INTEGRATED DIGITAL HERITAGE: CATALOGUES, ARCHIVES, AND HBIM FOR THE MUSEUM OF THE FUTURE
On April 15 at 11:00 AM, the Sala Spadolini of the Ministry of Culture will host the seminar Integrated Digital Heritage: Catalogues, Archives, and HBIM for the Museum of the Future.
The meeting will present innovative projects for the digitalization of cultural heritage, illustrating how digital technology is revolutionizing the methods and languages of enhancement.
Projects from Galleria Borghese will also be featured. The first, the Collection Catalogue, is realized in collaboration with the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid and utilizes innovative software developed by the Spanish institution for the online management of museum collections. This tool has enabled a complete re-engineering of the museum’s digital platform.
The Catalogue currently includes the main types of works — paintings, modern sculpture, ancient art, and furnishings — and is configured as an advanced multimedia database, enriched by images, videos, digitized bibliography, links to other platforms of national and international cultural institutions, and integrated three-dimensional models. It is designed not only as a tool for scientific cataloguing but also for the enhancement and dissemination of heritage.
The second project, Digital Archives, collects historical, documentary, and management information related to the works. The system involves an analytical indexing of the Borghese family’s historical inventories, ancient descriptions, and citations in sources — such as printed guides and archival documents — in order to track the presence of works in the collection, both for those preserved in the Museum today (acquired by the State in 1902) and for those that left over time. The system also includes conservation information and images of the works, data on loans, and an archive of inscriptions found on the paintings.
Additionally, the project “HBIM of Galleria Borghese: Museum Beyond 3 Dimensions” will be presented. This project is aimed at the integrated and coordinated management of all information related to the building: from its history to maintenance interventions and works, including the most recent systems updates. Data digitalization, based on the HBIM (Historical or Heritage Building Information Modeling) approach, extends the BIM method to the modeling of existing structures and collections, providing not only a three-dimensional digital representation but also “intelligent” models rich in information. In these models, every element of the building is a parametric object with defined semantics.
Finally, several significant digital heritage enhancement projects carried out thanks to PNRR funds will be illustrated. These include Tales of Light, a video-mapping project that, through spectacular artistic projections, transforms the museum’s rear facade into a large dynamic screen, tracing the fundamental stages of the birth and development of Galleria Borghese in chronological order; and Glimpses Beyond Time, an immersive virtual and augmented reality experience that, thanks to Oculus headsets, combines art, history, and technology, guiding the public on a journey through the centuries to discover the evolution of the Museum and its extraordinary collections.
Mandatory reservation at this link, subject to availability.