Factors Determining Whether an Art Museum Will Offer Virtual Content: An Empirical Study in South Korea

Abstract

This study examines the academic definition of virtual museums and the factors determining whether South Korean art museums will offer virtual content. First, this paper collects definitions of virtual museums from previous studies and identifies the key attributes to then suggest a comprehensive definition. The final definition arrived upon is as follows: A museum built within a digital space with a collection of digitized objects, such as images, audio files, text-based documents, and using virtual reality to supplement, augment, and enrich the museum experience. Next, this study assesses the current digitalization level of South Korea’s registered art museums and examines which museum attributes determine whether there is virtual content offered by the art museum. The research findings show that the number of museums with virtual content are quite limited. Additionally, the presence of collection information, the size of the collection, and the exhibition space’s size all affect the presence of virtual content significantly. Considering these outcomes, this study suggests possible practical and policy measures to enhance the experience of immersive cultural heritage.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2019S1A3A2099973). This research was also supported by the MSIT (Ministry of Science and ICT), Korea, under the ITRC (Information Technology Research Center) support program (IITP-2020-0-01749) supervised by the IITP (Institute of Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation).

Notes on contributors

Seungyeon Ha

Seungyeon Ha is a graduate student in the Department of Media and Communication at Korea University. Her research interest lies in the change of media ecosystem and new media. Her current work focuses on the connection between new media technology and art industry.

Seongcheol Kim

Seongcheol Kim is a Professor of the School of Media and Communication at Korea University. He received an MA and PhD in Media from Michigan State University. He is a co-editor of Digital Business and an associate editor of Telecommunications Policy. His research interests include digital business and new media.