Traditionally, museums have been buildings that hold collections of artifacts, along the lines temple. These artifacts, often from faraway lands or donated by wealthy collectors, become silent messages that are brought to life by art historians and museum visitors. Here the term "museum" will refer not only to the structure, but also to the many people who comprise the governing and functioning bodies of the museum's social

The loss of dimension on the computer screen is a more difficult problem. Paintings transfer to the two-dimensional computer screen a little more gracefully than do sculptures. Essentially, this is the same problem faced when transferring dance or theater to film. In the case of the performing arts, the motion can be captured on the screen, giving a sense of the space and the people and objects in it. For sculpture, it seems a similar mechanism is called for to add multiple, moving views. Because of the memory requirements and technical difficulties involved in producing such views, this solution has not yet been perused very effectively in the computer world. Electronic movies or animations could go a long way toward solving this problem, but they are simply too big and time consuming to produce on a mass scale.

User-directed navigation can be enhanced by making multiple paths and shortcuts or searches through the information space, but the time spent waiting for the computer to catch up with the user is still a big frustration for most, particularly over vast network distances. This problem may eventually be solved by faster networks and computers, and better data storage schemes.

Traditional museum-goers can often be heard to remark that some work must have taken a very long time to produce, or they may express wonder at not understanding how a particular effect was achieved. The most common criticism leveled against a piece of art is "I could have done that" or "my kid could have done that." Any representation of an artwork that undermines the ability of viewers to determine size, complexity, and technique can add to their frustration. To some extent, this problem can be alleviated by adding statistics and discussions of technique and creative process to the museum exhibit.

Some topics in this essay:
, traditional museums, virtual museums, virtual museum, traditional museum, art pieces, computer screen, traditional museums visitors, functions museums perform, museums attempt, functions museums, art public, museum visitors,