In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, arts organizations have accelerated their lagging digital transition in an effort to provide broader public access to their collections and projects, and increase their stake in the attention economy. Yet, for the most part, their digital infrastructure and digital strategies are still emergent, often limited to broadcasting documentation and visitor information on their website and through social media. While arts organizations are investing considerable resources into digitizing their collections to make them widely available for public reference and use, these massive, online collections remain dramatically underutilized, garnering very little audience engagement beyond a small pool of already committed researchers and amateurs. Almost three decades after the advent of the first online collections, their presentation has barely changed and arts organizations are still puzzled at how to best exploit these rich content troves. The UViMCA research project addresses this issue by examining both the existing and the potential impacts (i.e. utility) and modes of engagement (i.e. usership) of virtual museums of contemporary art. This issue is crucial for society as the general public is increasingly coming into contact and engaging with artworks by means of digital technology, given that visiting physical museums and galleries often proves difficult, costly and even daunting for some audiences. In consequence, digital mediation is rapidly transforming the public’s perception of and relationship to culture, which is what effectively upholds collective meaning and value for society. In today’s post-truth era, cultural organizations are among the only public institutions that retain a good measure of public trust (in comparison to democratic and scientific institutions), which makes them invaluable to the task of fighting disinformation, fostering healthy civic debate, promoting social cohesion and nurturing a more active citizenry. Accordingly, the overall objectives of the UViMCA project are to identify the most effective ways of increasing arts organizations’ social impact by means of new digital technologies, and examine how digital cultural applications can mobilize collective intelligence to sustain greater diversity, equality and social justice.
