Author: Efstratios Geronikolakis

More than 1,000 years ago, the Ancestral Puebloans (also called Anasazi and Hisatsinom by the Hopi) who had thrived in the Moapa Valley area for centuries, gradually abandoned their homes and vanished into the sizzling, arid expanses southeast of Nevada. For hundreds of years before migrating they lived in a vast, sprawling village stretching for miles along the Muddy River that first archeological excavators called Pueblo Grande de Nevada and, eventually, the Lost City. Mountain man and explorer Jedediah Smith found the first evidence of the Lost City in 1827 and nearly 100 years later, in 1924, modern day archeologists began digs that would ultimately uncover artifacts and relics that identified and defined the Ancestral Puebloans culture. Many of those artifacts are on display in Overton’s Lost City Museum and this week the facility expanded access to its collections using three-dimensional, virtual reality, according to Guy Clifton, Department of Tourism and Cultural Affairs. Those images are now available for public viewing at SketchFab.com/lostcitymuseum. “(The purpose of the 3-D imaging is to) increase public awareness and engagement with our museum collections,” said Mary Beth Timm, Lost City museum curator and archeologist. UNLV doctoral student Ben Van Alstyne and undergraduates Alexx Martinez and Michelle Bosinger-Shannon, spearheaded the project this spring in a partnership with the Department of Anthropology at UNLV. Timm explained that the pilot project to determine which pieces were...

The Charleston Museum was the first museum in the U.S., opening in 1824. Since the 19th Century, museums have advanced in archival, storage and exhibition techniques. Yet the experience many museums offer to visitors can feel outdated–especially in an age of ever-expanding digital technology. HOW VISITORS EXPERIENCE MUSEUMS The museum experience is extremely important to visitors. When visitors walk away from a museum, that experience will shape their opinion of every other museum. If a visitor leaves a museum feeling uninspired and “bored” by the experience, he or she is unlikely to want to visit another museum anytime soon. In a world of digital technology, our society is now used to a guided journey of storytelling. Gone are the days when we feel compelled to suffer through an arduous experience in the names of art or history. Thirty-seven percent of art museum visitors don’t even consider their visit as a “cultural experience” according to Artsy. AUGMENTED ACCESSIBILITY As travel is becoming less expensive and more accessible, museums are experiencing overcrowding–especially in front of certain works of art. Just try to visit the “Mona Lisa” in the Louvre in Paris. When you’re fighting with a crowd of over 100 people to get a glimpse of the art, you’re not experiencing the art in real life at all. In fact, you have a better chance of getting a photo of the...