Digitisation Trends within Superstar Museums in Amsterdam: Analysis of the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum

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Digitisation Trends within Superstar Museums in

Amsterdam:

Analysis of the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum

Author: Blanka Szamos MA Thesis Student number 10706623 Graduate School of Humanities, MA in New Media and Digital Culture Academic Year 2014/2015 Supervisor: Dr. Sjoukje van der Meulen

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Section I: Preface of the Research

Chapter One: Introduction

This research explores the influence of digitisation on museums. As an active museum-visitor, my interest in art and museums was growing over the years. It is fascinating how a building/organisation can store that much of our own history (even recent history in cases of modern art museums for instance) and make it special through exhibitions. There are many reasons why people enjoy visiting museums in their free time. To mention a few examples, it is a cultural activity, it educates, it entertains, it shows unique pieces of art and so on. However, there are many museums that are physically far therefore, the actual museum visit becomes more complicated. Fortunately, in 2015 there are several opportunities to enjoy and interact with a museum online. It is possible to search for other visitors’ experiences, to see the collection of a museum, to visit a virtual museum, to gain knowledge about artworks through the museums’ websites and so forth. Thus, online-visitors (also known as the digital audience) started to have a new role. Their appearance is considered as a new target group in museum management. Technological development influences the museum sector. Due to digitisation, museums have to face different challenges of management and engagement with their both types of distinguished audience, the traditional audience and the digital audience (the offline- and the online-visitors).

In general, museums are considered as organisations with the purpose of preserve artworks and educate their audience through exhibitions. Due to that, the aim of this paper is to present the different angles of digitisation within the museum sector. The research claims that digitisation influences the structure of the museums moreover, digitisation produces dissimilar management actions. To justify this claim, the research examines the different approaches to the digital in the context of museum through theoretical framework and comparative content analysis of two museums, that are based in Amsterdam.

The participants of the analysis of this paper are the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum. These particular museums were chosen because of three main reasons:

1. These two museums are the two superstar museums in Amsterdam (the concept of the superstar museum will be explained in the following chapter within this section) 2. The chosen museums have a dissimilar strategic plan for digitisation therefore, their

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3. Their geographical location is at the Museumplein in Amsterdam (as the paper takes place in Amsterdam)

During Section IV, that is based on the analysis and findings, there will be no personal opinion added on the management and marketing strategy of the two participating museums.

Even though much has been researched about the influence of digitisation in regards to the actual number of visitors paradoxically, a little has been written about management comparison between museums within the sector. Most studies examine museums’ management and strategies in the case of digitisation as the process of digitising artworks (and its influence on the number of offline visitors), as marketing strategy of social media platforms (connected to interactivity with the online visitors) and last, as the use of multimedia equipment during exhibitions (smartphone and tablet apps). Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to fill the gap from an under-researched approach of digitisation, that presents the museum point of view. The aim of this research is to show the reader what are the challenges that the museum faces in order to keep the audience (both traditional and digital) engaged through digitisation. Based on this paragraph, the paper examines the answer for the following research question henceforth:

What are the main dissimilarities between management strategies of the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum in order to keep their traditional and digital audience engaged through digitisation?

As sub-research questions, the upcoming points will be also discussed in the paper: ● Where are these organisations heading now and in the near future?

● How important is it to distinguish between the types of audience? ● What is the importance of visitor-interactivity for a museum? ● How the museum sector in general changes due to digitisation?

As digitisation is an interdisciplinary field, this paper studies the approaches of technological studies, new media studies, social sciences, museum studies and economics. Therefore, after the research methodology is explained in Section II, this study applies theories in Section III. Moreover, the introduced literatures are related to these previously mentioned disciplines. Section IV presents the applied theories on the participating museums. Furthermore, the structure of the analysis of the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum follows the form of the theoretical framework. Thus, the relevance of the literature is more visible for the reader

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through the determination. To highlight the main points of the findings, this section draws a conclusion of the paper in Section V also, it suggests further research opportunities.

In consideration of essential awareness, it is important to present the context of digitisation within the museum sector. Therefore, the following chapter discusses the phenomenons

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Chapter Two: The Understandings of ‘Digital’, ’Digitisation’ and ‘Superstar Museum’

This chapter examines the different approaches of the phenomenons that are often being used in this research. In order to have a better awareness of these expressions, it is important to distinguish between digital and digitised. For instance, in the case of artworks, digital means that the artwork was created digitally, usually with designer and/or digital tools, commonly exhibited in modern art museums and galleries. An essential example of an digital artist, Ed

Atkins’ exhibition takes place at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam1

. On the other hand, digitised art means that it has the traditional, in a way old fashioned base of an artwork (for example a painting on a canvas) and it has been digitised. Nevertheless, the quality of such an action of digitisation is not concerned important.

For the essential awareness, the phenomenon digitisation has three main, but different understandings within the context of museums. As to clarify it in general, digital in common is known as an opposite of analogue. In the context of museums, digitisation on the first level is being used the equipment within the museum. In short, this understanding means the technological and electronic devices (computer, laptop, tablet, smartphone and so on) that can be found within the organisation. From this angle, the use of electronic devices can be applied to the theory of digitising the institution or the organisation. The second comprehension of digitisation includes the actual technological equipment for digitising collections or artworks. As a result, the several types of photographies, scanning softwares or scanners belong to this idea of digitisation. The aim of this acquaintance is to develop and create dissimilar ways to digitise a traditional artwork and the information provided about the particular artwork, art period or artist. Third and last, the online/digital appearance of the museum is connected to the term of digitisation too. In addition, this digital appearance is applied not just to social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and so on), mobile or tablet applications (Rijksmuseum app, Touch Van Gogh app), websites (www.rijksmuseum.nl, www.vangoghmuseum.nl) and digital projects (such as virtual museums), but also to online visitor interaction (online surveys, online contact options, feedback activities) or multimedia guided tours (audio and/or video guided tours, tours through the apps). As this research paper examines the different strategies of management

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that the museums face with, the online/digital appearance as explained, is considered as the understanding of digitisation in the following chapters within this study.

