Kunstmuseum Basel is one of the world’s most important public art collections, combining historical holdings with exhibitions that shed new light on central questions in art and cultural history. With the exhibition “Torn Modernism – The Basel Acquisitions of Degenerate Art”, the museum explored a particularly complex chapter in the history of its collection.
How can an exhibition remain accessible after it has been dismantled – with a sense of space, context, and high-resolution images of the exhibits? With cura3D 360° InteractiveTour Photo, the fifth virtual tour was created for Kunstmuseum Basel. A special technical extension was the integration of high-resolution artwork images via an external IIIF server.
We spoke with Dr. Eva Reifert, curator of the exhibition, and Bernhard Witz, Head of Digital Collections & Applications at Kunstmuseum Basel, about exhibition archiving, digital mediation, and the practical use of virtual tours.
Image: Screenshot from the virtual tour of the exhibition “Torn Modernism” at Kunstmuseum Basel.
“We greatly value the helpful and solution-oriented collaboration with cura3D.”
What should you pay particular attention to when capturing a virtual tour?
Before implementation, it is worth carefully considering which locations are suitable for the 360° shots, as this has a major influence on orientation within the tour. The challenge is to provide as much overview as possible with as few standpoints as possible. Ideally, there are direct lines of sight between the shots.
What advantages does the cura3D 360° InteractiveTour Photo web CMS offer museums?
The CMS also enables people with less technical experience to create annotations for the tour. The import function for data from the collection management system is particularly helpful.
How did the process of creating the virtual tour unfold, from the photography through to publication on the Kunstmuseum Basel website?
We usually need a great deal of time to obtain permission from our lenders to use the images. After that, studio photographs are gathered for all exhibits, along with additional exhibition material such as wall texts, archival documents, room sheets, videos, audio guides, and more, which will later be linked in the tour. After the exhibition opening, our in-house photographer creates the 360° shots and photographs the display cases using a lifting platform. With each virtual tour, we have been able to improve the creation processes and technical possibilities. This time, for example, this included an automated interface to our DAM system and the integration of IIIF images, which enable smooth zooming for our high-resolution artwork photographs.
What distinguishes cura3D virtual tours from other tours?
For us as an art museum, the technology using high-resolution panoramic images has the advantage that the quality of the works comes across better and the interface is relatively easy to use. In my view, tours with 3D spaces do not yet achieve this quite as well. I think it is important that details for every exhibition object can be accessed with a single click. Personally, I especially like the audio guide function. It is important to me that I can see and hear everything from the original exhibition in the virtual tour.
What characterizes the collaboration with cura3D?
We greatly value the helpful and solution-oriented collaboration with cura3D. We are also pleased that feature requests from us have repeatedly been taken up and implemented.