Technological Solutions Ensure a Future for Cultural Heritage

This October, the British Museum announced a $12 million plan to digitize its entire collection. The intimidating task – which will span five years – is in response to a recent scandal where a curator stole several uncatalogued artifacts. The thief targeted precious jewelry and gems that were not found in the museum’s public displays or recorded in digital archives but are still each worth upwards of $60,000. Previous, similar thefts have resulted in the cumulative loss of 2,000 artifacts and millions of dollars. 

To some, the scandal is an opportunity. George Osborne, board chairman of the British Museum, said “We have a pretty good website— but we can use this as a moment to make that a lot better and a lot more accessible”. Only one percent of the British Museum’s collection of 8 million artifacts and artworks is physically displayed at a time, while the rest is archived in storerooms. However, the museum’s current website allows for more than a quarter of the collection to be digitally explored by the public. Each digitized object is represented by an image, a detailed description, and several identifiers. The British Museum is vowing to document all 8 million objects in its collection in this way by the end of the project.

In the museum’s press release announcing their decision, Interim Director Mark Jones explains the role that an exhaustive digital collection would play in preventing theft. “The better a collection is known – and the more it is used – the sooner any absences are noticed.” With the whole collection digitally preserved, no object can be targeted or disappear unnoticed. 

While the British Museum’s continuing struggle with theft is unique, the institution is not alone in moving towards large-scale digitization. Digitizing and sharing their collections is one method that prominent museums such as The Louvre, The Smithsonian, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art are using to protect cultural heritage while continuing to stay relevant. In 2013, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) reported that art museum attendance gradually declined in the period between 2002 and 2013, and their 2023 report states that 75% of adults participating in the arts did so through digital means. 

The steady decline in museum attendance was intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic. Two-thirds of museums are experiencing an average of only 71% of their pre-pandemic attendance. And despite their efforts towards digitizing collections and catering to a virtual audience, 60% of museums are still reporting pandemic-related financial losses.

The COVID-19 pandemic changed the role of digital archives from making artifacts, art, and other valuable data available to museum staff to making them accessible to the public. In December 2020, archaeologist and curator Pinar Durgun wrote for the Alexandria Archive Institute that “Museum collections databases are initially designed with specialized users in mind, mainly the museum staff and researchers.” She explains that museums are shaped for the visitor while museum databases are not. 

Photo Credit: Diego Delso, Museums + Heritage Advisor 

For an untrained visitor, pre-pandemic digital collections were frustrating to search. While information was available, it was difficult to find, use, and interpret. When museum attendance dropped 77% worldwide in 2020, institutions were forced to convert their unapproachable online databases into digitized representations of the museum. Only a year after the pandemic began, The Louvre and the Eugène-Delacroix National Museum boasted an updated digital catalog of over 500,000 digitized works. The collection is approachable even at first glance, featuring an interactive map of the museum and an advanced search option, allowing users to have the experience of walking through the museum from the comfort of their homes. However, the digital collections of The Louvre, the British Museum, and others are free to access, and people are questioning how the museums plan to make a profit with decreased attendance.

The director of The Louvre, Jean-Luc Martinez, recognizes this limitation and shared in a statement, “I am sure that this digital content is going to further inspire people to come to the Louvre to discover the collections in person.” The reality is that annual visits to The Louvre – although recovering – haven’t bounced back to the pre-pandemic average. While the digital collection is impressive, accessible, and approachable to the average museum-goer, it is not lucrative. Digitization may not be the sole solution to museums’ financial stability, but it is valuable in preserving cultural heritage threatened to be destroyed by regional conflict, as seen in Ukraine. 

In March, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) reported an increase in its efforts to protect Ukrainian cultural heritage vulnerable in the Russo-Ukrainian war. Through the donation of advanced technologies and the creation of online platforms such as the Odesa Museum of Modern Art (OMMA) digital collection, UNESCO is assisting in the preservation of Ukrainian heritage found at the OMMA, Odesa Fine Arts Museum, and other archives in both Odesa and Kyiv. 

For these museums, joining the digitization trend is about ensuring their cultural heritage persists beyond the war. Their efforts are more critical now than ever before, with UNESCO confirming damage to over 327 sites – including 28 museums – since Russia first invaded. Only four days after UNESCO’s report, the Odessa Fine Arts Museum was damaged in a Russian drone strike. Seven exhibitions were harmed, as well as the museum’s exterior. Ukrainian institutions are faced with the same overwhelming volume of data as the British Museum, but the urgency of the digitization process is exacerbated by incessant shellings and frequent, large-scale power outages.  

Bénédicte de Montlaur, the president and CEO of the World Monuments Fund, said in an interview with Artnet News that the conflict with Russia is, “very much about history and identity.” Montlaur suggests that notable heritage sites have been purposely targeted. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reiterated this point in his broadcasted response to a Russian bombing in October 2022. 

Ihor Poshyvailo, director of Kyiv’s Contemporary Maidan Museum, dubbed the conflict a “heritage war” and said in an interview with CBS News that the attacks communicate the Russian army’s goal of erasure and of destroying the past to “destroy our future”. Poshyvailo references a museum near Kyiv that was burned down while the nearby buildings were left untouched and another that was shelled despite no nearby fighting. Their concerns reflect why preserving heritage is an important aspect of fighting the war. 

In many cases, the loss of cultural heritage means more than the destruction of an artifact, artwork, or structure. Poshyvailo asserts that one small church outside of Kyiv was targeted because it functioned as the village’s community center. That community space cannot be recreated by any existing technology. In an act of resilience, Kyiv residents Julia and Max Voloshyn recognized the inability of digitization to meaningfully construct physical spaces for art and chose to reopen their gallery in April. The couple is putting support for local artists and the goal of “fostering a sense of resilience” above their own safety. Additionally, Katerytna Goncharova, a specialist in the Ukrainian heritage crisis, emphasized in an interview with the World Monuments Fund this February that physically restoring damaged monuments is valuable because it becomes something for people to look forward to; a reason to persevere through conflict. When it is safe to do so, Ukrainians returning home and attempting to rebuild will feel the absence of any monuments destroyed in the war because they are so important to their identity and community. The physical preservation and restoration of Ukrainian heritage therefore hold value that the digital versions lack. 

Museums across the world are adapting to threats of war, climate change, and economic instability resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Under these conditions, the safety of cultural heritage that museums work to protect is not guaranteed. Despite their best efforts, experts face the ugly truth that some cultural heritage cannot be saved outside of the digital world. In September, an analysis of UNESCO’s list of endangered World Heritage sites revealed that although most are found in war zones or areas identified as politically unstable, climate change threatens “one in three natural sites and one in six cultural heritage sites.”

Google Arts and Culture has already created an interactive page for these endangered sites, including detailed descriptions of Edinburgh’s flood-ridden Old Town and the moai figures of Easter Island that are being lost to rising sea levels. A similar feat was achieved in the summer of 2021, when an immersive virtual reality tour of the prehistoric Lascaux cave, known for some of the first discovered cave paintings, was developed for the public. The cave had been shut off from visitors after retaining damage from “carbon dioxide, [and the] heat and humidity of nearly 2,000 visitors a day”. Lascaux serves as an example of how to digitally preserve cultural heritage at risk. 

Art News reports that even with our modern technological abilities, archaeologists and other experts will still have to pick and choose which sites to physically preserve, while some cultural heritage will only live on digitally. Though imperfect, digitization is currently the only tangible method of tackling the widespread demand for preservation. As threats like climate change and war appear inevitable, we must come to terms with the unique future of our experience with cultural heritage.