Over the last few decades, contemporary museums have undergone a radical change into public places that promote socio-economic sustainability by impeding recreation, commercial, and cultural activities. This shift altered public perception of museums globally and had a profound impact on today's museums, resulting in new prototypes that differed significantly from prior ones. The study tries to answer the following questions: How far have Egyptian museums been evolving over the last decade? To what degree the radical transformation in the museum design can assist in fulfilling Egypt’s SDGs? To answer these questions the study attempts to explore how far Egyptian museums have adapted to this fundamental change by tracing the evolution of Egyptian museum design compared with the findings of the author's previous thesis in 2012 and Egypt’s SDGs The study used qualitative methods which began with a thorough literature review followed by a comparative analysis of the selected case studies. . The findings revealed that the contemporary design of the recent Egyptian museums by including the social and economic activities, significantly support the national and global agenda in term of SDG. The article provides architects, designers, and policy makers with clear design criteria to enhance the social and economic role of museums towards fulfilling SDGs.

Museums increasingly recognize the need to address advances in digital culture which impact the expectations and needs of their audiences. Museum collections of real objects need to be presented both on their own premises and digitally online, especially as social media becomes more and more influential in people’s everyday lives. We investigate these challenges magnified by advances in digital and computational media and culture looking particularly at recent and relevant reports on changes in the ways museums interact with the public. We find that the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated many of the changes driving museum transformation. We believe that museums must be more prepared than ever to adapt to unabated technological advances set in the midst of cultural and social revolution, now intrinsic to the digital landscape in which museums are inevitably connected and participating across the global digital ecosystem where they inevitably find themselves entrenched.

This paper presents an innovative methodology for enhancing museum visitor experiences through personalized content delivery using a combination of explicit and implicit visitor profiling. The approach integrates Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) smart badges to collect telemetry data, enabling precise visitor localization and dynamic group formation based on real-time proximity and shared interests. Initial profiling begins with OAuth registration and brief surveys, which is then refined through continuous tracking of exhibit interactions and time spent at each exhibit. An AI-driven system delivers content to individual and group profiles, fostering both personalized learning and social interaction. This methodology addresses the limitations of traditional profiling by adapting to visitor behaviors in real-time while maintaining a strong focus on data privacy and ethical considerations. The proposed system not only enhances engagement and satisfaction but also sets the stage for future advancements in personalized cultural experiences.

Museums and Science Centres are informal education environments that intend to engage the visitors with their exhibits. We present an efficient design process that allows an improved working relationship between museum practitioners, exhibition designers, and visitors. We present the principles and a graphical representation based on the Engagement Profile from previous work. Elements of the design process are evaluated using a learning game at the science centre Engineerium. The evaluation is based on a study with over five hundred visitors to the science centre.

Museums are called to respond to contemporary challenges and contribute to the formation of more progressive societies. One of the major challenges of our time is climate change and museums could construct cocreated narratives around climate and implement targeted actions for the audiences through their sensorial and affective experiences. More specifically, Geology and Palaeontology museums are repositories of knowledge on geoheritage and geoconservation, recognized for their scientific, pedagogical, cultural and recreational values. The educational potential of geological and paleontological exhibits could be used in informal education activities regarding the climate emergency. Taking the above into consideration, this study focuses on both the creation and evaluation of an educational program for the Natural History Museum of Arsakeio Campus at Psychicko.

Background: The saga of repatriating cultural artefacts continues as western museums face increasing pressure from claimants. Western museums that have been involved in the display of historical artefacts, most of which were acquired during the colonial period, have come under huge criticism. A heated discussion of late has been the legitimacy of retaining artefacts in western museums. This study aimed at investigating the ongoing debate regarding the restitution of artefacts. Objective: To investigate the arguments for and against the repatriation of artefacts in relation to diplomatic exchange, preservation, legitimacy and usefulness. Methods: Records will be searched in electronic databases including the University of Manchester Library for Social Anthropology, Scorpus and Project MUSE. Search terms will include "return of artefacts", “return of historical objects”, “return of cultural objects”, “western museums”, “restitution of artefacts”, “repatriation of artefacts”, “restitution of historical objects”, repatriation of historical objects”, “restitution of cultural objects”, “repatriation of cultural objects”, "material culture", "return of antiquities”, restitution of antiquities” and “repatriation of antiquities”. Coding and analysis will be done in SWIFT-Review. The deductive and inductive approaches will be used in synthesising results. Both tabular and graphical methods will be used to present results. Ethics and Results: This study did not need any ethical approval. Results on study characteristics, quality and risk of bias assessments as well as the synthesis of arguments for and against the restitution of artefacts will be presented. The review results will be reported according to appropriate guidelines and disseminated through publication in a relevant journal and presented to stakeholders where necessary. Conclusions: This review will be based on current protocols for systematic review and qualitative evidence synthesis. The study will be the first review that seeks to pull together claims for and against the return of cultural artefacts. The conclusions that will be drawn and recommendations will provide the basis for further research into the debate and the way forward. This study will also help identify the existing gaps regarding the subject matter.

The urban museum has become a multi-functional institution that transcends the functional display of artifacts. The museum has become, in cities, a hybrid institution that keeps its doors open late to support a wide variety of special events. This study explored London’s ‘Museum Lates’ programs and event characteristics, using museums’ theoretical views as cultural tourism attractions. Furthermore, the study applied the contextual model of learning to understand visitor attendance motivations. Authors employed an interpretive approach using interviews with two types of participants, event visitors, and event coordinators. Findings suggested that attendees possess a complex of personal, physical, and socio-cultural motivations for participating in museum lates events. The characteristics of late events – extraordinary quality and evening time atmosphere – produce different effects than current museum exhibitions held during regular operating hours. Museum lates events can contribute to achieving cultural sustainability, adding cultural construct to the traditional three-pillars of sustainability. Keywords: Museums; special events; late opening; visitors' motivations; sustainability, touristic attractions

For the first time, an attempt has been made to present in a systematized form chronologically the development of ornithological studies at the National Museum of Natural History in Sofia (Bulgaria) from its foundation in the last decades of the 19th century to the present day. This 135-year period (1889-2024) includes the work of 12 curators of the ornithological collections. Their major contributions and most-significant ornithological publications are also presented.

