Presentation 1

Transforming the Art Museum in the 21st Century

Ms. Jane Alexander
Chief Digital Information Officer, The Cleveland Museum of Art, USA
ProfileJane Alexander is the chief digital information officer for the Cleveland
Museum of Art. As CDIO, Jane is responsible for creating awe-inspiringand iterative digital projects that support a vision of innovation, technology
implementation, and digital transformation exemplifying the CMA’smission. Under Jane’s leadership, the CMA has launched a comprehensive
Open Access initiative, iterated upon the world-renowned ARTLENS
Gallery, (originally Gallery One), and created award-winning online
toolsets in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Jane leads thedevelopment of groundbreaking in-gallery digital experiences, including
Revealing Krishna: Journey to Cambodia’s Sacred Mountain, an
unprecedented scholarly exhibition intersection of art and immersive mix
reality experiences.
Presentation
The Cleveland Museum of Art has long been a digital innovator, known for over a decade of digital
innovation, including ARTLENS Gallery with gesture-based interactives created for the digital native,
our comprehensive Open Access Initiative – and during the pandemic, relevant and inspiring web-basedAI toolsets.
Recently, the CMA has takenon the new challenge of creating afirstofitskindscholarly

exhibition Revealing Krishna:
Journey to Cambodia’s Sacred
Mountainwhichimmersive mixed

combinedreality, large

scale

projection andgesture-based

interactives

telltoa

Compilation of images showing the CMA's digital offerings

complex story of global diplomacy and the conservation of a Cambodian masterwork.
Revealing Krishna is centered on CMA’s
beloved sculpture: Krishna Lifting Mount
Govardhan, a carved sandstone sculpture fromaround 600 AD. The sculpture was originallyinstalled in a cave temple on Phnom Da, asacred, two-peaked mountain, and was one of 8monumental stone sculptures of the Hindu
Gods installed on the mountain. Centuries ofupheaval led to the statue repeatedly changing
hands and relocating around the globe. In theVisitors in the Revealing Krishna exhibition

1970’s the CMA acquired the sculpture, and it
was reconstructed in CMA’s conservation Labs using newly discovered fragments. At the same time,
another sculpture was discovered in Cambodia, and in 2005 the remaining fragments were sent fromCleveland to Cambodia to reconstruct the other Krishna sculpture. CMA’s reconstructed Krishna wason view like this for about 40 years. However, there were lingering doubts about the arrangement ofthese fragments. In the last decade, colleagues in France, Cambodia and Cleveland collaborated oninvestigating the sculptures using a full-size 3D replica of the sculpture to solve this puzzle. Thisrevealed that the current configuration was incorrect. Conservation began working to reconstruct thesculpture as it would have stood centuries ago, by undoing the conservation done in the 70s.

Compilation of images showing the transformation ofKrishna Lifting Mount Govardhan, as well as a digital
rendering of how the sculpture originally would haveappeared.

CMA director William Griswold shakes hands withKong Vireak, director of the National Museum ofCambodia, after signing an accord on cooperation
between the museums.

This involved a trade in fragments between the Krishna in the CMA’s collection, and the counterpart
in the National Museum of Cambodia, initiated when Sonya Rhie Mace, curator of Indian and Southeast
Asian art, first came to the CMA. She researched the provenance of works in her area, including theHanuman sculpture seen here. After being informed that the originally accepted provenance might beinaccurate, the museum took steps to uncover the truth of the sculpture's history. When she understood
the research, she recommended that the Cleveland Museum of Art voluntarily return the work toCambodia, which it did in 2015. As a result of the returned sculpture, the National Museum of Cambodia
honored the return as an example of best practice and entered into an agreement with the Cleveland
Museum of Art to exchange artworks, expertise, and research.
When we began planning an exhibition centered on Krishna Lifting Mount Govardhan, it was clear
the sculpture’s complex story would be difficult to tell through artwork alone. We wanted visitors to be
immersed in the research, history, and global partnerships behind the exhibition, to witness thesignificant undertaking that brought the sculpture to the CMA, and to its current state. For a seamlessexperience between the physical and digital, we developed concepts to take visitors through the canals
from Angkor Borei to the sacred mountain, explore Krishna’s original cave temple, and stand before themonumental gods of Phnom Da. Our goal was to make the unbelievable story of the sculpture accessible
to all audiences, scholars, and the general public alike.

