The Regional Directorate for Culture has developed a website that allows you to see some of the region’s museums from anywhere in the world.
What if you could go to a museum without needing to leave the comfort of your home? Or how about having a look at some of its pieces before actually visiting the museum?
In Madeira it is already possible to go through the collections or visit the exhibitions of some museums through the Museus da Madeira – Online Platform.
The project created this year comes out of a concern of the Regional Directorate for Culture (RDC) with the access to region’s museums and heritage.
Over the last decade, some museums have come to develop their own websites. Now, the goal is to ‘encompass more museums and collections with the presence of mobile, immobile and immaterial heritage and sources’, says Francisco Clode, head of the Madeira Museums and Cultural Heritage services.
At the moment, available on the website are the Quinta das Cruzes Museum, the House-Museum Frederico de Freitas, the Madeira Ethnographic Museum and the Mudas – Madeira Museum of Contemporary Art.
The goal is for the website to encompass other places ‘that are a part of the Portuguese Museum Network, independently of who administrates them’, mentions Francisco Clode giving the example of the ‘Sacred Art Museum of Funchal and the Photographia Vicentes Museum’.
Currently, the webpage has a presentation for each of the museums, six virtual exhibitions and 424 searchable pieces. The ‘ease of immediate access to heritage and related information’ is one of this website’s advantages. To facilitate searches, there is a variety of filters such as ‘author’ and ‘category’ that allow for more swiftness. ‘It’s a powerful heritage search engine that bridges the gap between collections and all kind of internet users’, notes Francisco Clode.
Even with all its visual component, the truth is that ‘no website can stand in for an actual visit to the museums’ but, as he soon adds, the website ‘creates an extraordinary proximity to the cultural memory of Madeira’.
