Before we met new kind of museum, let’s know the meaning of word “ virtual”.
Wiliam Gibson writes ( 1984), that we moved in another space “ virtual reality”, when we think on the way of virtual meaning. Philosopher Pierre Levy ( 1998) said, the word “ virtual” is derived from the Medieval Latin virtualis, itself derived from virtus, meaning strength or power.Strictly speaking, the virtual should not be compared with real but the actual, for virtuality and actuality are merely two different ways of being.
In other ways, a virtual museum is not a digital analog. We speak about real museum, but in artificial world. But this is not the sense that most people use the prase “ virtual museum” at this time, by which they generally mean “artificial museum”.
Among the first major online exhibitions, several were produced by the American Treasures of the Lybrary of Congres http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/. They showed the basic exhibition online format.
Then, Museo de Monterreys, “ Virtual Visit”, http://www.museohistoriamexicana.org.mx/museovirtual/index.html. for example allows visitors to look around the graounds of the museum, move from room to room and click on specific paintings for more informations abouth them.
The Hamburg museum http://www.hamburgmuseum.de/d/htm_d/main.html has an extensive set of quick-loading, Quicktime player using to show each gallery.
Many of these concept to present art on digital way is best to understand like exhibitions online. Today, in new gallery of Charles Saatchi, http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/ you can take a virtual tour of gallery and also create your own virtual gallery, which means that each visitor can be curator and director.