With the explanations of the former paragraphs, it is also important to clarify the importance of heritage. Thus, the definition of digital heritage is provided by UNESCO as the following:

“Digital heritage is made up of computer-based materials of enduring value that

should be kept for future generations. Digital heritage emanates from different communities, industries, sectors and regions. Not all digital materials are of enduring value, but those that are require active preservation approaches if continuity of digital heritage is to be maintained.”2

In addition to the definition, the collection of the museums belongs to an artistic institution/organisation. Therefore, the value of the stored, presented or exhibited objects and artworks has already been acknowledged previously. However, it is a topic of argumentation whether the value endures with digitised heritage. The main importance of digitising these objects and artworks is because of fragility henceforth, it is a way to secure their later appearance for the future generations. Moreover, the value of the digitised artworks should be discussed as a different approach from the point of valuation. The artistic or the aesthetic value is not definitely damaged by digitisation if it happens in the goal of educating the audience or make it available for the future generation. On the other hand, the uniqueness of the museum collection is connected to accessibility and de-accessibility (see more details in Chapter 4.2). Therefore, the procedure of digitised artworks’ presentation is considered as an important course of action.

Museums belong to the category of tangible heritage, if these organisations are considered honorable and admirable of protection for future generations. As a further matter, the exhibited and not-exhibited collections of an historical or artistic museum are also in a proper place of cultural heritage. The previous sentences present that museum visitors consider that the roles, functions or characteristics of the museum are ‘just’ to store, preserve and exhibit the unique historical/artistic objects. For the sake of interpretation, the ICOM (International Council of Museums) defines a museum as below:

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http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/access-to-knowledge/preservation-of-documentary-heritage/digital-heritage/concept-of-digital-heritage/

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“A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its

development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment (...) This definition is a reference in the international community.”3

As mentioned earlier, museums have more roles and functions within the society according to ICOM. The significance of the former definition is to present the position of the museum. Besides, it also includes the activities that museum visitors often forget about for instance for example, to research or to communicate. Therefore, to highlight the key part of the ICOM description, the following actions are important: acquires, conserves, researches,

communicates and exhibits. These essential activities together are considered as the base of

the first chapter in Section III hence, it examines the roles and functions of the museums in more details.

Based on the paper of Frey and Meier, superstar museums (this phenomenon is commonly accepted and used by cultural economist and art managers) have five main characteristics (1036-1037). First, they can be always found in the guidebooks for visitors thus, they are ‘must see for tourists’. Second, they attract so many people in the particular city that their number of visitors keep increasing over the decades. Paradoxically, this means that smaller museums' number of visitors keep decreasing. Third, they accentuate ‘world-famous painters and world-famous paintings’. Four, the ‘architectural design’ of the museum building counts as a feature as well. Five and last, these museums are commercialised in two ways: by having an impact on the local economy and a big part of their income is based on the revenue. Generally a superstar museum does not mean all of these previous requirements, but usually four can be applied to it.

Superstar museums are in a different situation. They are competitive not with smaller museums within the same city, but with other superstar museums. Thus, it is common that for example, they branch out or they create a brand for themselves. Also, in a way there is a distinguish between museums based on a huge collection with a few world-famous paintings (Rijksmuseum) which highlights those particular paintings but in contrast, the other part of the collection loses prominence. Museums based on a specific world-famous painter (Van

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Gogh Museum) have smaller collection therefore, they have to come up with new ideas in order to develop the mostly permanent collection. This leads another competency among each other in the technological development approach.

As a last thought, superstar museums have to face the general opinion that they are special. It is connected to the term of ‘total experience’ (1038), which includes two conditions: art must be established with the right context of history, technology, entertainment and well-known events; the museum has to give everything within entertainment (park, library, cafe, shop and so on).

This research examines the influences of digitisation in the cases of management and technological development through a comparison between the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum. As the previous studies and phenomenons were explained above, this paper forwards to the next section that explains the techniques of the analysis in more features.

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Section II: Methodology

Chapter Three: Research Design and Methodology

This section of the thesis describes the tools and procedures that are used in order to receive the information to conduct this research. Fortunately, enough amount of relevant literature is given to this topic moreover, chapter 3.2. explains two other main documents that are considered as a part of methodology instead of theoretical framework. Thus, Agenda 2026 and National Research Agenda for the Museum Sector are discussed in Section IV.

To aim of this paper is to present how digitisation influences the museum sector therefore, web archives are used as the main methodology of this research. Besides, archives in general are examined in a different chapter in Section IV through different approaches of scholars. Also, a smaller section is based on the Google Art Project (GAP) is discussed in the theoretical framework. Due to the fact that the base technology of GAP is the same for the Rijksmuseum and also for the Van Gogh Museum, screenshots are presented during Section V in the analysis. The purpose of this step is to demonstrate visualising/digitised artworks, the accessibility of digitised collection and virtual museums.

3.1. Web Archive Wayback Machine

The Web Archive Wayback Machine4 is used to collect visual information about the websites' development and design from the previous years of the research participants. The first screenshot of The Rijksmuseum’s website is from December, 1999 while the Van Gogh Museum’s is from January, 1999. For the sake of visualising, more than one one screenshot is presented in Section IV thus, it is more visible for the reader how these particular websites were being developed between their date of launching the websites and nowadays.

The web archive (Internet Archive) arises from the search engine culture. In 1997, Kahle published the first idea of web archives in Scientific American. Apart of the aim of creating a digital library based on the collected public materials. As he explains the web’s hypertextual structure:

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“form(s) an informal citation system similar to the footnote system already in use.

