Three Graces in York
The Festival of Ideas held at the University of York in June 2013 presented an opportunity to preview the Three Graces exhibition in the 3Sixty Space at the Ron Cooke Hub, University of York. This unique high-tech space, initially designed for sound experiments is now set up to project a PowerPoint presentation onto four walls simultaneously.
Though it had not previously been attempted, the 3Sixty Space provided an ideal site in which to virtually install the online exhibition in a physical space at York. On Saturday 29th June 2013, for one day only, an experimental exhibition took place in which the four walls of the Three Graces online exhibition were digitally projected at life-sized scale in the 3Sixty, thus liberating the show from cyberspace and transporting the V&A space that it is imagined to inhabit across the country. Visitors were able to view the exhibition in an embodied way in York, in a way resembling a visit to a physical gallery.
Photography by Ian Martindale
Before the Three Graces: Victorian women, visual art and exchange online exhibition could be curated a virtual exhibition room had to be designed in cyberspace to house the show. In the spirit of collaboration between the University of York and Victoria & Albert Museum an exhibition space within the V&A (Room 20a on the ground floor, which has now been subsumed into the Exhibition Road building project) was chosen as a template for the virtual exhibition room and the chosen works of art have been digitally imposed onto its walls. The location of the space within the V&A is signalled in the online show by the vistas out to the John Madejski Garden.