Galleries of the future: served five ways

The art of the future demands a gallery of the future to be displayed in, so how will these new cultural institutions look?

What are museums and galleries for? For preserving art from our history? For displaying art of our future? For teaching people, meeting people, inspiring people? All of the above? Whatever purpose they fulfil, their place in society is increasingly vulnerable, with a lack of government funding of the arts meaning galleries must rely on private donors and public support. So how will the galleries of the future look, and how must they develop to survive?

1. The enhanced gallery

The largest art theft in history took place in March 1990 at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. 13 works of art - worth an estimated $500 million - were stolen, leaving empty frames in their place. Today, those stolen masterpieces are being returned, albeit briefly, by the wonders of digital technology.

Using Apple’s easily-accessible ARKit, museum engagement platform Cuseumcreated “Hacking the Heist”, an augmented reality app allowing visitors to see the stolen works reappear in their frames.

Galleries having been using digital technology to showcase their art for years. Household names provide virtual tours on their websites and sites like Google Arts & Culture allow you to walk the halls of some of the world’s foremost cultural institutions from the comfort of your own home.

But augmented reality goes one step further, allowing visitors to experience the enhanced gallery - replacing what has been lost and showcasing the work of daring new artists, experimenting with this new artistic frontier.

The first exhibition by MoMAR, an unauthorised gallery concept bent on democratising exhibition spaces, leverages augmented reality to layer eight new artists’ work on top of existing pieces in New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition, called “Hello, we’re from the internet”, can be viewed through the MoMAR app in the museum’s fifth floor Jackson Pollock gallery, where the renowned abstract expressionist’s masterpieces are remixed and replaced by bold new interpretations.