Studying the topography of these links and their evolution might provide insights into what any given community thought was important” (n.p.).

As Rogers explains, Internet Archive makes certain the flow of surfing on the Internet as this tool creates to possibility to study the evolution of a websites (or/and multiple websites). More importantly, it also enables users to work with broken links while browsing live web. Thus, it is important to state that for this use of tool, the query that is used is the URL of the museums’ websites - single URL approach. As a result, a list of the indexed and stored web pages that are associated with these two URLs (http://www.rijksmuseum.nl and

http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl) is used for the analysis in Section IV to present the history of the websites.

3.2. Main Agendas as Structure of Analysis

There are two formal agendas that are used for the analysis in Section IV. First, the Nederlandse Museumvereniging's (Dutch Museum Association) Agenda 2026 and second, a general overview for the museum sector in the Netherlands written as the National Research

Agenda for the Museum Sector published by Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed (Cultural

Heritage Agency). These steps provide a clear and understandable national view about how the participating museums manage and deal with digitisation. It shows the digitisation of collection and artworks, the interactive tools that the museums use and the content of the website which together, demonstrates the online appearance of the museums. By the use of these two agendas, the reader is able to receive a national Dutch point of view about digitisation in the museum sector and challenges that these institutions have to face in the near future. Both of the URL links of the pdf versioned documents are provided in the Bibliography part of this paper in case of more interest of the topic.

Overall, Agenda 2026 and the National Research Agenda for the Museum Sector provides a deep detail-oriented perspective of the sector that is helpful to set up the structure of the analysis (combined with the form of the theoretical framework in Section III) and create a general understanding for the reader.

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The use of the previous methodologies enables this research to provide a clear comprehension of the topic of digitisation. By the application of the Internet Archive, the analysis presents the evolution of the website development of the two participants moreover, the importance of user-engagement as a strategic point from the organisations. The two agendas enable the reader to gain enough background information of the sector and to have an overview about the future plans of the museums.

As the methodology was explained in more details, this study focuses on the deductive part of the research in the following section in order to present the different positions of digitisation within the museum sector. The goal of the upcoming Section IV is to create a better understanding about the museums’ roles in general, about the sector (explained as museology), audience and its engagement to the organisations and the idea of a digitised museum. The previous topics are discussed from the research perspective henceforth.

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Section III: Theoretical Framework

The aim of the literature overview section is to present the different position of scholars in regards to digitisation and museum studies. Therefore, the discussed research papers are distinguished in the upcoming chapters and subchapters. Besides, the reader gains essential knowledge to understanding the application of these theories in the next section.

This deductive approach of the research examines the dissimilar positions about digitisation in the museum sector. Thus, as a general introduction into the theoretical framework, it is important to create a division between the main chapters.

Much have been written about the economic approach of museums due to that, a chapter is based on this point of view to discuss the relation between digitisation and museums. It is important to mention the different positions about the economic roles and characteristics of the museums so the reader has a better understanding from the museum point of view in regards to financial and management issues in the sector. Moreover, several studies are written about museum studies and museum science (later referred as museology) in order to present the evolution of the sector development. This particular part of the research has a strong connection to social sciences, the changes of the society and urbanisation. As to continue the line of argumentation, the previous chapters create a better understanding of the changes of the audience and the engagement with the museums. It is an essential key point of scholar position exchange whether museums should focus more on their online or offline visitors which impacts the main management line of a museum: the accessibility of the artworks and thus, the deal with digitisation.

In paradox, a little have been discussed about what are the steps that a museum has to face with when its management approach decides to move forward with digitisation. As a contribution, this section includes some scholar positions about processes and course of actions in regards to fill this gap. In this research, that particular chapter includes ideas such as digitised artworks, collections, virtual museums and the importance of interactive tools within the organisations in the goal of audience engagement. Since the aim of this paper is to present different approaches and positions, the following chapters include several thoughts of scholars from this field therefore, the main focus is to have a clear awareness about digitisation in the museum sector henceforth.

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Chapter Four: The Changes of Museums from the Economic Approach

This chapter is written in order to to generate sufficient theoretical background information about how museums have changed over time and how they are presented from scholar’s positions. It is important to mention that at most cases, the roles and characteristics of the museums are discussed from the economic or/and cultural economic point of view. Therefore, this division is more applicable for management studies as a future research topic. Besides, museums’ roles within the society more generally is a discussable topic within social sciences. To clarify the purpose of this chapter, the main positions about museum functions are demonstrated by several authors. For that reason, it is important to first have a better awareness of the relation between inputs and outputs of the museums. The inputs and outputs together serves the base of the functions of the museum that will be discussed afterwards in detail as well. As the changes within the society considered as a catalyser, a so far new function of museums is presented in this chapter as well.

4.1. Understanding the Inputs and the Outputs of the Museums

According to Pearce, performance indicators, such as input and output can influence the efficiency of a museum. Efficiency in economics is known as a term that provides an economic state, in which the different resources divide among in order to serve individuals in the best way, while keeping waste on a minimal level. Efficiency in common is understood as a relation between inputs and outputs. At this point, museums are considered as firms and organisations that are able to create different inputs and outputs (not just in the case of digitisation). Pearce describes efficiency in her paper as the following:

“Efficiency is concerned with the relationship between the output of goods, services

or other results and the resources used to produce them. How far is the maximum output achieved for a given input, or minimum input used for a given output? In short, efficiency is about spending well”(45).

Generally in museum studies, the outputs are described in other ways as well. According to Hutter, the upcoming list of course of actions are considered as the museums’ outputs: ‘expansion; maintenance and documentation of a collection; display services and add-on product and service offers’ (100).

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To clarify the circumstances of the museums, a short summary is added henceforth.

