Museum virtual exhibitions
Build museum virtual exhibitions with careful gallery coverage, artwork permissions, color discipline, and accessible visitor guidance.
Scope the exhibition with curators
Decide whether the experience documents architecture, a temporary exhibition, an interpretive route, or selected objects. Ask curators which labels, sightlines, conservation barriers, and contextual rooms must remain visible.
Obtain permissions for the building, artworks, loans, visitors, and any audio or video content. Copyright clearance for an object image does not automatically grant permission to publish every surrounding work.
- Create a gallery-by-gallery scene list with object and label references.
- Choose a visitor route and mark accessible alternatives where stairs or narrow passages intervene.
- Schedule capture when glare, crowds, and exhibit operations are manageable.
Respect the gallery while shooting
Use a quiet, stable setup and never touch cases, plinths, walls, or barriers to improve a composition. Keep the camera at a visitor-appropriate height and preserve enough context to show relationships between objects.
Mixed gallery lighting can shift color between frames. Lock white balance and exposure, avoid direct illumination of sensitive works, and ask museum staff before using any additional light. A color target may help the post-production team, but it should not appear in the public image.
- Keep the tripod outside required visitor and staff clearances.
- Check reflections in glass cases and dark vitrines before moving on.
- Capture a clean reference frame for each gallery and label cluster.
Build an understandable online visit
Stitch and inspect architectural lines, case edges, hanging systems, and repeated artwork frames. Avoid aggressive perspective changes that make a gallery feel larger or narrower than it is.
Pair scene names with concise descriptions and identify works using the museum’s approved object data. Provide text alternatives for meaningful images and do not make essential interpretation available only through visual hotspots.
- Test starting orientation, route order, labels, keyboard access, and mobile playback.
- Preserve approved title, artist, date, medium, and credit-line spelling.
- Keep a high-resolution archival master separate from public derivatives.
Mistakes and publication checklist
Frequent problems include photographing visitors without a policy, shifting color temperature, obscuring labels with seams, and promising a complete exhibition when some works are unavailable. Never retouch conservation barriers or artwork condition in a way that changes meaning.
Ask the curator and rights contact to review a private proof. Keep a permissions register and record what was excluded, blurred, or replaced.
- Confirm permissions, route, accessibility needs, and gallery schedule.
- Check seams, reflections, color consistency, labels, and artwork identity.
- Verify alt text, captions, credits, navigation, and mobile behavior.
- Archive raws, masters, approved metadata, and rights documentation.