How Smart Can Museums Be? The Role of Cutting-Edge Technologies in Making Modern Museums Smarter

Introduction

In our rapidly transforming 21st-century society, the image and role of the museum as we knew it until now are gradually changing, thanks, mainly, to the exploitation of the potential of new emerging technologies. The catalytic experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, which dealt a significant blow to museums by threatening their very viability (UNESCO report 2021), drastically changed the pace and intensity of the digitization of museum collections and the exploitation of the Web 2.0 (Corona 2021), especially social media (SM), consolidating online marketing strategies and unleashing the enormous potential of “digital engagement” (Crooke 2020).

While technological developments accelerate at a frenetic pace towards Web 3.0 and 4.0, heralding the completion and expansion of social transformation through symbiotic human-machine interaction, the cultural managers of this traditionally conservative institution are increasingly convinced of the necessity for them to find new forms of “intelligent” or “smart” management, using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) (Trunfio et al. 2021). Thus, they hope to optimise museum operation and visitor experience, increase sustainability and competitiveness, and contribute to social welfare and development.

In this context, numerous studies of the last decades and especially after 2017, mostly pilot ones, focus on a variety of new technologies that find application in museums attempting to upgrade them to smarter ones, while others concentrate on the multifarious and constantly evolving types of technology themselves (Shah, Fathihin and Ghazali 2018, Ch’ng et al. 2019, Lu et al. 2023). However, although there has been extensive research on technology-mediated visitor experience in recent decades, the issue of a holistic approach to the smart museum has attracted only limited attention (Lu et al. 2023, Pérez 2023).

Thus, it was deemed appropriate and largely necessary to theoretically and holistically explore the concept of the smart museum, the new generation of museums that succeeds the traditional and the digital, in its entire diverse spectrum, viewing it through the cultural lens. Based on the above purpose, we have defined the following main research objectives:

The objectives of our study encompass its key parameters, which also serve as research questions. To address these questions, we explored two main topics: the museum’s transformation over the past 50 years, shaping its current identity, and the adoption of cutting-edge technologies that define its future profile in the 21st century. Specifically, to understand the modern museum’s identity in the third decade of the 21st century, we examined the socio-economic developments that influenced the institution in the post-war era, particularly from the 1980s onward. We also analyzed the digital transformation and integration of new technologies in museum management, through which we could further delineate the concept of the emerging smart museum of the 21st century, tracing its overall profile in its ideal future version.

Background research

As a constantly evolving social institution and structure, the museum is continually changing, in direct relation to the surrounding reality. A milestone in its development, after the war, was the emergence of New Museology in the 1980s, a time when the focus of interest in modern museum studies began to shift from collections to the public and society, while the museum from object-centered and curator-centered began to become more and more visitor-centered (Chen, Ho and Ho 2006).

The cultural shift of this era and the emphasis on the study of visual culture through the development of interdisciplinary disciplines such as “visual semiotics” seriously shook the - dominant until the 1960s-1970s – bourgeois view of the museum, according to which museum objects and art objects, par excellence, possessed an intrinsic value, eloquent for a select elite (Sifaki 2015). At the same time, it marked the transition from the search for inherent universal principles based on the aesthetic concepts of the Enlightenment to the inclusion of aesthetic aspects in the context of cultural functioning and their correlation to power structures (Cagliostro 2020).

Museums were then seen as representatives of an aesthetic attitude that encouraged inequality, betraying their “real function”, which, as Bourdieu observed, was to enhance “for some the feeling of belonging and for others the feeling of exclusion” (Bourdieu, Darbel, and Schnapper 1991, 112). Faced with a multi-layered criticism and the “existential crisis” it triggered, cultural managers felt the need to rethink how they manage and promote museum collections, orienting more than ever to all kinds of potential audiences (Cagliostro 2020).

The transformation of the perception of the museum’s role in society was similarly facilitated by the gradual collapse of the notion of mass culture as a uniformly passive, easily manipulated consumer public. This idea, largely established by prominent figures of the Frankfurt School (Adorno 2000, Arendt 1994), has increasingly been challenged (Paschalidis 2002a).

The development and spread of Cultural Studies, particularly through the University of Birmingham and the influence of Marxist sociologists and other intellectuals like Stuart Hall, Raymond Williams, Umberto Eco, and Herbert Gans, played a crucial role in shifting cultural mentality. This movement challenged the notion of passive consumers, emphasised the significance of popular culture, and promoted the view of cultures as dynamic, reconfigurable systems in which cultural consumers can interpret messages in diverse ways (Williams 1989, Gans 1974, Paschalidis 2002a).