Infographic discussing what to expect in the immersive
exhibition, Revealing Krishna: Journey to Cambodia's
Sacred Mountain“Journey to Phnom Da.” The immersive panoramicfootage and soundscape captured via boat and drone
takes visitors through the canals of southern Cambodia.

In the opening gallery, Journey to Phnom Da, we use immersive video projections on three walls
and a Cambodian-waterways soundscape to create a cinematic experience of the sculpture’s homeland.
The second of the four immersive galleries is dedicated to a HoloLens 2 tour. Wearing a HoloLens
headset, visitors physically follow the life story of our Krishna through five stations, each with abstract
physical forms that ground the Augmented Reality landscape. Guided by the voice of the eight-year-old
Krishna and following physical and digital wayfinding, visitors in groups of six disembark every threeminutes—up to 36 people at a time can be on the tour. The mixed reality offers an immersive experience
without completely occluding the field of vision; users can still see and interact with others andmaneuver through the gallery, blending the physicaland the virtual.
To gather material for the exhibition, our crew
flew drones over Phnom Da, entered the cave
temples, and collected lidar scans, photogrammetry,and sound recordings. The tour culminates in a lifesize holographic projection of the temple on Phnom
Da where the Cleveland Krishna appears to havestood. Visitors will experience a high-resolution
model of the temple at scale with ambient sound.
They will see an artist’s rendering of Krishna as hemight have originally looked before years of wear

A visitor examines holographic fragments in
the HoloLens Experienceand tear.
This model of Krishna demonstrates the benefit oftechnology. Our conservators would never alter anobject to this degree, but here we can re-create how
the sculpture might have looked, with its dark,polished surface and original gold jewelry. We canexperience walking up to it, in its original context,centuries ago. Visitors will come away from theHoloLens 2 tour with a new appreciation of thestoried conservation history of the Cleveland
Krishna and new perspectives before removing theheadset and viewing the actual sculptures in thefollowing gallery.

Digital rendering of “The Story of the Cleveland Krishna.”
The mixed-reality tour culminates with a life-size
holographic representation of the original cave temple on
Phnom Da, where visitors are invited to walk around anartist’s re-creation of the sculpture as it might have stood.

The virtual reconstruction of Krishna is based ona decade of research from a cross-continental team.
AtopourvirtualPhnomDa,created

withphotogrammetry captured via drone, the sculpture issituated precisely where curator Sonya Rhie Maceand other scholars believe it stood more than 1,000years ago. In another gallery visitors will also see
detailed 3D models of all eight sculptures depictedusing high-resolution lidar and photogrammetry.
Visitors are sent off with an immersive timeline
exploring the impact of global history and thediplomacy surrounding the sculptures of Phnom Da,

The “Gods of Phnom Da” digital gallery displays life-size
3D models of the eight gods of Phnom Da, from c.600, withmotion-activated animations exploring details andiconographic elements.

narrated by director, actor, and humanitarian Angelina Jolie and author Loung Ung (First They Killed
My Father). It tells the story of the gods of Stone Mountain showing the excavations and earliest
discoveries in the 1800s, alongside present-day footage and animated maps. The film also covers thepast decade of conservation innovations and partnerships with Cambodia and highlights the museum’s
evolving role in stewardship within the global landscape. Not all museums have the same resources butcollaborating gives us the opportunity to share.

This exhibition is something that can live beyond it’stime on view, as something online, traveling to other institutions and as an example for best practices inmuseums moving forward.
This exhibition represents the future of how people will experience scholarly exhibitions. It is a bestpractice example of sharing resources between organizations, and a demonstration of the power of using
the digital to tell complex stories in an inclusive manner.

The “Gods of Phnom Da: Global Journeys” immersive audio-video timeline traces the discovery anddisposition of the eight gods of Phnom Da as affected by global events and the work of museums.
Photo: The Cleveland Museum of Art