The Art Newspaper’s annual study found that attendance at the world’s most popular art institutions dropped by 77% in 2020. The true explanation for the low number of visitors was the epidemic and the periodic lockdowns.
It sparked a dialogue within the arts and culture industry about exploring new avenues for monetization. While looking for a short-term fix, museums worldwide require a long-term strategy to keep up with the rising demand for digital information.
In the future, it may put up a museum in the metaverse or create a digital facsimile to expand its audience and revenue base. Museums traditionally display works of art, cultural artifacts, historical artifacts, and significant innovations.
Metaverse museums provide an interactive experience where visitors can learn about the past and imagine the future. By using cutting-edge technology such as AI, AR, VR, and 3D, museums may open themselves up to the uncharted.
Read more: UAE Launches Metaverse Program For Remote Interviews and Exams
When do you visit a museum online?
An existing museum with digital exhibits or a whole new online venue for presenting the past and the future might be considered a virtual museum. Museums may expand their online reach and appeal to members of Generation Z and millennials by creating virtual exhibition spaces in the metaverse. These online exhibition spaces function more like auction houses or museums when showcasing virtual content.
Virtual museums can be divided into two categories:
Museum Digital Twin:
A digital twin is a museum replica that can be visited online instead of in person. Museums can provide visitors with more options for seeing their collections by creating digital twins of their physical locations in the metaverse. These virtual platforms make museum visits possible for people worldwide by leveraging cutting-edge technology like augmented reality and virtual reality eyewear.
Metaverse Museums:
There is no analogy between a museum in the virtual world and its real-world counterpart. These online galleries are reimagining the museum experience for the modern art enthusiast. The flexibility of these digital platforms allows museums to more closely resemble auction houses in their methods of generating cash. These sites allow artists to sell their digital NFTs to interested patrons.
Both forms of virtual museums have shown to be successful for museums looking to diversify their revenue streams and prepare for the future.
Why Are Museums In The Metaverse Getting More Popular Than Traditional Ones?
For a long time, traditional museums have successfully carried the load of presenting history, civilizations, and fine art. Even though conventional museums were built to display collections, they can only showcase a tiny fraction of their total holdings due to space constraints. While museums were the primary location where visitors could learn about the past, they fell short in meeting visitors’ needs due to a lack of room and access to more extensive historical collections.
Creating a virtual museum in the metaverse efficiently by expert Metaverse developers in Dubai satisfies the needs of history buffs who cannot visit physical museums. In the metaverse, visitors to virtual museums can view works of art without committing to a permanent collection. Some of the main advantages of online museums over physical ones are as follows:
No space limitation: Unlike conventional museums, which must strike a delicate balance between the storage and display of artwork, virtual museums are not constrained by physical space. No longer are physical museum locations a concern, thanks to their digital counterparts. Without worrying about space constraints, it is possible to successfully display a wide range of artwork, cultural artifacts, and historical events.
No need to permanently acquire artwork: There’s no requirement to buy anything again if you don’t want to, unlike at a traditional museum. However, a metaverse museum can contain a rotating collection of digital artwork without going through the traditional art-acquisition procedure.
Create fresh revenue opportunities: Online museums function more like auction houses, creating a new revenue model. Artists can use these sites widespread use to advertise and sell their digital works in the form of NFTs to interested parties.
Experience improvement: Next-generation technologies such as the Internet of Things, augmented reality, and virtual reality are incorporated into the metaverse’s virtual museums. In these museums, visitors can fully utilize any Internet of Things-enabled gadget to immerse themselves in the past.
Virtual platforms have the unique ability to evolve to meet the digitally-hungry generation’s needs while still serving their original function. When you sum together all of the elements above, you get a lot of people taking interest in visiting virtual museums. This means it’s inevitable that museums will start looking to the metaverse for guidance on operating.
Digital Collectables as the Way to the Metaverse
The virtual museum serves the same cultural function as its brick-and-mortar equivalent. Museums can organize exhibitions with artists worldwide and establish their metaverse by adopting VR-enabling technologies.
In the metaverse, however, nothing is more intriguing than digital collectibles. Virtual reality will bring many more people into museums to see the art on display. They can then consider turning some of their physical collectibles into more marketable digital variants. But why would they want to? In a word, let’s say liquidity. By creating digital collectibles basis on items in their collections, museums may cash in on the burgeoning cryptocurrency market.
The British and State Hermitage Museum of Russia is just two examples of museums that have transitioning to digital collectibles. The former even provides a 360-degree view of its artwork, allowing art lovers to examine each piece more deeply. Both institutions saw large financial gains by minting select objects and selling them as digital collectibles.
Museums that dabble in creating and selling digital collectibles through online markets are taking their first steps into the metaverse, as this process takes place in the blockchain.
Expenses Are the Primary Obstacle
There is a cost associated with making the jump to the metaverse. It calls for extensive financial expenditure and familiarity with cutting-edge technology like blockchain and digital collectibles. Due to the potential financial risks involved, many museums choose a gradual adaptation to the metaverse.
There is much we need to learn about the metaverse, so it’s too soon to say when widespread adoption will occur; in the meantime, museums should do what they can to employ existing technology to bridge the gap between brick-and-mortar and online exhibitions.