Expansion is problematic for museums because they have to face with the problems of budget

cuts, sponsorships, partnerships, demand, supply and subsidies most of the time. They have to attract visitors who go to exhibitions thus, they have to be aware of the value of their collection and use it to generate revenue and profit. Shortly, it is important to focus on the permanent exhibitions but also on the temporary or special exhibitions. In common, museums do not increase their collection. They might rent additional artworks out for special exhibitions from private collections or other museums, but as long as their income and profit makes it impossible to expand their collection, they need to make the permanent exhibitions more interesting for their audience.

The previously mentioned Hutter-listed outputs likewise meet with several problems.

Maintenance is problematic because of the physical limit a museum has to store artworks.

Apart from that, museums have to calculate and think forward to have extra space in case an artwork gets damaged and needs restoration. Thus, there is a capacity-control for the damaged artworks, the exhibited artworks and the stored artworks (non-exhibited).

Documentation is the output that had a biggest change within its understanding since

digitisation. In the traditional point of view, documentation was meant to the actual positioning of the artwork. As digitising heritage or artworks are considered as an action to keep that particular part of culture/art available for the future generations, documentation is used against fragility. Therefore, documentation nowadays mean to choose the sufficient medium in order to save and preserve the work of art in sufficient or high quality.

Display is understood as the information provided by the museums for the artworks that is

usually placed next to it (or added on their website as well). As ads on product and service

offers, the displayed information can be taken through reading, audio tours, guided tours,

smartphone applications, guided tour for children and so on.

Pearce on the other hand, uses outputs in a different meaning for museums. She distinguishes two main types of outputs, intermediate and final ones. The earlier one is understood as the intermediate output that becomes an input for another productive process. For instance, the documentation and the collection of the museum which can be used as a base for a research. The final output in contrast, has two subtypes. First, the benefit of scholarship which is in basic, all the publications, lectures, workshops and development. Second, the experience the audience and the public gains during the visit.

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Towse's opinion about outputs also worth to be mentioned in this chapter. Her idea about economic output is based on visitor services, which is education, entertainment and aesthetic satisfaction combined with complementary services (such as museum shops, cafés and other services for the audience) and their collection within the institution.

As a last thought on this paragraph, the outputs of the museums are the followings from Fernández-Blanco & Prieto-Rodríguez's point of view: collection, exhibition and other services.

Inputs have a strong influence on outputs. In general, as Hutter described, technological development can be considered as in input of museums. It had an impact on the information itself, since ‘new objects come into the range of restoration, and new connections and determinations of origin are accomplished’ moreover, ‘information tool is applied to an information process’ (102). Museums also have high inputs within their mostly fixed budget due to labor. Interestingly, the input that has been determined for the dimension of organisation, ‘remains hidden as long as the museum organization is part of a larger public administration’ (Hutter 102). Towse on the other hand explains inputs as one of the functions of museums, to be more specific, she claims that inputs are equal to production function. As she reasons, this function (input) allows the museum to:

“produce these various outputs whose inputs are the collection, the building

(containing areas for storage, preservation, research, and so on, as well as exhibition space) and labour of various types, including the curatorial and managerial staff, research and preservation experts, education and design staff, salespeople and guards. All these inputs can be varied and combined in different quantities, and economic theory would tell us that that is done with respect to relative input prices; substitution between some inputs is possible(...). The one input that is rarely reduced in size, though it is added to, is the collection” (248).

It is difficult sometimes to distinguish between inputs and outputs mostly because these factors are overlapped and strongly connected to economics. Thus, there is no official list about how to make a museum efficient. Generally speaking, the balance between the inputs and outputs is considered as a way to reach a higher level of audience satisfaction during and after the visit (due to technological development, this applies also in online circumstances), while the museum generates revenue in order to reach the ability of welcoming old and new (offline and online) visitors within the building and on its website.

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Commonly, we can consider museums as firms or as productive cultural organisations, institutions. Johnson and Thomas raised an essential thoughts in their publication related to inputs, outputs and goals of the museums:

¨In order to achieve certain objectives, engage in the transformation, via a production technology, of inputs into a mix of outputs that are valued by others (...), they raise key questions about how the choice of objectives is determined and how different objectives relate to each other; how decisions are reached on what mix of outputs to produce¨ (p. 75)

From the economic approach, it is clear that museums aim to achieve the efficiency explained by Pearce. As a weak point of this subchapter, there is no enough literature which is based on the understanding of inputs and outputs from the non-economic point of view. Followed by the idea of the relation between inputs and outputs, the upcoming subchapter presents the roles and functions of the museum.

4.2. The Roles and Functions of Museums in Economics

Museums have their roles in the world globally and locally as well, in the case of politics, economics, social sciences and so on. The main functions and roles are changing and expanding due to digitisation, therefore the relevance of the upcoming discussion about roles and functions present the situation of the museum and its common understanding in order to achieve sufficient position within the culture of arts through these organisations. The economic approach of museums will be related to the upcoming chapter of museology development therefore, an overviewed list of roles will be presented during the analysis. There are differences in cases of superstar museums, such as the act of creating

museum-brand. The use of such a brand is used to generate extra revenue for a museum. Therefore,

the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum both have this attribute. Apart of the

Museumshop at Museumplein in Amsterdam, both museums have their own shop within the

building. As a use of the brand, a visitor can buy several objects based on the museum’s collection such as Van Gogh pen, necklace or a calendar and magnets of the paintings found in the Rijksmuseum. Another example for brand creation among superstar museums in the

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just related to revenue, but also to the function of production and entertainment in addition, it is a new way of managing the total experience explained in Chapter Two.

The academic discussion of what is understood as roles and functions of museums by scholars is presented henceforth.

According to Fernández-Blanco and Prieto-Rodríguez, the essential awareness of main museum roles is an offered definition where museums’ situation is generally posited,

“as an organization that follows a general path specified by economic behaviour, that

is, the maximization of an objective function under a set of economic and institutional restrictions” (290).

