Museums in the Metaverse

This blog was first published by the Scottish Arts & Humanities Alliance. 

Each year International Museum Day highlights the pivotal role museums play in providing hands-on learning experiences that serve society and its development.

This year’s theme – Museums, Education and Research – aligns exactly with the University of Glasgow’s Museums in the Metaverse (MiM) project objectives and we hope also contributions to this important conversation.

Museums have long faced a fundamental challenge: globally less than 10% of museum collections are typically on public display. Through our Extended Reality (XR) platform, we are hoping to address this by creating digital twins of rare and precious objects that can be experienced in entirely new ways.

Imagine viewing an enormous walrus skull from every angle or magnifying the details of a Lewis Chess piece from your own home or in a MiM VR pod in a museum. This is the reality we are creating through MiM.

The technological foundation involves hundreds of photographs stitched together through photogrammetry, enhanced by skilled digital artists to create museum-quality 3D models. As Historian Lucy Worsley noted when experiencing MiM: “You can handle and get close to things that you just wouldn’t be able to in real life because they’d be too precious or they’d be in storage.”  This is particularly meaningful for remote communities, people with mobility challenges or scholars studying artefacts from anywhere in the world.

Just two years after our £5.6 million launch through the UK Government’s Innovation Accelerator programme, we have already developed  four unique virtual environments which will be publicly launched soon. Recently we secured additional funding for Phase 2, which will expand our digital collection, refine the platform, and bring  MiM to the public via kiosks in museums.

It’s important to emphasise that MiM does not aim to replace traditional museums but rather complement them, bringing collections to life in new contexts and for new audiences. By removing physical barriers, enabling hands-on interaction with precious artefacts and empowering visitors to become curators, we are helping reshape what museums can be in the digital age.