WILTON UNCOVERED
Building a Virtual Exhibition
I partnered with Jillian from Explorers Studio on this project. Jillian is a fantastic museum exhibition and activation designer with extensive experience integrating two-dimensional messages and graphics with three-dimensional space and form. It was amazing collaborating and working with her on this project transforming an exhibit into a dimension virtual space.
Photo by Matthew Scarnaty
Wilton House Museum is a museum in a historic house located in Richmond, Virginia. Wilton was originally constructed by William Randolph III to be a manor house on a 2,000-acre tobacco plantation known as "World's End" located on the north bank of the James River.
In 1934, with commercial development encroaching on the opposite bank of the James and the property in danger of foreclosure, The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Virginia saved the mansion from destruction by purchasing, dismantling, moving, and rebuilding it on a site overlooking the James River a few miles west of its original location where it now stands, beautifully restored.
Make it stand out
Today, Wilton continues to serve as an example of Georgian architecture, headquarters to the Virginia Dames, and host to public programs and educational exhibits.
About the Collection
The exhibition I was honored to work on at the Wilton House Museum is based around an excavation in 1998 by William & Mary archaeologists, who uncovered the material record of the lives of nearly a century of enslaved families. This excavation recovered not only the most important available tool for understanding daily life at Wilton, but the largest collection of objects associated with Wilton’s original location in existence.
“Wilton Uncovered: Archeology Illuminates an Enslaved Community,” displays this collection for the first time alongside Dennis Winston’s poignant artistic renderings of the community that used, loved, broke, resented, played with, and discarded the artifacts.
Explorers Studio designed and implemented Wilton Uncovered’s amazing exhibition design as well as the branding of the exhibition logo.
The Challenge
My challenge was to develop a website that accurately depicted this exhibition design and gave visitors a sense of the movement that someone would experience as they walked through the gallery.
Katie Watkins, the Director of Education at Wilton, told me her biggest wish with the website was to incorporate the three different angles of the exhibit: the history, the art, and how to connect those to today.
Here’s the catch: how do you accurately depict 60 unique historical artifacts, all with different descriptions and categories in one website, where they all are able to be interacted with as if you were to read the little plaques at the physical gallery itself?
Getting organized
To begin, Katie sent us the scanned files and photographs of all artfacts and we made a big spreadsheet of all 60 artifacts!
After researching similar exhibitions and historical museums, we sketched out a dynamic one-page scrolling exhibition based on the main display banners that were in the museum itself.
Initial Brainstorming
After laying out all the artifacts and photographing them, we were able to see which artifacts needed to belong in each section. Jillian and I debated back and forth the best way to show off the artifacts since the artifacts display would be the most complicated–and most crucial–part of the virtual exhibition.
After a bit of technical research, we decided that a lightbox with transparent artifacts would be the most effective and interactive way to show off each section. I worked with a developer to create a custom lightbox solution, since the premade in-the-box products did not have the capabilities we needed.
Figma wireframes of the initial virtual exhibition design.
I collaborated with Jillian and Katie on the overall look and feel of how the exhibition feels when you walk through it to help the digital rendition feel as realistic as possible.
