On the occasion of the exhibition of the distinguished Finnish artist Helene Schjerfbeck (beginning October 2, 2014), the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt is introducing a new digital education format: the digitorial. An interview with Schirn director Max Hollein.
The Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, the Städel Museum, and the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung are launching a completely new digital education format with their digitorial: relying on an innovative form of storytelling, enlightening backgrounds, art-historical and historicocultural contexts, key exhibition contents are made easily accessible to all visitors interested in preparing their tour through the museum on a responsive website. Free of charge, the digital format in German and English allows the public to get into the right mood for the exhibition before visiting it. In order to make this possible, the digitorial presents instructive details, comprehensive relationships, and background stories combined in a novel visual way on the website. The multimedia linkage of image, sound, and text ensures a multiple interweaving of contents and permits entirely new forms of representing, describing, and communicating art--whether at home, in a café, or on the way to the exhibition. The first digitorial was conceived for the exhibition "Helene Schjerfbeck" on show at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt beginning October 2, 2014. It can be retrieved from the website: www.schirn.de/schjerfbeck/en/.
Schirn Magazin: What is the purpose of the new digitorial format?
Max Hollein: First and foremost, we want to provide a service--for our visitors, in particular those who want to prepare themselves prior to actually visiting the exhibition. In much the same way as people get themselves into the right mood for other events, such as studying the lineup for an upcoming soccer game and reading interviews with the players and the coach, or running one's eye over a summary of the plot of an opera before attending the performance itself. It's left to the individual, of course, whether he or she learns things worth knowing about the exhibition and the themes it deals with at home on the couch, sitting at a PC, by means of a tablet computer, or via a Smartphone on the way to the Schirn by train. It is an ideal opportunity to involve oneself in advance with the contents of the exhibition, and by doing so also learning something about its historicocultural background. Once arriving at the Schirn, visitors can then experience an even more interesting and insightful tour of the presentation. We want to make this possible by means of the easily accessible digitorial for select exhibitions both at the Schirn as well as at the Städel Museum and the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung--free of charge for anyone interested. It simply makes sense if people already come to our exhibitions with basic knowledge in order to be able to experience a more complex, grounded, and richer appreciation of art. It's not absolutely necessary, of course. And after one has seen the presentation and would like to know more, there's always the exhibition catalogue or the accompanying booklet.
SM: What role do the Internet and other technological developments play for you as the director of an exhibition venue?MH: For us, they are all an integral part of our exhibition- and communication-related options. We make use of new technological opportunities in multiple and, we hope, very user-oriented ways. This not only opens up new channels of communication with our visitors, such as the exchange of information on social media platforms, or information in the form of apps or films of individual exhibitions, but also multifaceted insights that we make available to our visitors and people interested in art, for example in the online Schirn Magazin.
SM: What kinds of possibilities do you see for communicating art in the digital sphere?
MH: On-demand availability is an important possibility for us for the purpose of presenting our education- and communication-related formats in a much more diversified way, and thus altogether being able to recognize and cater to the requirements of our visitors.
SM: What surprised you most on reading the digitorial? What did you learn about Helene Schjerfbeck that you didn't know before?
MH: I naturally delved into the oeuvre of this great Finnish artist before we decided to mount this exhibition and could persuade the lenders to assist us in implementing it. But the fact that Helene Schjerfbeck's paintings serve as inspiration for the contemporary fashion scene in Sweden is new to me. This testifies to the relevance and the currency of her spirited oeuvre.