The pressing economic imperatives that followed the reduction of government support for state-subsidised museums from the 1980s onwards, decisively contributed to this shift toward the public (Chabouri-Ioannidou 2003, 28), which was also in response to demographic and generational change in the society of the time (Lu et al. 2023). Since then, public museums have increasingly adopted extroversion and the “consumer model” of management by expanding and enriching their activities, competing, thus, with other “leisure industries” (Desvallées and Mairesse 2014, 22, 28).

In addition, the evolution of educational theories and the transition from a linear-didactic and teacher-centered to a two-way learning model, or in other words, from a positivist-behaviorist to a constructivist approach, were gradually imprinted on the form of the modern museum institution (Hooper-Greenhill 1999). The constructivist learning model focuses on both the transmitter and the receiver of the message, since knowledge does not arise as a result of the transmission of a pre-existing intrinsic meaning but as a result of a fluid and non-finite “participatory process”, in the construction of which the viewer actively participates (ibid). The so-called cultural approach, which has found appeal and tends to be widely adopted by the postmodern museum, focuses on how interpretation varies according to visitors’ gender, ethnicity, social class, educational level, personal knowledge, and culture (Hooper-Greenhill 2000).

Furthermore, the recognition of the dominant role culture plays in development – another important socio-economic factor – has influenced the transformation of the museum into a critical space that encourages dialogue around values and questions directly related to the community it represents. After the failure of the economic-centric model of industrialised Western societies and the collapse of the “myth of development” – most noticeable in the 1970s and 1980s – the human community realised that technological and economic development must be in harmony with social welfare and respect nature, the diversity of human existence and the heterogeneity of cultural traditions, values, and identities (Morin 1998, 534-545, Paschalidis 2002b). This awareness was reinforced by the unprecedented expansion of the very concept of culture, which in 1982 was recognised within the international community as a multifaceted and complex phenomenon, extending from biodiversity and landscape to living experience and all the varied, contradictory and heterogeneous aspects of life (Mexico City Declaration 1982). Within the same community, a culture-centered approach that places the human community at the center of the development process was adopted and crystallised in a series of normative texts in the early decades of the 21st century, particularly after the catalytic events of 9/11. These documents formulate the framework of a new ethic of safeguarding and promoting intercultural dialogue and sustainable development, as defined based on the UN’s 2030 Agenda for joint social, environmental, and economic action (United Nations 2015).

As the transformation of the museum institution is reflected in the evolution of its definitions of the period 1946-2022, the most recent of them indicates the new pluralistic, and complex - compared to the traditional - role of the modern museum in society (Lehmannová 2020). According to it, museum “researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage”, is “open” to the public, “accessible and inclusive”, fosters “diversity and sustainability”, operates and communicates “ethically, professionally and with the participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection and knowledge sharing” (ICOM 2022).

In this context, museum functions combine the traditional functions of acquisition, conservation, and research with management and the more visible function of communication (which includes education-mediation, entertainment, and exhibition). Communication, not traditionally included in the main museum functions, gradually evolved during the late 20th century into the main focus and driving force of its operation (Desvallées and Mairesse 2014, 21, 60-61). Admittedly, in this new, multifunctional and broad-oriented modern museum, where the complexity of contemporary postmodern society is reflected, the role of technology is catalytic.

In more detail, the digital revolution is the last but far from insignificant socio-economic development that contributed drastically – and still contributes - to shaping the identity of the modern museum. Indeed, the emergence of the new trend of using ICT to promote user interaction, in the late 90s, found full expression in the participatory online cultures of Web 2.0 and especially SM (Refae 2022). Thus, the cultural recycling of material available on the internet was mixed with people’s daily lives and creative elements, which effortlessly led to a new democratised form of participatory popular culture consumption and production, which included everything as common property and heritage of humanity-audience and educated an audience whose perception was multiplying and expanding relentlessly and feverishly thanks to the internet (Beer and Burrows 2010, 7, 10-11).

Notwithstanding, the museum sector has indeed been until recently more hesitant and relatively reluctant to follow the digital transformation process compared to other sectors, such as the tourism industry (Pérez 2023). However, the technological development and innovations of the first decades of the 21st century, such as the emergence of smart mobile phones, developments in computer graphics or software and hardware developments in extended technologies, combined with the aforementioned socio-economic developments and lessons learned since the recent pandemic that has accelerated the digitization processes of the museum, have significantly contributed to the gradual adoption of new technologies by cultural managers (Margetis et al. 2020, Avlonitou and Papadaki 2024).

