Estonian Annual Museum Award to our virtual museum
The Estonian Annual Museum Award 2016 in museum development category was awarded to Tallinn City Museum’s virtual display at Google Arts & Culture platform.
Our hub at Google Arts & Culture can be viewed both in a web browser or, on mobile devices, one can access it via Android and iOS apps. Presently it contains more than 160 items from our collections, a major part of which is usually hidden in stoarge facilities. There are also three 3D virtual tours of a selection of our sites: the City Museum at the medieval merchant’s house in the Old Town, the 15c cannon Kiek in de Kök, and the house of Peter the Great in Kadriorg Park.
Tallinn City Museum at Google Arts & Culture
An introduction to our collections is provided by five exhibits – Tallinn Cityscapes, The Blackheads of Tallinn, St Canute’s Guild, faiance made in Tallinn by Fick Factory and our collection of archeology. The treasures of our museum are now better accessible to everyone, including those unable to visit the museum in person.
Our partnership with Google set off in spring 2015. By Arts & Culture Google provided a superb free platform to present our museum, Google also captured our venues with Street View technology. Th ejob of the museum was to collecte and upload the content – images and texts –, provide metadata, and curate virtual exhibits. The project gave an extra impulse to digitise our collections in even better quality.
Estonian Annual Museum Awards are set up to acknowledge the best museum specialists and to promote different facets of museum work. For 2016, prizes – the Museum Rats − were awarded in ten categories, plus a special prize was awarded for for tourist friendliness. This is the fourth Annual Museum Award won by the Tallinn City Museum. Further information at the Ministry of Culture website (in English).
Virtual Tallinn City Museum can be reached at
www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/partner/tallinn-city-museum
(shortened URL bit.ly/TallinnCityMuseum).