Digitorials for art exhibitions

Almost all visitors at the three major Frankfurt museums Schirn, Städel, and Liebighaus come to the exhibitions without any prior knowledge of what they are going to see. How can they be given a suitable opportunity to prepare themselves? The new "digitorial" format endows visitors with an appreciation of the works of art.

The Scholz & Volkmer team partnered up with museum director Max Hollein to develop the "digitorial" format, which prepares and tunes visitors in to a specific exhibition. The preparatory tutorial on the Internet is a visual, interactive experience in itself. It focuses on central works of the exhibition, revealing surprising insights and exciting details. Quotes and background information are provided, placing works and artists in a historical context. Users can book tickets for the exhibition online directly from each digitorial.

The digitorials are so easy to use that all you have to do is scroll down to explore them. It is an entertaining approach to art that brings users up close to works that are centuries, sometimes thousands of years old.

The team has produced a total of eight digitorials for the Schirn, Städel, and Liebieghaus museums. The underlying concept and design are always completely different and depend on the content of the specific exhibition. The extremely flexible and painstakingly set up technical platform remains unchanged, helping to reduce costs. Other museums and cultural institutions have also expressed great interest in the new format.

Art and education should be open to everyone. The free digitorials help to achieve this. In addition, they appeal to new target groups who may have previously been intimidated by the reverent silence and splendid halls of big museums. More than half of the roughly 432,100 visitors to the Monet exhibition had taken a look at its digitorial beforehand. The digitorial is not there to replace a real-life visit to the exhibition. However, it can make that visit a more pleasurable art experience.