Jim Regan - Site Reviews
St. Petersburg's State Hermitage Museum
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One should expect a high quality Web site with IBM as a partner, and that quality is readily apparent, from the excellence of the reproductions to index banners that are minor works of art in themselves. The content, while not yet including all 3 million items in inventory, (that is the plan) is already overwhelming with a population of 2000 -- so intelligent site design easily as important as aesthetic considerations. To make accessing the artworks as easy as possible, the virtual Hermitage provides multiple search tools -- both conventional and innovative -- allowing visitors to choose the method most efficient for their needs.
Two such methods present on the home page are a keyword search, (for those who want to get straight to the Van Goghs) and a Virtual Tour, (for those who would rather wander the hallways) but the most, thorough means of viewing artifacts is by way of the Collection Highlights.
Categorized under such headings as Prehistoric Art, the Arsenal, the Golden Rooms, Oriental, and Western European Art, works in each area are further subdivided (Painting, Sculpture, etc.) until samples are narrowed down to a manageable number. At this point, the visitor is presented with an text introduction to the 'sub-sub-category' and thumbnail images of the relevant works of art, each linking to full screen images and detailed descriptions. (The Hermitage site is set up for a 800x600 pixel screen, so if your browser tops out at 640x480, you'll have to scroll right to find the thumbnails.)
Whether you use the Collection Highlights or not, the Virtual Tour is an essential part of the visit, as it not only places the artifacts in the context of their surroundings, it also shows that the museum rivals its own collection as a work of art. Twenty-two locations are documented on site, with photographs, (some panoramic -- more on that later) detailed descriptions of the surroundings, and links to the featured works housed within. The Hermitage History also includes exceptional interior and exterior photos of the museum.
Finally, the Digital Collection provides access to higher resolution images of the art recorded to date. Images can be found by familiar browse or search options, or by IBM's Query By Image Content technology. Using a virtual canvas and rudimentary imaging tools, visitors can search for art by color content, or by a rough approximation of a work's visual layout.
This may or may not be a toy, but it is engaging, and you could wind up learning a few basic principles of composition despite yourself. Image size in the Digital Collection is limited to 1024x768 pixels -- fairly large, but not enough for a really close look, so another IBM technology, ZoomView, will soon be in place to allow the visitor to choose very specific areas of a work and have the selected area fill the screen. It's not active yet, but the demo is impressive.
The third piece of IBM technology relates to the panoramic views in the Virtual Tour. These are accomplished by a Java applet, Panoramix, which, unfortunately, is no substitute for QTVR - being more pixellated and erratic in its movements. (Information on Panoramix points to the advantage that no plug-ins are required, but since essentially every browser already has QuickTime installed, it's a moot point.) Unfortunately, I doubt the site will offer QTVR as an alternative to IBM's own technology.
For those fortunate enough to be planning a non-virtual visit to St. Petersburg, the site also provides Information and listings of current and future Exhibitions. For the rest of us, the Virtual Hermitage (and other online museums) provide access to the world's art that would have seemed inconceivable a few years ago. In fact the only thing more amazing that the technology, is the speed with which we take it for granted.
St. Petersburg's State Hermitage Museum can be found at http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/index.html.
Jim Regan provides 'Today's Links' to the e-Monitor. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.