Some of the previously written studies were more concrete about the position of exact functions. For instance, Frey and Meier mentioned a generalised list of main functions (based on an earlier study, written by Noble in 1970) which includes to collect, to conserve, to study, to interpret and to exhibit. Due to the changes of the museum sector, they created a more specific list of the functions (earlier discussed by Weil in 2002) with the elements of

preservation, research and communication.

Another paper written by Buren, distinguishes a different type of selection between functions. The components of the catalogue are aesthetic, economic and mythical. The first one is related to the situation of the museum as ‘the frame and effective support’ where the artwork is collected and exhibited. The second is based on the economic actions a museum can create which includes sales, revenue, exposure, consumption, promotion and so on. The third and last depends on the ‘art as status’ thus, its meaning within an exhibition as well.

The previous paragraph presented the internationally accepted and used economic approach of the main roles and functions of the museums. As the the influence of digitisation is significant, these roles have been changed over time. Therefore, it is important to argue that the upcoming subchapter belongs to the economic approach or to social sciences. Museums’ structure changes in regards to the needs of audience and the development of the phenomenon of museology (see Chapter Five). In addition, the new but so far not generally used, function is related to the free time that a museum visitor has and spends in the museum. Such a function is connected to the idea of leisure which is discussed henceforth.

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4.3. The Formation of Leisure Function

There is a visible emergence of a new, yet now official museum function. The leisure function is more connected to institution from a non-economic approach therefore, it is more focused on museums as a public space (even in virtual) to share social experience. This influence of the mass culture made it possible to highlight an unknown approach for the analysis. It is the first function that can be more related to the idea of new museums with the purpose of creating a museum community. The community-building action presents the social experience as a leisure time of the visitor. Within this understanding, the extra public spaces such as the cafes, shops, libraries and the restaurants serve the goal to generate social interactions between visitors and make the leisure time more enjoyable.

Kotler stated that ‘museums compete in an expanding leisure marketplace’ (418). In his paper, he gives the description of this type of cultural leisure experience as a new kind of elixir with several opportunities included. Mostly in museums, the idea of renewing some of the functions, such as aesthetics, visualisation and education - also in the digital way - becomes sensible nowadays among visitors. For instance, the combination of intense emotion and intellect perceptions or, the social and immediate happenings in museums. As he states, ‘whatever the implications are, tourists and a large number of infrequent visitors expect a

wow experience’ (418). Also, it is mentionable that museums were forced by their audience

to focus on leisure time from a visitor point of view. The economic advantage is to generate a bigger revenue by creating more possibilities for visitors. Therefore, the engagement of the audience (see more details in Chapter Six) is more concentrated on the engagement with the organisation instead of the museum collection itself.

Stephen's research about the leisure function makes the actual time that a visitor spends in the museum a more memorable part which means, that a real-time happens during in leisure time mostly. The importance of this position is also applicable for digitisation therefore, the digital-visit - when an online visitor surfs on the website of the museum - also happens during leisure time. Also, Stephen explains leisure as a great chance to make a combination with the education function therefore, learning at a museum is ‘done without many of the rules and obligations which accompany the latter—an important distinction to make when discussing leisure’ (302). By this statement, leisure and education functions together create the balance

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of edutainment. These functions’ favorable circumstances are beneficial for the society and the institution as well as Stephen explains:

“The contemporary museum is a place of traditional and newly-redefined cultural

functions. It is outstanding that the functions that have been identified above are not, with ideal management, incompatible. Using its collected artifacts and physical spaces, the modern museum can function remarkably well as a context for education, reliving leisure experiences and the general betterment of life for people in society” (307).

Mass culture, that is considered as the public itself - included museum visitors - is in a need of edutainment, that is now accessible through leisure function in museums. In this way, the individuals can use more digital tools and have more opportunities to educate themselves while in the mean time, they can relax. Also, museums found an impressive way to engage their current and probably future demand generation by the use of leisure function. Even though such a function is under-researched yet, by the ability of engage traditional and digital audience at the same time, generates future research opportunities from the approach of economics and social sciences.

In order to have a better awareness of museum field itself - referred as museology - in regards to digitisation, the upcoming chapter discusses the main differences between traditional and new museums connected to the development of functions of these cultural organisations.

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Chapter Five: Shifts in Museology, New Museology and the Appearance of ‘New-new Museology’

The aim of this chapter is to introduce the development of museum studies. Digitisation is considered as a new and modern step for a museum thus, museology itself has also changed over the time. The theory based versions of museum researches exist since the 16th century however, the term museology exist for about one hundred years. One of the main issues that researchers can struggle with, is to go beyond the definitions of these cultural institutions. This step requires a better awareness about the balance that is desired between the museum theorists and museum particularists. In the common academic opinion, museum studies are overly practical nowadays, instead of putting a more dominant focus on the theoretical approaches for scientific researches and analyses. The academic evolution of museology is presented in the upcoming subchapters.

5.1. ‘Traditional’ Museology

In the position of Theater, the establishment of this area of research is important hence, it circulates in different approaches of academic research areas. Theater explains that traditional museology ‘has long been marked by a conflict between competing views of professional knowledge’ (405). Shortly, museology as a phenomenon appeared for more than a half-millennium of years ago therefore, its use changes over the centuries. In the beginning, the term museology also included how to define a museum worker, who was considered as a ‘craftsperson, a practitioner of a set of skills combined with wisdom’. As a result, a base definition by ICOM has been used for decades it appears in Theater's research paper as the following:

“Museology is museum science. It has to do with the study of the history and

background of museums, their role in society, specific systems for research, conservation, education and organization, relationship with the physical environment, and the classification of different kinds of museums. Museography covers methods and practices in the operation of museums, in all their various aspects (407).”

