Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere

Art museum patrons have varied reactions upon their first visit to the museum: those with an established art education and love of art can spend hours examining each piece and reading the information plaque beneath each piece. However, an average visitor spends less than ten seconds looking at each piece, and these visitors rarely leave the museum with a deeper understanding of the history living within the galleries. In this talk, I propose using an interactive 3D timeline as a way to create a new medium for visitors to interact with curated pieces as well as learn about the history of the pieces.

In this presentation I will be discussing the interactive timeline of Orlando Museum of Art’s (OMA) American Journey gallery I created using an open source software developed by knight lab. My goal in this timeline is to provide each work of art with a historical context, and curator insights in order to help visitors to have a more engaged experience in the museum. The timeline will be displayed on a webpage that visitors can access through a browser on a tablet, or a mobile device. This Digital Humanities project will provide museums with a new mode of engagement, increase visitor engagement, and provide a new means of informal learning in the OMA gallery.

Jesslyn Parrish, University of Central Florida, Ph.D. student

Register here.