MANNHEIM.- Visitors of the art nouveau west wing can now take advantage of further offerings that form part of Kunsthalle Mannheim’s innovative digital strategy. With them, the museum opens up new possibilities for outreach and seeks to attract younger museum-goers.

Real and virtual museum spheres intersect, controlled by a central Museum Orchestration Server (MOS). “Our tailor-made digital offerings enhance our exhibitions and better allow our visitors to actively to take part in what we offer—also making the museum more accessible,” museum director Dr. Ulrike Lorenz explains. The Kunsthalle 4.0 is an arena for experiences accessible around the world, 24 hours a day, complementing the analog museum.

The Creative Lab is part of the Kunsthalle’s digital strategy, together with the Collection Wall and the multimedia app. Besides presenting collection themes such as the focus on sculpture, the Creative Lab is a place to spark innovative ideas and enable fresh forms of experience. The Creative Lab includes the graphics table, the personalized museum catalog, 360-degree films, the SculptYours augmented reality program and a sculpture disco.

“The fact that the Kunsthalle Mannheim is focusing on analog and digital outreach makes the new building all the more spectacular,” BadenWürttemberg Stiftung CEO Christoph Dahl remarks. “This union of all digital strategy aspects, from the Collection Wall and the app to the stations in the Creative Lab, which is itself based on the digitalized collection, remains unique in Germany. Moreover, it opens up unrestricted access to art and knowledge for many people.” The Baden-Württemberg Stiftung has contributed 1.85 million Euros to support the Kunsthalle Mannheim’s new media and outreach programs. The Kunsthalle also enjoys the support of the city of Mannheim and private patrons.

Bringing together digital tools inside and outside the museum focuses the learning experience by cross-mapping diverse medialities and creating new spheres of knowledge. “The Kunsthalle wants to make full use of the opportunities our digitalized society offers,” Lorenz remarks. “Digitalization is a type of translation,” says Heiko Daniels, Digital Strategy Profect Manager a the Kunsthalle Mannheim. “Works of art can be interlinked, interpreted and experienced on a new linguistic level. For the Kunsthalle, this means communicating with the world within an expanded field, including those individuals who are not yet part of our audience.

Cultural education, emancipation of the visitors from an over-dominant museum and the addressing of new audience groups is at the heart of the digital “revolution.” The goal isn’t technical virtuosity for its own sake, but rather a refinement and stimulation of visitors’ senses and imagination using our digital offerings, thus leading them to the ultimate goal of a personally meaningful experience of the original work of art and the sharing of this authentic experience.

The Collection Wall, located in the freely accessibly atrium, is the most powerful instrument and a symbol of the larger digital strategy program. The wall consists of sixteen large monitors mounted together, which resemble a billboard in an urban setting and work using innovative gesture-based technologies. This digital tool provides visitors with an aesthetically refined way of exploring the institution’s art collection, with over 1,100 artworks included to date. In the future, the entire collection will be available in digital form.

The multimedia app makes it possible for visitors to download seven multimedia tours onto their smartphones and use them to let themselves be led through the museum as if accompanied by a city guide. They can call up information on the 742 works on display and a number of surprises await curious users, such as the so-called “Easter eggs.” The app interacts with other digital tools, such as the Collection Wall, and will later be linked up with the personalized museum catalogue.

An interactive, electronic graphics table in the Creative Lab makes the bulk of the otherwise-hidden treasures of the graphic prints collection accessible via a large-scale touch screen. This protects the highly sensitive original works on paper while allowing a close look at the precious pieces thanks to a highresolution magnifying glass function. 406 works on paper are currently available for examination.

“Our new digital strategy opens up new possibilities for outreach. Rather than remaining the sole space for experience, the analog museum is joined by the digital museum, whose strengths include contextualizing knowledge, offering opportunities for sharing, community building, and creative self-actualization. Users become active designers and producers of new content. They create value and form communities that can in turn benefit the museum,” remarks Lorenz, explaining her vision.

The online collection database is a major foundation of the digital strategy. Since 2015, the research team at the Kunsthalle Mannheim has worked on the step-by-step digitalization of the collection’s holdings in painting, sculpture, and graphic works, as well as the necessary accompanying texts. Parts of this has been available via the Kunsthalle Mannheim home page since 2017, and the beta version is available online at www.sammlung-online.kuma.art.

Klangerfinder GmbH & Co. KG is the main firm responsible for realizing the Kunsthalle Mannheim’s digital strategy. This Stuttgart-based studio for auditory communication was founded by Professor Florian Käppler in 2009. The young, interdisciplinary team is made up of creatives and developers in the fields of conception, composition, sound design, user experience, and software development. The company describes itself as an innovation laboratory at the intersection of music, art, brands, and multisensory experiential worlds. “We explore how art and culture can be experienced and developed in a digitalized world. We want to explore this new terrain and make it a place for art,” explains CEO Prof. Florian Käppler.