Thus, recently, especially in the last decade (with exponential progress from 2017 onwards), many studies have come to light, where researchers propose innovative designs or applications and smart solutions applicable in one or even more museums (Lu et al. 2023). Scholars investigate “smart learning environments” (Kasperiuniene and Tandzegolskiene 2020, Pan, Zhang, and Yang 2022), and “intelligent cultural spaces” (Chianese, Piccialli, and Valente 2015), the utilization of a fusion of technologies towards a specific type of a “smart museum” (Siountri, Skondras, and Vergados 2019), the digital design of a “smart museum based on AI” (Wang 2021), IoT-based smart museums (Mighali et al. 2015, Korzun et al. 2016, Spachos and Plataniotis 2020), cognitive robots for smart museums (Saggese, Vento, and Vigilante 2019), “smart things” (Bessaa, Levillain, and Tijus 2020), “smart objects” (López-Martínez, Carrera, and Iglesias 2020) and “smart showcases” (Bhattacharya 2019), the “engineering of smart museum ontology” (Zachila et al. 2021), “smart navigations systems” (Khan et al. 2021), issues of satisfaction and loyalty in the smart museum (Zhang and Abd Rahman 2022) and many other options.

Actually, scholars examine aspects of the smart museum mainly in terms of technology and equipment, as an information service, or in terms of their impact on visitor experience and behavior, while even evaluation criteria for smart museums have been proposed exclusively related to the satisfaction of visitors (Liu and Guo 2023). At the same time, the label of “smart” is currently indiscriminately applied to any integration of new technologies in the museum space, betraying ambiguity and heterogeneity in its use (Pérez 2023).

We reviewed 83 publications on the smart museum concept through a cultural lens, including relevant museum practices. These publications generally address the integration of new technologies and theoretical issues in modern museums (29 articles), covering six key categories of cutting-edge technologies used in museums: Extended Reality (XR) [24 articles], Artificial Intelligence (AI) [9 articles], Internet of Things (IoT) [7 articles], Robots [7 articles], Fusion [5 articles], and Blockchain and Holography [2 articles]. Of the studies reviewed, ten were published between 2014 and 2016, with the majority published between 2017 and 2024.

Surprisingly, there is a scarcity or lack of holistic models regarding the concept of a smart museum through a cultural lens. Furthermore, there is not a one-size-fits-all definition of the smart museum and the latter is usually integrated into the more general view of intelligent space or simply associated with smart technology. As an exception, Liu and Guo (2023) correlate the smart museum with three aspects, namely protection, management, and service, while Pérez (2023) adopts a more holistic view proposing a model of smart management, which is inspired by and depends on the Spanish model of tourism development SEGITTUR.

According to Pérez’s model for museums, a smart museum is a museum “that makes a transversal incorporation of inclusive strategies and Information and Communication Technologies in all functional levels to obtain an efficient and sustainable management” (Pérez 2023). The model is namely based on functions related to “the visitor experience”, “conservation and management”, and “marketing and communication strategies”, including Technology, Sustainability, Governance, Accessibility, and Innovation and thus incorporating the five smart axes currently applied to the management of smart destinations as adopted by the above-mentioned tourism management model (ibid).

In another approach, we attempt to examine the contemporary physiognomy of the museum as dictated by recent developments in the museum institution and relate it to the findings of the literature based on the integration of new technologies in museums. Thus, we proceed to fully define the concept of the smart museum by formulating the following definition:

A smart museum is a museum that optimises all its operations and functions through the appropriate use of ICT, staying aligned with the digital age, its mission and the needs of a widened, diverse and inclusive audience, while mobilizing their intelligence, encouraging their interaction with the museum, with each other and with other communities, and focusing on both museum exhibits and on broader social issues.

The above definition becomes more readable in the diagram below (Figure 1), which visualises and distributes the characteristics of the smart museum identity into four categories, the last two of which refer, characteristically, to the function of communication: alignment with museum mission (mission-oriented, sustainable), the digital age (modern-innovative), and the visitors’ needs (accessible, relevant, and attractive to an extensive audience), as well as mobilizing of individual and collective intelligence (of people and local communities). We are going to analyze these features further below.

Figure 1. The smart museum diagram

Methods

Our investigation was based on an extensive literature review, secondary data classification, and analysis, interpretation, and synthesis methods. The research synthesis method, defined as “a tool for understanding a body of literature and characteristics that enhance or diminish relationships of interest” (Steingut, Patall, and Fong 2022), was employed to capture the global state of research on the smart museum concept. This method focused on the integration of cutting-edge technologies in contemporary museums and aimed to provide a clear overview of the smart museum’s profile through a cultural lens.