Later on, ICOM published a renewed position of museology in Key concepts of Museology that was edited by Desvallées and Mairesse. Within this document, the editors agreed to

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arrange different phenomenons that are connected to heritage and museums. In their new understanding, museology is the base of a study on the museal field through theoretical and the critical approaches. Also, they clarify commonly used phenomenons by exact explanations. For instance, collection, which is formed by the several cultural and historical

objects, that belong to the museums, giving them the permission to use them for exhibitions.

The significance of this presentation about the distinguished versions of museology is to demonstrate how the changes within society and urbanisation influence the concept of museum studies. Therefore, the upcoming subchapter introduces the reader to idea of new museology.

5.2. New Museology

New museology, focuses on museum studies from a different approach. The theorists from this particular and more modern part of museology consider museums as social institutions. In common, scholars from this section argue about the contrasts between the approaches of traditional and new museology. To mention a few examples, some of the key concepts of argumentation are value, control, interpretation, meaning, authenticity and authority.

According to Vergo, new museology as he defines is ‘a state of widespread dissatisfaction with the old museology’ (13). He presents that the previous studies were mainly focused on the methods thus, he claims that museums themselves could be examined through several different points of view. For instance, political studies (the role of the government and politics within the institutions and cultural sectors), media studies (technological development, new management opportunities), sociology (institution's role within the society), psychology (art therapy), cultural/humanities studies (art history, preservation studies), economic studies (cultural goods, value of the art, collection and exhibition management) and so on.

A different position of new museology is based on the term itself hence, new museology can be considered as an under-researched method to examine the roles and the functions of the museums. As McCall and Gray write, new museology received several responses that could be collected as ‘suspiciously ad hoc’, moreover as ‘odds with the educational purposes’, and last as ‘less useful for praxis’ (21).

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Another point of view was discussed in Stam's paper which was more related to the valuation of the museum. The paper examines value not from the economic approach, but its appearance among the museum visitors which therefore, creates social value. As he states, ‘value, (...) is not an inherent property of objects, but rather an attribute bestowed upon objects by their inclusion in the museum’ (270). In this position, the phenomenon of the aura is presented in addition hence, it is applied to online (virtual museums) and offline (traditional museums) environment. The aura is the place where the value of the artwork (not significant if it is traditional artwork, digitised artwork or digital artwork) can exist. It is created by the audience moreover, the aura is the ‘embodiment of established social values’ (271).

New museology summarises the traditional forms of museology and applies them to social sciences. The consideration of the museums having a bigger role is based not just on value, but on the creation of a museum community.

In the online paper of Andrea Hauenschild, Claims and Reality of New Museology5, she

claims that museums are educational tools. More importantly, she states that ‘discourse of new museology is essentially cultural and political, not scientific’. Since her paper was published in the late 90s, more scientific papers were published from the questioned approach of new museology still, the relevance of her paper is essential. Her position about the new museums’ aura is considered decentralised while a traditional museum has the ‘four walls of the building’. On the other hand, new museums are the ones that can be referred as 'fragmented'. It is simply explained by the fact that new museums can be extended after the reach of the physically limitation (the ‘four walls’). It is not a direct relation to nowadays popular virtual museums but to deal with museums' extensions outside of their environment. As this chapter aims to demonstrate the development of museology, taken the bullet points of her paper, the upcoming table was created:

Objectives Basic Principles Structure and Organisation Approach Tasks Traditional museum Preservation and protection of a given material heritage Protection of the objects Institutionalization; government financing; central museum building; professional staff; hierarchical structure Subject: extract from reality (objects placed in museums) Discipline-oriented restrictiveness; Collection; documentation;r esearch; conservation; mediation 5_{http://museumstudies.si.edu/claims2000.htm#1.}

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orientation to the object and

past New museum Coping with everyday life; social development Extensive, radical public orientation; territoriality Little institutionalisation; financing through local resources; decentralization; participation; teamwork based on equal rights Subject: complex reality Interdisciplinari ty; theme orientation; linking the past

to the present and future; cooperation with local/regional organizations Collection; documentation; research; conservation; mediation; education; evaluation

Table 1. Traditional museums compared to new museums based on the paper of Hauenschild

If the reader takes a look at this table, except of some smaller differences, there is no significant change. Therefore, new museums are modernised versions of the traditional museums. As time passes, it becomes questionable whether the term new museology still has its relevance or it has become outworn. In that latter case, the modernised approach is necessary. As this section is a gap within this field of study, the idea of new-new museology (new museology nowadays) with the relation of the changes of roles is discussed henceforward.

5.3. ‘New-new Museology’

Santos and Primo's edition brings a modernised approach for new museology. Their position is based on the application of new museology in the 21st century. They argue whether it is possible to mention new-new museology or, an extended and probably modernised understanding of new museology should be adjusted to the field. In their understanding, community museums - which is related to Stam's position about the creation of communities within museums - ‘grow and multiple’ (8) thus, their development is likewise changes based on the need of the community. Their paper also raise the problem of a tetra-partite model of a museum which means, that visitors of the exhibitions are free to add information about the artwork. They are allowed to rearrange, make suggestions which leads to the loss of authority of the museum when ‘visitor becomes the curator and the museum becomes the visitor’ (55). The model has been already criticised due to the knowledge or education level of the visitor however, personal taste as a factor is not mentioned which is not related to the previous

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points. Moreover, this model is related to the definition of museums provided by ICOM in Chapter Two. Thus, to highlight the role of the museum as a service of society, extended new museology or new-new museology organisations are in a service of their community.

This research’s argumentation is based on the digitisation as an influencer factor. Therefore, the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum are considered as new museums explained by Hauenschild. It is questionable whether these museums belong to new museology, extended new museology or new-new museology. Using the roles of museum from the previous chapter and the table based on Hauenschild’s paper, the followings tasks are considered as functions: Collection, documentation, research, conservation, mediation, education,

evaluation. For a better understanding, the upcoming explanation is written in addition.

