Yael Eylat Van-Essen PhD – Curator / Researcher

Museums and Technology: Redesigning the Museum

Museums have undergone significant transformations in recent years in order to adapt themselves to the new realities of the 21st century. From institutions anchored in the ideological concepts of modernism, they are required to address the new political, economic, social and cultural order of the current era. Due to these transformations, their influence goes beyond their traditional role as constructors of national and collective identity and their function as institutions that impart knowledge and education. In different places around the world, museums have become a generator of urban processes as they are a major source of attraction for tourism, and function as spaces for participatory and public engagement.

Many of the changes in the nature of contemporary museums derive from the cultural changes that have taken place as a result of the digital revolution of recent decades. Assimilation of new technologies in museums succeeds, in many cases, in making the museums accessible to populations who previously had no interest in visiting the museum, in deepening the learning process taking place within it, connecting between the museum and the local population and exposing the museum treasures and activities to populations that cannot physically reach the museum. But the use of news technologies has in many cases “flattened” the museum experience and lead to the “Disneyfication” of the museum’s institution. By relating to various case studies, this lecture will examine the implications of the use of new technologies on the museum both in regards to the museum’s display as well as in regards to its operational infrastructures.

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