The National Cinema Museum is getting a makeover! Restyling in layout, digital technologies, WiFi and mobile, for a museum open to everyone
Seven years from the latest important restyling carried out for the occasion of the Winter Olympics in 2006, the National Cinema Museum is committing to a vast renewal project of its layout and contents under the tagline of A Museum for Everyone, a Museum for You. Its wide recourse to new digital technologies is focusing on improving visitor experience for all kinds of public (with special attention for persons with disabilities), on facilitating knowledge of the works on display, allowing a choice of customised itineraries and broadening one’s experience before and after one’s visit to the Museum too.
The first step for this work in progress – which will continue into 2014 and 2015, involving other areas of the Museum – is a new layout for the entire floor dedicated to Cinema Archaeology (level +5), carried out with the support of Compagnia di San Paolo. The work, already begun in the autumn of 2013 with the installation of new conservation display cases (60 linear metres in length for 700 showcased works), will be finished by April 2014 with partial or total makeovers of the eight current thematic halls and the creation of new spectacular installations.
The use of new digital technologies, with the support of the Turin Chamber of Commerce and technological coordination by Torino Wireless, features the use of a free, open WiFi network, accessible from all the levels at the Mole Antonelliana, the creation of 250 TAGs placed along the visiting circuit to allow the visualization of extra information through personal smart-phones or thanks to the iPads provided, digital captions on 9 and 7 inch tablets and the introduction of novel interactive hubs.
“This is the most ambitious renovation project since its opening - states the Director of the National Cinema Museum Alberto Barbera - a work in progress which took off over a year ago and will see us busy for another two at least, with the intention of making a visit at the Museum an even more vibrant, satisfying and unforgettable experience. Its new contents and an intelligent use of digital technologies are generating unprecedented possibilities for serving knowledge and every type of public. I should like to underline the great commitment this vast project involves, which has been made possible thanks to support from numerous partners who believe, as we do, in the necessity of investing on the future of cultural institutions even in times of curtailed economic and financial resources”.
As Guido Bolatto, Secretary General of the Turin Chamber of Commerce, points out: “The reasons for the Chamber wishing to guarantee its commitment for this great exhibition renewal work are essentially two: on one hand, the importance vested in the Museum within the increasingly established tourism identity of this city; on the other, allowing the widespread fabric of technological businesses throughout this territory to prove themselves by putting forward advanced and innovative solutions. Because cultural consumption is indeed going more and more towards multimediality, with content converging with new technologies, here are interesting opportunities of development which may open up also for ICT in Turin, taking off from the museum excellence it has at home”.