The changes of collection are noticeable since one of the main attributes of the museums has changed with it, which is called the de-accessibility of artworks. Traditional museums are famous for having a huge collection but in the meantime, they only exhibit a smaller part of it. With digitisation, their collection and its information can be reachable for everyone with internet connection thus, museums expand their possibilities to share the mystic of artworks. Documentation is the act of choosing the right medium to digitise the artwork.

Research is also based on information accessibility therefore, museums can be considered as open data/big data providers with an incredible amount of materials.

Conservation also has a new understanding with digitisation as a result, museums are considered as archives (and internet archives).

Mediation is the wide range of set of tools that helps the relationship between the artworks exhibited by the museums and the visitors, including surveys, feedbacks or social media platforms which leads to task of evaluation.

The role of education remained the same but interestingly, it developed several digital features to become more popular for the next generation of visitors which is showed on the following figure (Hawkey 21).

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Exhibit 2: Education function plans for museum

This chapter examined how museology changed over time in regard to the base of its definition. In conclusion, traditional museology and museums are understood as organisations with the main tasks and roles of exhibit and preserve. Over time, new museology changed to main roles thus, the function of the new museums are to educate and to connect the audience by creating community. This impact can be connected to the general urbanisation development and the social-, technological shifts within this area. As new-new museology or extended new museology was explained earlier, it was influenced mainly by the development of technology. Therefore, it is necessary to have a new phrase of museology that is connected to digitisation for instance, a better distinguish between new-new museology and extended new museology. Digitisation has an impact on museology, not just because of technological development but also, it changes the structure of a museum simultaneously. Consequently, museums are considered as facilitators of interaction between art and the audience (online and offline as well). As a result, these museums’ main role is audience engagement through technology combined with leisure that will be discussed in the upcoming chapter.

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Chapter Six: Audience, Accessibility and the Democratisation of

Artworks

This chapter’s aim is to present how digitisation influence the museum audience in regards to museum management’s approach of the accessibility of the collection. The changes explained henceforth give a better understanding about the importance of distinguished audience (offline and online visitor of the museums) in relation of considering museum collection as an open data set. Therefore, digitisation impacts the main characteristic of a museum, that its collection is only accessible by going physically to the exhibition.

6.1. The Distinguished Audience of Museums

As Towse explained, one of the main advantages of digitising heritage - artworks, collections or creating virtual exhibitions and museums - is the ability to provide digital guides. This action distinguishes the actual visit itself as a course of actions by visitors. In detail, a difference between digital visit and real-time visit is explained henceforth. The first version of visit appears when the visitor can collect information about his/her own interest about the exhibition, collection or the museum itself from the websites, digital brochures, social media platforms, other visitors' opinion. More importantly, if the museum provides virtual museum, it gives the chance to experience the artwork even though the visitor is not there physically. In paradox, the second option is based on the actual attendance and participation at the museum in order to see an exhibition.

Interestingly, there are two main leading groups in the cases of opinions whether museums should or should not digitise their artworks and activate themselves on online platforms in regards to audience. One of them states that while it is good to share art to the part of the audience who are not able to physically visit the museum, it becomes questionable whether those people would go later to see those particular artworks in person. It is also a topic of argumentation whether the value of the digitised artwork decreases or increases, since museums are famous to have a huge collection while on permanent exhibitions only a part of it can be seen.

On the other hand, it is a highly researched topic if the digitised collection of the museum still generates the feeling of an actual visit to someone in front of his or her electronic device.

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Therefore, there is a possibility to create a stronger must-see-in-person category of artwork through digitised collections. This point of view states that museum managers should not forget that one of the main function of the museums is to educate people, which is strongly connected to find information available online after all, both digital and real-time visit considered as main leisure and entertainment activities between people who are thus, potential visitors of the museum.

In La Distinction, a text written by Pierre Bourdieu in 1979, the French sociologist addresses the social determinism that separates the museum-goers (who possess a high cultural capital) from those who do not go to the museums (and who have a lower cultural capital). This second category of people are often mentioned as those who do not feel welcome into the institutional space, and partly because they don’t know what to expect from a museum experience.

According to Towse there is a need to consider the idea of shifting the demand of museums. One of the main point that museums have to admit, is that they have to set up their strategy in order to attract not just the general audience and digital audience but also, the younger generations who are multitasking media users. For this, museums should provide free information about the museum, current exhibition with a well-designed and eye-catching website and promote their different, modern, interactive tools. All of the previous idea of an overviewed information sets has to be updated over time to show to the audience the relevance. This includes not just the website but social media platforms. Museums have to understand the change that went through the audience: people search for the information, share their experiences and express their opinions online. Therefore, the digital context of the museum should convince the visitor to have the real-time visit and a digital one as well. Last, if museums focus on the younger generation, there is a need to provide digital and offline (or a hybrid) educational tools that makes children get used to the environment of the museums and later, come back as visitors again.

As a result, museums have to face with one of the biggest challenges so far, they have to engage not just with the offline visitors but, also with the online ones. Therefore, digitisation does not only influence the structure of the museum but also the audience itself in addition. This step requires a distinguished management and marketing strategy within the organisation in order to keep the audience engaged traditionally and digitally. In order to

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have a more sufficient awareness of the engagement-audience, the following subchapter explains this course of action in more details.

6.2. Engagement of Audience

The main challenge of museums appear when these organisations have to face with audience-engagement. Even though there are strategies and ideas about how to connect perfectly with museum visitors, there is no generalised tactic that would perfectly work at all of the museums as museums are trying to stay unique for their audience. Naturally, there are new concepts and attitude standards that can show how these institutions are trying to improve their level of digitisation and online accessibility by digitising collections, setting up virtual museums, using social media platforms and so on.

