Digitally Caring for the Dead at the Harvard Art Museums: The Development of an Augmented Reality Experience for the Ancient Mediterranean Exhibit’s Funerary Artifacts

Abstract

In these cases, where repatriation is either impossible or not called upon by any extant advocate group or culture, the question then shifts away from whether the museum should possess these artifacts. Rather, now that museums already have them under their custody, and either have no capability or no reason to return them, the questions are better framed around what can be done to responsibly display them to the public. We must ask, how do we best represent the dead in our museums? How can we honor funerary artifacts, calling the attention of museum visitors to them and their origins, and learn best from them under these circumstances? How can museums fulfill their moral duty to honor the dead and communicate their humanity to those who come to them to learn of the past? For my goals at the Harvard Art Museum, augmented reality appeared to be a powerful tool. The ability to create a targeted experience that is layered upon the physical exhibit, without being intrusive to that exhibit’s existing state, was both a unique avenue to combine my two fields of study and a path forward to highlighting the funerary artifacts at the museum. The development of an augmented reality application that highlighted and honored the artifacts associated with the dead would be a powerful tool to urge visitors to consider the human beings associated with the objects. At the onset of a new age of augmented reality and in the midst of debate about burial sites, remains, and funerary artifacts in our museums, I set out to develop an application that would pair the two together.