The City of Porvoo, in collaboration with Stereoscape, has created a virtual art museum launched in December 2023. In the virtual museum, both Porvoo residents and tourists can explore the local artistic treasures. Susann Hartman, Head of Cultural Services at the City of Porvoo, explains why and how the virtual art museum was created.
What is the Porvoo Virtual Museum?
The Porvoo Virtual Museum is a virtual art exhibition launched in December 2023, currently featuring 64 works from the City of Porvoo’s art collection. On display are paintings and sculptures by Porvoo artists. The virtual museum can be visited through both the City of Porvoo’s website and the Porvoo Museum’s website. The museum experience is available in Finnish, Swedish and English.
What kind of art is on display in the museum?
The first exhibition of the Porvoo Virtual Art Museum was curated by Porvoo Museum’s assistant curator Susanna Widjeskog, together with museum director Johanna Lehto-Vaahtera and representatives of the City of Porvoo. The works on display span from the 1950s to the present day. The most recent works are from the past few years and have never been exhibited before. The works are by artists who have lived and worked in Porvoo.
Where did the idea for the Porvoo Virtual Art Museum come from?
Porvoo has a collection of artistic treasures that the public has not been able to see, as many works are displayed in private spaces such as schools, health centres and the city hall. There has long been lively discussion in Porvoo about establishing a physical art museum, but a physical museum has not yet made it onto the investment list. When a citizen initiative was submitted to the City of Porvoo proposing the creation of a virtual museum, we began to consider, together with the Porvoo Museum, how to proceed.
What kind of discussions did you have during the planning phase of the virtual museum?
In the early stages, we debated whether we even wanted to attempt a virtual museum, as it felt like something outside our area of expertise. We wanted to carry out a comprehensive review of what a virtual museum means. During the process, we engaged in market dialogue with an external party who guided us on what we were acquiring and what was needed. Through this dialogue, our own objectives became clearer, and we also understood what achieving them would require. The work was then put out to tender, and Stereoscape was selected as our implementation partner. Stereoscape’s extensive expertise was what led us to choose their proposal. The company brought along a large team with a wide range of specialisations.
Who is the Porvoo Virtual Museum intended for?
Our most important target audience is Porvoo residents who want to see works by local artists. The second key audience is domestic and international tourists. Porvoo is a tourist destination, one of the most interesting in Finland; we receive one million visitors a year. When people search for information about Porvoo in advance, Porvoo as a cultural city generates interest.
We began planning the virtual museum during the pandemic, when access to physical museums was restricted. During the pandemic, many people learned to use digital services, and as a result the audience for digital services expanded. On the other hand, following the pandemic, the desire to experience physical encounters has strengthened and appeals to cultural consumers. In the current situation, the virtual museum is an important complement to the physical experience. The virtual museum can be visited before a trip to Porvoo, or after. The virtual museum is always open, regardless of the time of year or time of day.
How does the virtual museum relate to the physical museum project?
Although support for the virtual museum project has been solid, at the same time the aspiration to have a physical museum building in Porvoo remains strong. Discussion about a physical art museum has been ongoing for years, but every party has had a slightly different picture of what an art museum could be. The virtual museum helps advance discussions with decision-makers about the physical art museum, as it helps to visualise the different options more concretely and to focus on what is essential, namely experiencing, discovering, exploring and appreciating art. Through virtual modelling, we can for the first time establish an experiential foundation: what is Porvoo’s art? How could it be experienced in a building?
How was the virtual museum launched?
The launch took place at an invitation-only event held in a cinema. We explored the virtual museum on a giant screen, guided by a live presenter. The experience was excellent, and from it came the idea that a pop-up space with a live guide is a great package for presenting a virtual space. Guided by an expert curator, we were able to explore the artworks in greater depth.
