Conveying Archaeological Contexts to Museum Visitors: Case Study Pergamon Exhibition

Abstract

Reconnecting the audience of an exhibition to the archaeological context of ancient artefacts and explaining their reception histories is a great challenge. Employing digital devices to support the understanding of connections between exhibits and their past, creates the additional challenge of developing a system that not only achieves comprehension but is also accessible to all museum visitors. We have devised a concept and an implementation of a kiosk application for conveying these contexts and evaluated the effectiveness in a special exhibition about the ancient city of Pergamon. We found that using postcards that are accessible through different navigation views as the central metaphor is an effective way for museum visitors to interact with and to spent time exploring contexts about exhibits.