From Gallery Walkthroughs to Virtual Workbenches
Virtual museum tours once meant little more than quiet strolls through digitised galleries, echoing the logic of a floor plan. The State Hermitage Museum’s new project, Empty Frames: Enter the Picture, signals a very different direction for digital museum experiences. Instead of simply recreating public halls, the Hermitage invites viewers into spaces usually closed to visitors: the restoration laboratory and the curator’s domain. This shift turns the screen into a kind of backstage pass, where behind the scenes art work—cleaning, retouching, analysis—is no longer hidden. As museums compete for attention in an image-saturated online world, the promise is clear: don’t just show the finished masterpiece, reveal the fragile, complex processes that keep it alive. Empty Frames positions itself as a model for how institutions can reshape virtual access into a genuinely immersive art exhibition.
Rubens’ Bacchus, Between Exhibition Hall and Lab
The debut chapter of Empty Frames centres on Bacchus by Peter Paul Rubens, a large-scale canvas currently undergoing a long-term restoration. While the painting is physically absent from its gallery and will not return to public view until 2027, the virtual experience bridges that absence. High-resolution spherical panoramas allow viewers to see Bacchus in two parallel realities: installed in the Rubens Hall and laid flat on the restorer’s workbench. This dual perspective reframes what a virtual museum tour can be, collapsing the distance between exhibition and conservation. Instead of treating the painting as a static icon, the tour foregrounds its status as an evolving object, vulnerable to varnish, overpainting and time. In doing so, it underlines a simple truth that digital museum experiences rarely convey: every masterpiece is also a work in progress, shaped by generations of caretakers as much as by the original artist.
Revealing the Craft: Tools, Varnish, and the Restorer’s Eye
Inside the Laboratory for the Scientific Restoration of Easel Paintings, the new Hermitage tour slows down the act of looking. Interactive markers let viewers explore the specialised tools used to clean away old varnishes and later overpaintings, step by step. Commentary from senior restorer Maria Shulepova and curator Vladislav Statkevich turns technical procedures into an accessible narrative, explaining how the original colour palette of Rubens’ Bacchus is gradually recovered. This level of behind the scenes art access transforms viewers from passive spectators into informed witnesses of conservation decisions. Instead of a generic label, audiences encounter the micro-dramas of restoration: what to remove, what to preserve, how far to intervene. The result aligns virtual museum tours with documentary storytelling, using close-up craft to deepen understanding of both material technique and curatorial responsibility.
Why Behind-the-Scenes Access Deepens Engagement
By foregrounding conservation labs and curatorial commentary, Empty Frames suggests a broader future for immersive art exhibitions online. Viewers are not simply given a digitised substitute for an in-person visit; they are invited into the museum’s decision-making core. This reconfiguration matters for engagement. Seeing how experts diagnose damage, debate interventions and plan long-term preservation fosters trust and curiosity, particularly when major works temporarily disappear from display. The Hermitage also frames the project as ongoing, with future virtual visits planned for additional works in its holdings. That serial structure encourages repeat viewing and builds a narrative arc across multiple restorations. In the process, digital museum experiences become less about ticking off famous artworks and more about following the continuous, often invisible labour that keeps collections alive—transforming the virtual tour into a sustained, behind-the-scenes relationship with the institution.