This website review considers the impact of the digital in the cultural heritage sector, with particular reference to the online content of two of Russia’s foremost museums: the State Hermitage in St. Petersburg and Moscow’s Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. It discusses the digitisation of the physical sites of these museums and their collections, as published on the institutional websites, and the wider use of these surrogate images on third-party webpages, chiefly Google’s Cultural Institute and Pinterest. The review examines the availability, selection and display of object-images online, and how this digital medium mediates our experience of the museums and their contents. It seeks not only to investigate the implications for curating access to historic and artistic collections, but to stimulate a wider discussion on the pages of this journal of the interface between digital technologies and cultural heritage in Russia, Eastern Europe and Eurasia.
Language of contribution: English