From the Virtual Museum to a Museum Narration at Cinema

Abstract

From 2012 we progressively saw an increase of art presence outside the museums: the Nexo Digital’ event cycle “La Grande Arte al Museo” represents in this sense a very pervasive example of this kind of presence. This essay means to investigate the ontology of that peculiar form of storytelling in which the usual museal visit is replaced by a sort of “visita guidata aumentata” (Mandelli, 2017) that is capable to cross the boundaries of the physical museum and proposes an experience that reminds us a virtual museum. But if we consider the museum narration at cinema as a kind of virtual experience we miss an important point: in this kind of product there interaction with the audience gets lost. In a virtual museum the user is both invited to follow a suggested path and is pushed to enrich his/her experience by adding information concerning his/her interest and needs. In the Museum-Movie Storytelling instead, the user is passively invited to experience a great and enriched art exhibition that totally reflects the directors’ ideas. In this sense the experience of a museum narration at cinema seems to be close to a visit in a physical museum in which the user is basically subjected to the so called “curator dictatorship” that imposes his/her historical and critical gaze. Has this sort of redefinition of the exhibition’ instances created a new form of fruition that enriches the user experience or instead we are progressively stepping away from the point? And what other kind of charming forms are going to rethink the museal fruition, as we know it?