my360place
A virtual exhibition that is yours
The platforms hand you their room, and it is the same room as everyone else.
Putting a show online has got easy. ArtPlacer, Exhibbit and Kunstmatrix all do the same thing well: pick a 3D gallery space, upload the work, arrange it on the walls, publish a link or embed it. Kunstmatrix gives you fifteen ready made spaces with an account. No technical skill needed, and for a lot of shows that is exactly right.
The catch arrives the second time somebody sees one. Those fifteen rooms are shared by every show on the platform, so a visitor who has been to two exhibitions has already stood in your gallery. The work changes and the building never does.
The room is part of the curation
Anyone who has hung a physical show knows the wall is not neutral. A red wall pushes photography forward. A black room is the only place light based work can compete. Arched alcoves break a long wall into stops, which changes how long people spend at each piece. Choosing the room is curating, and a platform that gives everybody the same fifteen rooms has quietly taken that decision away from you.
Building it yourself is less work than it sounds
- Start from a gallery panorama rather than a 3D model. It is one image, not a scene to light and render.
- Hang the work as hotspots. Every tour builder does this, and clicking a piece to open a full resolution image with a caption and a price is the whole interaction an exhibition needs.
- Publish it on your own domain. Kuula or CloudPano if you want it quick, Pano2VR or Marzipano if you want to host the files yourself and still own it in five years.
- Embed it in your existing site so people stay with you instead of ending up on somebody else's platform with your name in small type.
Reuse the building, change the show
This is where owning the room pays. The same gallery in four colourways means a season of shows that feel different without anything being rebuilt: white for the group show, red for photography, black for the screen based work, blue for the sculpture. Same hotspots, same layout, twenty minutes to restage.
And it is not only art
A gallery is a room with lit hanging positions and nothing in it, which is also what a product catalogue, a degree show, a photography portfolio and a trade stand all need. The industrial warehouse space suits work that would look apologetic in a small white room. The office and showroom sets do the same job for anything that is not framed.
A virtual exhibition that lives on your own domain also keeps its search value. A show on somebody else's platform builds their pages, not yours.
