Interesting article in the Times Online today discussing how the “world’s cultural icons are blighted by hordes of tourists.”
Saying that “Increasingly the choice is between risking a work’s survival and letting it be seen,” the author concludes by saying that museums may have no choice but to implement the same sort of solutions as were taken at the Cave of Lascaux.
Clearly, the author wasn’t focused on technological solutions. She didn’t even mention the possibility of digital surrogates for handling this problem — nor, for that matter, did she mention Walter Benjamin at all.
Nevertheless, while nothing new to the readers of this blog, the issues she raised about balancing the desire to see the original with the need to preserve the original are critically important — and can provide great discussion questions for students!
One wonders when the Second Louvre Museum will hit 8.3M visitors per year, and how the developers of that museum will handle the stress of so many visitors…
–PFM
February 19th, 2007 11:17
I actually visited the Second Louvre Museum a couple of nights ago. There were at least 3 other people perusing the halls along with myself, which I thought was gratifying. But what I found particularly interesting about it is that it didn’t hold the Louvre classics in digital form, it had contemporary virtual artworks created by other Second Life users.
February 20th, 2007 10:20
Exactly. The Second Louvre Museum is an example of a SL museum that works very hard to create a setting that duplicates, at least partially, a RL museum or location, without necessarily duplicating the artifacts found in the RL museum. I too am always happy to see other visitors when visiting SL museums!