Cultural Heritage in a Digital World:the Future of the Museum and Digital Research Technologies

Nineteenth-century photographs, taken during travel and colonial occupations, represent primary research tools for studying and reconstructing monumental and archaeological sites damaged during war and natural disasters, or through looting. The ancient trading center of Palmyra is one such site. During the current Syrian conflict, local residents have sought shelter in archaeological sites, further altering their state of preservation. This session will explore the history and value of photography as an aid to virtual and physical reconstruction. Creator of “Return to Palmyra” (2021), a digital resource that foregrounds the importance of photography in the conservation of ancient sites, Dr. Terpak will discuss the process of transforming an exhibition, “The Legacy of Ancient Palmyra” into an enduring online resource. https://www.getty.edu/research/exhibitions_events/exhibitions/palmyra/ She also organized the groundbreaking exhibition “Brush and Shutter: Early Photography in China (2011).” Both exhibits draw from the extensive photography collections of the GRI, documenting China, South and Southeast Asia, North African, the Middle East, Turkey and Asia Minor. Combined with engravings, travel accounts, and ephemera, these materials highlight the importance of visual records, data, and field notes in preserving the world’s cultural heritage.

As digital methods become a promising new trend in analysing landscape paintings, the role of architectural modelling in this approach awaits further investigation. This research uses architectural modelling to decipher paintings of the Surging Wave Pavilion site in China and yields new perspectives. Using digital models to simulate viewing and movement, the results show that artists’ crafted ways of seeing in the pictorial space were realised by manipulating the vantage viewpoint, selecting artefacts and scenic elements, and altering the portrayed objects’ geo-locations. Artists represented vicarious movement by relating to and intensifying the on-site touring experience. Apart from revealing artists’ visual devices, the translated architectural drawings assist in contextualising the viewers’ bodily experience in the space.

In the history of German museums, Asian art was initially placed in ethnographic museums to be studied as material culture in relation to religious and folk practices; in the early years of the twentieth century, the growing awareness of East Asian objects as a significant part of “world art” shaped practices of display and defined the collections of specialized museums in Berlin and Köln. The Museum of Applied Arts (Museum Angewandte Kunst) in Frankfurt takes yet another approach, which became representative of German crafts museums. Founded as a crafts association in 1877, the collection had a strong focus on applied arts, but the East Asian holdings also included so-called “fine arts” objects; i.e., painting, sculpture, calligraphy, and prints.
The Museum Angewandte Kunst has gone through remarkable changes since its opening in 1985. In its early years, the building’s unique architecture attracted large crowds; since 2012, visitors have come to the museum for the radically new, and sometimes controversial, exhibition strategy of Matthias Wagner K., the museum’s director. The Covid pandemic, its associated financial challenges, and the new sensitivity towards provenance research, has led the museum to rethink its strategies for collecting and displaying objects both in physical exhibits and on the museum website. This lecture will present a survey of the museum’s changing profile and address present-day challenges.