According to Fox 6 there are five ways to reach digital audience. First, museums have to open a dialogue which allows the visitors to express their opinions and experiences whenever and wherever they want to. In short, this is the action of real-time information flow.

Second, museums have to be accessible which means, the are in a need of staying open for the global and local, to the audience, to the online and offline visitors. Museums as institutions can also have their opinion that they can express through social media channels therefore, it is a new way to connect to the digital audience. For instance, posting pictures about setting up a new exhibitions or present the ‘real world’ of the museum workers by sharing everydays’ life pictures with the audience.

Third, museums have to emerge the role of cultural aggregators. Even though most of the users also search for the online accessible content, hundreds of new posts can be less effective therefore, if the museum works with an aggregator, all the particular information sets can be collected and posted on one site In this case, we can talk about opinion-leaders on social media platforms or bloggers. These museum ‘workers’ are considered as intermediaries in order to facilitate the interaction with the audience and the museum.

Fourth, by the act of mobilising the visit, the audience can combine the previously discussed functions of the museums. It is common to see that most of the museums have their own app for smartphones or tablets. In general, they collaborate with a particular apps to have a fun

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and online competitions between the visitors in order to make a visit more enjoyable for the audience.

Last, setting up virtual museums can help a lot to engage audience who is physically unable to attend the exhibition. If it has success by creating the must-see-in-person effect, these online visitors will attend the exhibition during a real-time visit.

Another approach about managing digital audience is based on a different understanding of digitisation. According to the publication of Finnis7, digitisation should be more considered as an opportunity for collection extension through channels and tools, and museums should not focus on building a strategy on it. Therefore, it is a chance to create ‘wider mission and existing content, exhibition, touring, education and audience development plans’. As she claims, there is a wrong understanding of digitisation, including the pressures that cultural organisations can face with. For instance, accessing the younger audience, contact with the audience, earn more money, increase participation, demonstrate modernity by creating several apps and digital tools. Instead of focusing on these achievements, she states that, the mission of the museum and the needs of the audience should come first. Later she defines engagement as its is ‘about attention, inspiration or connection’. Hence audience in general can be categorised by different approaches, such as age, gender, demographic, motivation and so on, in the case of digital engagement the key factor should be the behaviour.

Based on the report of MTM London, a segmentation is discussed between the people who are interested in arts and culture online and internet users. There is a correlation between the two groups, which is understood in a way that people with higher interest rate in arts and culture online are the ones who have better skills within computer technology. Also, it is worth to mention that people with lower computer skills or non-interest for online arts and culture, have a general disagreement on digital strategy, digital marketing and digitisation in general. This factor leads to different engagement rates within the audience. They also state that the engagement measurement is strongly related to the content of digital information. Thus, there are five main category: acces, learn, experience, share and create. On the following exhibit from the report (5), it is visible how computer skills are connected to engagement.

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Exhibit 1: Framework of engagement

In the paper of Visser and Richardson, digital media is considered as a type of inspiration in order to be more opened and social. In their understanding, the lines are keep stretching as time passes thus, the ‘audience is more than a customer’ and the museum is ‘more than a provider of education and entertainment’ (4). As they describe the main differences among assets, content, they highlight audience the most. In their explanation, museums should be aware that not everyone in their audience is actually digital audience as well therefore, they have to focus on the analogue part as well. More importantly, once they see how people within the audience (reached and unreached) become stabilised, they have to analyse what groups can be found thus, create a new strategy for each of them. This step helps to create digital community shared on the same digital experience and activities. Later, it is ‘the first step towards making sense of channels, activities and the processes leading to a successful digital engagement strategy’ (26).

As a summary, the shift within the audience due to digitisation is visible. Therefore, museums should consider to focus more on the needs of the audience with the balance between visitors with digital visit and real-time visit. There are several tools and activities that can be used for both versions which means, museums have to open-minded for this new and challenging way of thinking. The appearance of one of the main consequences is noticeable in the paper of Hughes, who created the term hybrid institution. This claim is explained by the museums that are trying to manage both analogue and digital resource in

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order to achieve a higher level of combined audience satisfaction. This change within the structure of the institution is explained by the following sentence:

However, the dichotomy of preserving access to the resources such as the traditional card catalogue for some users, while also providing access to high-resolution images of key collection items and managing digital assets, is straining resources at some institutions (6).

Museums are capable of managing the difference between digital and traditional audience. As digitisation generates the distinguished versions of museum visitors, the attitude of the museum needs to contribute to both types of audience. As it was previous explained, digitisation can be viewed as a strategy but also, as a possibility for museum-extension therefore, engage with the global audience might be easier than the organisation would think. As mentioned earlier, digitisation has an impact on the accessibility of the artworks. As this factor is a crucial point of argumentation, the importance of the democratisation of the arts in regards to accessible digitised artworks is explained in the upcoming subchapter.

6.3. Accessibility and the Democratisation of Artworks

Accessibility within museums have different meanings. First, it is possible to discuss this term as the actual collection exhibited within the institution. On the other hand, one of the main characteristics of the museums is to have a bigger collection than the actual set of artworks exhibited. This means an X percentage of their collection is actually just stored in the museum.

Second, if digitisation is accepted and happened, depending on the museum, a part or all of their collection can be reached online. Therefore, as these artworks are archived online, it is possible to view this action from as an approach of open data of a museum. This term is also called the democratisation of the arts.

Third, other information about special exhibitions, sponsorship or donation possibilities, actual news are available online as well through the websites of the museums. Thus, digitisation influences not just the information flow but also the information accessibility about the museums as organisation itself.

As the previously discussed position of Bourdieu’s distinction between high cultural capital and low cultural capital, in the case of accessibility, art, information and knowledge spreaded online globally. Therefore, there are studies (such as Susan Hazan's research) about a new

Digitisation Trends within Superstar Museums in Amsterdam: Analysis of the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum