Museums Today: Creating Digital Exhibitions: A Practical Guide

What makes a digital exhibition an exhibition? What makes a digital exhibition different from other exhibitions? As many museums started embracing digital presences and continue to work across physical and digital spaces, creating a digital exhibition involves more than translating content into an online format. It actually requires digital exhibition curators to integrate new ways of thinking about technology, curation, audience engagement, interpretation, accessibility, infrastructure, and evaluation.

Drawing from their most recent edited volume Creating Digital Exhibitions: A Practical Guide, Dr. Morgan Joseph Hamilton and Dr. Zida Wang will discuss the theory and practice of digital exhibition-making through perspectives from museum researchers, practitioners, educators, and curators across the world. The discussion will explore how digital exhibitions can create new opportunities for participation, learning, access, and engagement while addressing the practical realities of limited resources, evolving technologies, and changing audience expectations. Furthermore, this session will also examine how institutions may conceptualize the digital exhibitions not as a supplement of the physical space, but as a unique landscape that presents specialized digital creative opportunities, ethical considerations, and institutional responsibilities in this fast-changing world.

Speakers:

About Morgan Joseph Hamilton

Morgan Joseph Hamilton, Ph.D., is an independent curator and adjunct professor at the University of Delaware. His research centers around equitable experiences for the visitor in the art museum. He curates and designs exhibitions that tap into every-day interests by incorporating interactive, supported interpretation in the gallery space. In 2025 he edited a critical anthology, Artifice: Implications on Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, and in 2026 he co-edited Creating Digital Exhibitions: A Practical Guide. 

About Zida Wang: 

Zida Wang, Ph.D., is Manager of Academic and Community Engagement at the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Zida’s research and practice focus on museum education, collaborative curation, and digital exhibitions. He is co-editor of Creating Digital Exhibitions: A Practical Guide.