In recent years, there has been an increasing demand for personalized experiences in various domains, including the cultural and educational sectors. Museums, as custodians of art, history, and scientific knowledge, are seeking innovative ways to engage their visitors and provide tailored content that enhances their understanding and appreciation of the exhibits. This article presents ExhibitXplorer, a distributed architecture service that leverages geofencing, artificial intelligence, and microservices to enable personalized content delivery in museums. By combining implicit and explicit segmentation of museum visitors and utilizing the GPT API for content generation, ExhibitXplorer offers a dynamic experience to different visitor segments, including researchers, students, casual visitors, and children. The system utilizes push notifications triggered by visitor location changes, allowing seamless delivery of personalized information both indoors and outdoors. Tests were conducted to evaluate the user experience of visitors to an outdoor ethnographic museum. The results showed that 55% of the test participants were satisfied and 45% very satisfied with the way personalized content was delivered.

The documentation and management of the cultural heritage of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the heritage digital age are emerging discourses in cultural heritage management. The enthusiastic uptake of a generative artificial intelligence application (ChatGPT) by the general public and academics alike has provided an opportunity to explore i) whether, and to what extent, generative AI can conceptualize an emergent, not well-described field of cultural heritage (the heritage of COVID-19, ii), whether it can design an exhibition on the topic and iii) whether it can identify sites associated with the pandemic that may be(come) significant heritage. Drawing on an extended ‘conversation’ with ChatGPT, this paper shows that generative AI is capable of not only developing a concept for an exhibition of the heritage of COVID-19 but also that it can provide a defensible array of exhibition topics as well as a relevant selection of exhibition objects. ChatGPT is also capable of making suggestions on the selection of cultural heritage sites associated with the pandemic, but these lack specificity. The discrepancy between ChatGPT’s responses to the exhibition concept and its responses regarding potential heritage sites suggests differential selection and access to data that were used to train the model, with a seemingly heavy reliance on Wikipedia. The ‘conversation’ has shown that ChatGPT can serve as a brainstorming tool, but that a curator’s considered interpretation of the responses is still essential.

In the paper, we explore the notion of global digital citizenship, particularly with respect to museums and cultural heritage organizations. In this perspectives study, we explore current examples of how museums can adapt to the tenets of global digital citizenship necessary to navigate and participate in increasingly interconnected digital worlds and culture, and to collectively address global challenges.

In the last years, interactive exhibitions based on digital technologies are becoming widely common, thanks to their flexibility and effectiveness in engaging visitors and creating memorable experiences. One of the topics in which digital technologies can be particularly effective is the communication of abstract concepts that are difficult for the human mind to imagine. An emblematic example is the astronomy discipline, which requires us to imagine and understand phenomena far away from our everyday life. In this paper, the authors present a research project, MARSS, in which digital technologies are used effectively to enhance the Users’ Experience of the Museo Astronomico di Brera located in Milan. Specifically, the MARSS project aims at designing and developing a new digital journey inside the museum to allow different categories of visitors to enjoy the exhibition in an engaging and interactive way. The paper presents the design and development phases of the experience and its evaluation with users. The results of the evaluation indicate that the digital interactive experience has been appreciated by users and is successful in translating the content of high scientific value into more engaging and easily understandable elements.

Artworks play a fundamental role in the cultural and economic asset of communities, enforcing their identity and helping the social integration. Despite their importance, they are not always adequately protected against degradation, which can be induced by the aging, atmospheric and human-induced occurrence, and catastrophic events. Earthquakes certainly represent one of the main risks for art goods; however, traffic, construction works, and shipment can also represent a threat for art goods. Therefore, the assessment of the vulnerability of art collection to dynamic excitations plays a crucial role in their conservation, and it has been collecting an increasing attention by researchers, academics, and Museums’ managers. This work focuses on the vulnerability of the art collections exhibited at the Museum “Gaio Cilnio Mecenate” in Arezzo. Namely, it aims at assessing the effective dynamic loading experienced by the artworks, which is a function of the dynamic propagation plaid by the foundation soil, by the building and by the displayers used for exhibition. In this study the dynamic properties of some of the displayers used for exhibiting the art collections are investigated by performing an experimental survey. The analysis of the experimental data lead to assess the proper frequencies of the displayers, which have been compared to the ones of the building and the foundation soil of the Museum.

This paper looks at key elements of global culture that are driving a new paradigm shift in museums causing them to question their raison d'être, their design and physical space, recognizing the need to accommodate visitor interaction and participation, and to reprioritize institutional outcomes and goals reexamining their priorities. As heritage sharing in online spaces reaches across national, political, and social boundaries on platforms and networks, this has been driven by museum engagement with Internet life during the pandemic. Museum relationships and interactions with communities both local and global, continue to challenge core values and precepts, leading to radical changes in how museums define their roles and responsibilities. In this new cultural landscape, museums are responding to human digital identity in a tidal wave of human interactions on the Internet, from social media to online sharing of images and videos. This is revealing shared perspectives on cultural conflict as being tied to freedom of expression of one’s heritage embedded in digital identity.