Interactive Museum Exhibits: Technology, Examples & Benefits

12th August 2024

By encouraging hands-on participation and integrating technology like touchscreens, virtual reality, and augmented reality, museums can offer immersive learning environments that are fun, memorable, and accessible for visitors of all ages.

Traditional displays can only go so far in capturing attention. The British Museum, for example, reports that over 99% of its collection is never on public display at any one time. With the help of interactive technology, arts and heritage institutions are finding new ways to bring these hidden stories to life, deepening engagement and enhancing the visitor journey.

What is an interactive museum?

An interactive museum is a space where visitors engage directly with exhibits, often using technologies like touchscreens, VR, or AR. Rather than passively viewing, visitors can touch, explore, and learn through multisensory experiences.

This approach creates more engaging, educational, and memorable visits, especially for younger audiences. 

How do museums choose what to display?

Museums often choose interactive elements based on their audience’s needs, the subject matter of their collections, and specific learning goals. This ensures that the experience is not just engaging, but also educationally relevant and accessible to different age groups and learning styles. 

Examples of interactive exhibit technology

Arts and heritage institutions are finding exciting ways to create interactive exhibits, and to do this they’re making use of innovative technology. Here are some of the main examples:

Touchscreen displays

Touchscreen displays aren’t a particularly new innovation, but they’re still one of the most effective ways to engage visitors and present large amounts of information, images or maps in a  small space.

You can use them to empower visitors to create a more personalised experience, allowing them to learn more about specific aspects of exhbits, or simply use them for finding their way around larger museums.

Augmented reality (AR) exhibits

Augmented reality (AR) exhibits in museums use digital content, such as text, images or animations, to enhance a visitor’s physical environment. This is often achieved via a mobile app, but virtual reality headsets can also be used for AR experiences.

Some examples of how this could be used include text information about a specific artefact appearing on a smartphone screen, or an animated avatar appearing next to an exhibit to provide further context which is only visible to anyone wearing a VR headset or who is pointing a smartphone at a specific marker, like a QR code.

READ MORE: How the use of Augmented Reality in Museums is bringing collections to life

Virtual reality (VR) experiences

Virtual reality has been around in one form or another for decades, but it’s only been in the last few years that the technology has reached a high enough level to attract mainstream appeal.

In 2021, the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) launched Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser, a VR exhibition that allowed visitors to take part in a game of hedgehog croquet, search for the White Rabbit’s missing glove and solve riddles.

The cost of implementing VR tech in museums at scale is still high, but more and more institutions will make use of the innovation to engage and captivate their visitors in new and exciting ways.

Interactive display cases

Display cases are used by arts and heritage institutions all over the world to safely and securely present their artefacts, but the downside is that they prevent the visitor from interacting with the exhibit.

Interactive display cases make this problem a thing of the past, offering your museum’s guests the chance to interact with and inspect objects. Artifacts, monitors displaying information and lighting can all be rotated, scrolled through and adapted easily, significantly enhancing the experience of viewing historical objects.

Projection mapping

Interactive projections, achieved through a technique called projection mapping, transforms museum content by projecting dynamic images and videos onto exhibits and artifacts, creating immersive and engaging experiences for your visitors.

Projection mapping can be used to either enhance static exhibits, for example creating a sense of movement by projecting images or videos onto artifacts, or by creating fully immersive environments. In this case, images and video can be mapped onto walls and ceilings or an exhibition space.

Holographic displays

Similar to projection mapping, holographic displays can be used to create engaging and immersive experiences, bringing exhibits to life in a way that simple video, images or other static content can’t.

Holograms can be used to show how ancient tools or weapons would’ve been used, to show how long-extinct creatures moved and behaved, or to demonstrate the mechanisms of antiquated machinery.

Benefits of Interactive Exhibits

Increased Engagement

Interactive exhibits encourage visitors to spend more time exploring. Instead of simply viewing static displays, people can interact, play, experiment, and personalise their experience. This active participation keeps attention levels high, particularly among children and younger audiences.

Deeper Learning

When visitors are able to control their journey through an exhibit, they can explore at their own pace and revisit areas of interest. This autonomy — coupled with tactile or visual engagement — helps reinforce understanding and improves knowledge retention.

Greater Accessibility

Interactive technologies can accommodate different learning styles, physical abilities, and language preferences. Features like audio narration, enlarged text, touch-free interaction, and multi-language options make exhibitions more inclusive for all audiences.

Improved Visitor Satisfaction

A memorable, hands-on experience is more likely to leave a lasting impression. Visitors are more inclined to recommend museums that surprise and delight them — and they’re more likely to return. Interactive elements also create shareable moments, boosting word-of-mouth and digital visibility.

Examples and success stories

Some of the world’s most renowned arts and heritage institutions are already using this technology to create unforgettable experiences for their visitors. 

ArtScience Museum Singapore

The Future World exhibition at the ArtScience Museum in Singapore makes use of projection mapping on a huge scale, projecting large natural environments onto floors, walls and ceilings that respond to the movements of visitors.

Camp Nou, Barcelona

The museum of Barcelona FC at the Camp Nou uses touchscreen display technology to great effect, allowing guests to recount iconic goals, great games and detailed history about the club and the players.

The Museum of Art and Photography, Bangalore

The Museum of Art and Photography in Bangalore, India, has used AI and holographic technology to create a digital avatar of painter M. F. Husain (who died in 2011).

The three-dimensional avatar of Husain uses facial recognition, speech synthesis and language processing to respond to questions in real time and discuss topics related to his life and works.

How Digital Asset Management supports interactive exhibits

Interactive exhibits have the potential to transform the museum experience, but they rely on high-quality digital content to make it happen.

Whether you’re using projection mapping, virtual or augmented reality, touchscreens or audio guides, you need a reliable way to store, access and manage large volumes of assets. Basic file storage solutions aren’t designed for the scale or complexity of modern exhibitions.

ResourceSpace gives museums, galleries and heritage organisations a better way to manage digital content. From image rights and metadata to fast sharing across teams, it helps you deliver engaging visitor experiences while keeping your assets secure and organised.

Want to see how it works in practice? Learn how ResourceSpace supports museums, or book a demo to explore the platform with one of our experts.

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