What kind of reactions did the virtual museum receive at the launch event?
t the launch event, among those present were the Digital National Gallery programme group and the XR museum project development team, that is, Finland’s leading digital developers in the museum sector. They congratulated us and noted that similar museum modelling work had not previously been done in Finland; others had always started from the assumption that a physical museum or gallery building already existed. Also present at the event were representatives of artists, who commented that the experience was of high quality and exciting. The launch also brought many wishes from the audience, for example requests to see works by old masters such as Edelfelt in the virtual museum.
What technical capabilities do visitors to the virtual museum need?
Typically, the virtual museum is visited from personal smart devices. The museum is optimised for the Chrome browser. It is also possible to access the virtual museum on a mobile phone, but the experience is optimised for a larger screen, that is, a computer screen. A very small screen is not ideal for viewing art, as it also diminishes the artistic experience. We look forward with enthusiasm to visitor feedback regarding the user experience. We are pleased that the solution built by Stereoscape will not become outdated any time soon, and the digital service offering is secured for years to come.
What kind of discussions did you have about the content of the virtual museum?
We decided to use existing photographs of the paintings, but the sculptures required 3D modelling. Three-dimensional captures were carried out together with Stereoscape, as we wanted to also present sculptures in the virtual gallery. With tourists in mind, we would have liked to also photograph the surroundings of the virtual museum, including the national landscape of the Porvoo River, but that was not yet possible in version 1.0.
We wanted to highlight in the virtual museum that Porvoo is bilingual and international. We also reflected on how to implement three languages (Finnish, Swedish, English) in the virtual museum. Would we create three virtual museums with different language versions? We concluded that the languages would be available in a single version. For this reason, the text content had to be shortened. We kept in close contact with Stereoscape regarding how much text and how many images could be displayed in the museum. 64 works does not seem like a large number when the Porvoo collection has 5,000 artworks. But technically it was necessary to take into account the speed of use and the ease of use of the virtual museum.
How does the virtual environment influence the presentation of art?
“As museum professionals, we challenge ourselves to consider what new possibilities virtual reality offers.”
We had a lively discussion about how artworks are presented in a virtual space. How can the virtual art museum be used differently from a physical space? What interested me most was the idea that virtuality could convey a new kind of experience of art to the viewer, and that it could offer the visitor a genuine moment of discovery.
During the planning phase, we thought a great deal about our visitors: how do artworks open up best for, say, a 13-year-old student? New ways of presenting emerged gradually through experimentation. We decided, for example, that the scale of artworks can be changed so that the art stands out better in the vast virtual space.
With some artworks, we also experimented playfully, with the artists’ permission, on how a work could be experienced in a new way in the virtual environment. For example, we “released” the balls from Ylva Holländer’s painting Jänis to float in the air of the virtual museum. The small birds from another work flew up to the ceiling; while Harri Leppänen’s sacramental, red and gold work was expanded to open from the wall to the floor and ceiling. We carried out these experiments with the artists’ permission, of course, and we were delighted that the artists took a playful approach to how their works are presented in the virtual museum.
What future development plans do you have for the virtual museum?
In the first phase of the virtual museum, we completed the launch and the first art exhibition. In the next phase, we will focus on marketing the museum and collecting visitor feedback. At the start of the year, we will be taking the museum to Porvoo schoolchildren as part of art education in schools. Feedback from them and from the general public will form the basis for developing the virtual museum. The visitor perspective is central when thinking about the future of the virtual museum. Based on the feedback, we will develop the museum further together with Stereoscape. In the coming year, we will also involve young people from Porvoo in the development of the virtual gallery.
What new exhibitions can we expect from the Porvoo Virtual Museum?
Among our plans is to put together an exhibition of works by old masters such as Edelfelt, which Porvoo residents have requested to see in the museum. Porvoo is also home to a large art school that organises exhibitions of student work and graduation projects, and we have been considering creating a pop-up space to present these works virtually. The City of Porvoo’s urban planning department is also interested in the possibilities of the virtual museum, so there is plenty of scope for development!
What is your favourite artwork or space in the virtual museum?
My favourite is the work by Jenni Tuominen, which can be found on the wall of the second floor of the virtual museum. With this work, we experimented with spreading it across the museum staircase, and I think the experiment turned out very well.