More specifically, the definition of the three main research objectives described above was followed by a comprehensive literature search, involving multiple and complex queries across various available databases, specifically Google Scholar, Scopus, Emerald Insight, ScienceDirect, Springer Link, and ResearchGate. In addition, the MuseWeb database, an annual global conference where advanced research studies and applications of digital practice and innovation in museums are published, was explored and papers relevant to the research topic were gleaned.

The studies were evaluated for their relevance to the predefined research objectives. The material was thematically classified into distinct study groups and subgroups based on qualitative similarities. The collected data were processed, analyzed, and interpreted by inductive and deductive methods with explanatory, descriptive, interpretive, and exploratory purposes.

Papers, sites or documents (83 publications) referring to the utilization of novel technologies and its impact on the physiognomy of the 21st-century museum, were correlated and embedded in a broader theoretical framework, through conceptual principles and approaches such as the theories of “flow”, “value co-creation” and “digital humanism” as well as models of “experience economy” and technology acceptance (8 papers, books or documents, published between 1989 to 2021). Finally, our findings were visualised and distributed in a table with the ultimate goal of clarifying the concept of the smart museum, by outlining the main characteristics that shape its profile. Thus, 15 characteristics and properties were identified and used as the basis of a synthesis depicting the profile of the modern museum in the digital age.

The study focused on both academic research and museum practices of integrating smart solutions in museum environment internationally (Europe, Asia, and America). We studied a broad range of implementations in the contemporary museum while pointing out the obvious benefits to the museum community and inherent challenges. The review followed a general and non-exhaustive/systematic approach and included only English-language literature.

Findings

Our findings, visualised in Table 1, provide a clear picture of what a smart museum of the future might be. They contribute to helping us understand how the digital transformation of the museum is changing its structure, making it extremely powerful compared to the traditional, i.e. hybrid, modern/innovative, and technologically upgraded, but also the necessity of collaborations and interdisciplinarity to keep up with the digital age.

They also demonstrate the positive impact of technology on the visitor experience, as it provides personalization, interactivity, and participation opportunities, and its power to create immersive and engaging worlds that transform the traditional museum into a new, relevant, and engaging one for visitors, especially the youth, provided it stays in touch with their needs and ensures an unobstructed and discreet technological mediation.

The findings of our study also show how the integration of new and emerging technologies leads to a new type of educational-entertainment museum character, capable of facilitating visitors’ critical thinking and personal understanding of cultural heritage (CH) and at the same time socializing their experience and contributing to knowledge sharing and public awareness. Finally, they identify a challenge that technology-mediated experiences in museums can pose, namely the risk of altering or losing the sense of authenticity and neglecting the museum’s objectives, underscoring the need for smart museums to adopt a calculated approach and ensure both their sustainability and their catalytic role in the democratization of culture.

Result

Conclusions

The rapid technological developments in computer science that have escalated over the past 20-25 years, along with the deliberate and growing adoption of smart technologies by museum policymakers worldwide, underscore the necessity of studying the smart museum. This paper employs an extensive literature review and key theoretical tools to explore the smart museum concept, addressing three core research questions: its origins, definition, and profile. The study details its characteristics based on the application of emerging technologies in 21st-century museums.

Investigating the first research question revealed that the origins of the smart museum are rooted in the extension of socio-economic developments affecting this century-old institution in the digital age. Key factors include the emergence of New Museology and cultural shifts, reduced state support, the decline of mass culture as a model of passive consumption, the development and adoption of a constructivist, interactive learning model, the recognition of a culture-centric development model, and the digital revolution. These changes are reflected in the museum’s current definition and its evolving institutional role in post-war society.

Secondly, the study identified the variety and fragmentation in the use of the term “smart” within the museum field. Efforts were made to establish a clear and comprehensive definition through a cultural lens, demonstrating that smart technologies are valuable tools for achieving the humanitarian goals of the museum rather than ends in themselves. The smart museum is thus approached holistically, extending not only within the museum through its mission and visitor experience, but also beyond, as it is shaped by the digital age and influences the intelligence of individuals and communities interacting with it.

Finally, tracing the museum of the future, an attempt was made to identify its key characteristics as study parameters and design components of a holistically smart museum, shaped through the utilization of new and emerging technologies. Potential limitations, risks, and future prospects were also addressed.

The smart museum profile was depicted through 15 features and properties, grouped into four general categories that correlate the museum with the digital age, its mission, visitors’ needs, and the activation of individual and collective intelligence. Future case studies that use these characteristics as parameters or design elements will assess the value of this profile and further clarify the concept of the smart museum.