In Taipei and London, digital archive projects are revolutionizing the modern museum’s role

Posted on 31 March 2010 | Comments Off

The sheer magnitude of the numbers is staggering. The London-based British Museum BM bears the reputation of being the world’s most prominent museum because of the more than 7 million objects in its holdings, while the Taipei-based National Palace Museum NPM has earned fame because its collection of some 655,000 items constitutes the finest accumulation of Chinese artworks and artifacts in the world.

Although such massive, comprehensive collections have brought renown to the NPM and BM, they have also caused a number of difficulties, one of which is the problem of simply keeping track of the many objects. An equally pressing issue for the museums is finding a way to share their priceless treasures with distant art lovers and researchers who are unable to visit in person. Furthermore, given the limited availability of display space, the NPM and BM, like most other traditional museums, are only able to display a very small fraction of their holdings. Although more than 6 million visitors from all over the world visit the BM every year, most of them can only view approximately 42,000 objects on display at any given time, or a mere 0.006 percent of its entire collection. This problem of limited public access to overall holdings can also be seen at the NPM, where only around 0.7 percent of the museum’s ever-expanding collection can be displayed at any time.

Read more Taiwan Review – A Tale of Two Museums.

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