The Digital Extension
Städel Museum
Schaumainkai 63
60596 Frankfurt am Main
Germany
www.staedelmuseum.de
Städel Digital Collection
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The Städel Museum, Germany’s oldest civic museum, is marking its 200th anniversary this year with a fundamental redefinition of its diverse educational programme as well as the museum visitor experience. Against the background of the increasing digitalization of everyday life, the extension of its educational responsibility into the digital realm is a key building block for the museum. In light of this, the Städel has launched a wide range of initiatives which will be launched during the anniversary year.
“Monet and the Birth of Impressionism”—Digitorial
From 11 March to 21 June 2015, Städel Museum is presenting a major exhibition on Monet and the Birth of Impressionism. With the Digitorial developed especially for the show, the Städel is offering a new digital educational medium. A responsive website presents worthwhile background information, art-historical and culture-historical contexts and fundamental exhibition contents. The free digital format in German and English enables the public to tune in to the exhibition themes before visiting the exhibition. The multimedia combination of image, sound, film and text interlinks the contents in a multiplicity of ways and provides entirely new means of depicting, narrating and mediating art.
The Digitorial is accessible at www.monet.staedelmuseum.de
Städel Digital Collection
After a development phase of more than two years, the Städel Digital Collection offers a completely original approach to the institution’s holdings. Based on the extensive store of the museum’s collection and data, this knowledge tool has a semantic search function that both satisfies art historical interests and provides individual search paths through 700 years of art history along intuitive and associative criteria. To ensure the prerequisites for this “digital roaming” facility, the free-to-access Cloud-based exhibits platform encompasses not only large-format pictures, multimedia contents like audio sequences and film productions and a wide variety of details on the Städel’s works but also a far-reaching concatenation of these works, contextualizing them in an evident, yet often also surprising way. The sematic preparation of the data from internal and external sources makes for a rich pool of contents with about 100 data fields on each single work. Accessible at www.digitalesammlung.staedelmuseum.de, it allows a new approach to the museum’s collection also from beyond the institution’s material boundaries. An English version will be published in autumn 2015.
Städel app
The new Städel app is the ideal multi-media guide for a visit to the Städel Museum. In the museum, the app’s integrated image scanner recognizes within seconds about 100 masterpieces of the Städel collection dating back to over 700 years in the history of art, and provides suspenseful insights, in German and English, into the individual works, supplemented with interesting background information as well as audio and video material. Works from the Städel Museum collection can also be ordered as high-quality reproductions with the Städel app.
Downloadable at all usual stores, the Städel app offers moreover the entire audio guide of the special exhibitions from the Städel Museum. The Städel app is accessible at: www.staedelmuseum.de
When asked about the idea behind the museum’s broadly conceived initiative, Städel Director Max Hollein explained: “The increasing digitalization of our life also has an impact on cultural contents hitherto thought of as analogue, for example a five-hundred-year-old Dürer painting or a drawing by Henri Matisse. Museums likewise find themselves confronted with the tremendous changes taking place in nearly all areas of life, changes that fundamentally redefine how we deal with information, education and culture. If we take advantage of the potentials offered by the rapidly progressing digital developments, and succeed in creating a genuine alternative offer, we are paving the way for the institution’s future and the Städel Museum’s next two hundred years.”
Besides these digital initiatives numerous additional education offers are being conceived to complete the digital extension of the Städel Museum: an innovative educative point-and-click adventure game for children will be implemented, online art history courses on modern art are developed in collaboration with the Leuphana University Lüneburg, the film sector is massively extended by creating new formats for the platform, and the Städel YouTube channel besides specifically produced exhibition and artist films. Visitors to the Städel can use free-of-charge WiFi throughout its premises since February.
Director: Max Hollein
Press contact: Axel Braun (Head of Press/Public Relations):
T (+49 69) 605098 170 / F (+49 69) 605098 188 / presse [at] staedelmuseum.de
Press material:newsroom.staedelmuseum.de
