Cleopatra: An Interactive Guide to Art of the Ancient World

The Art Institute of Chicago is developing Cleopatra, an interactive touchscreen program for its newly reinstalled galleries of ancient art. The program is expected to increase the understanding of these collections, add broad cultural and historical context to the works of art, and inspire close observation of these works. With this reinstallation, the Art Institute will hlly integrate, for the first time, computer technology as an interpretive tool in a permanent collection gallery. The museum's goal is to design an interactive multimedia program, tentatively named Cleopatra, that showcases 1 8 objects from our collection. Cleopatra will relate these objects through a variety of views of an information matrix using simple navigational features such as maps, timelines, and illustrated text panels. Cleopatra has been conceived as a series of "layers," making information about objects in the ancient art galleries accessible to visitors with different backgrounds and interests. It allows the visitor to answer questions he or she may not have found discussed in other sources; to follow paths of inquiry through time, media, or other associations, according to each user's inspiration; to provide views inside, underneath, and even, through x-rays, within an object, which are not possible within thegallery. Finally, the presence of computers in an adjacent space encourages the visitor to return to the objects with greater interest