attendance. In
 fact, many visitors to the aquarium, when asked, mentioned that they
 became interested and aware of an exhibit through the website. >>

I'm very glad to hear such reports.  I was both amused and horrified a few
years ago, when a number of museum webmasters and other web enthusiasts
predicted that the web would render museum attendance unnecessary and that
this was a good thing!  I thought such a viewpoint was a pretty warped
reaction, although there's probably always a risk that people will become
more interested in simulacra than the "real thing".  I think most of us have
a more balanced view nowadays, realizing that the World Wide Web has become a
powerful, perhaps indispensable tool.  I think it's a tool for presenting and
finding information (and sometimes an abundance of garbage along with it)
very quickly (sometimes, when there isn't too much clutter).  I don't want to
start an argument with those who might still think that my ideas are
old-fashioned, but I believe that the fact that museum web sites do not
appear to discourage museum attendance validates my faith in museums as sites
for "real" experience, especially interaction with "real" objects or historic
and/or aesthetic significance.

It has always been possible and desirable to present information and
interpretation of objects, as well as images of the objects, in external
locations.  Students, scholars, and the general public who couldn't get to a
museum (as well as museum visitors who couldn't view the objects they wanted
to see directly because they were in storage) have always had to rely on
secondary or supplementary sources such as interpretive books and articles,
catalogs, and other printed documentation.  The Web can make such information
more widely available.  But viewing information and surrogate images, IMHO,
can never take the place of viewing the original artifact itself, even when
you can't quite articulate precisely what you might gain from a direct
confrontation with the original object.  For this experience, people will
still want to visit real museums.  I suppose there is some risk that
computers in general augment anti-social tendencies and provide an excuse for
people to stay at home, just as television has its confirmed couch potatoes.
But even before television, many people found reasons not to go "out",
preferring to read books, assemble picture puzzles, knit, putter in the
garage, etc.  It's hard for me to believe that anyone who seriously wanted to
see what museums have to offer in terms of either educational value or pure
recreation would be willing to substitute vicarious experience in front of a
computer for the "real thing."

Conversely, I've always felt that you don't need expensive museum real estate
as a locus for developing and presenting grand interpretive themes--they can
be presented in a publication or on a web site.  Perhaps, in a way, that was
exactly the point that the early museum web site enthusiasts were making,
sometimes without realizing it.  If the artifacts are subjugated to themes
and interpetation in an exhibition to the extent that they almost become lost
within a scheme of messages, a web presentation might be just as successful
or even more successful.  On the other hand, museum exhibitions of the
old-fashioned or Victorian style risked wearying and alienating viewers when
the clutter of objects, with minimal identification or interpretation, made
individual objects seem lost within a sensory overload.  One of the functions
of good exhibit design is to separate objects or groups of objects from
others, and labels and auxiliary elements can help focus attention.  This is
why exhibit planning is such a fascinating field--there are multiple
variables to manage.

David Haberstich

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