After 50 years, The Armstrong Air and Space Museum is blasting off to a new virtual world, and the staff are excited for the future and what this could mean for the museum. Neil Armstrong said, “To make new discoveries, we must explore,” and this week people looking to explore the museum that bears his name can do that from the comfort of their own home thanks to their new virtual museum.
Sunday night people got a sneak peek of how to navigate this new virtual space. 360-degree pictures of the Wapakoneta landmark were stitched together to create an experience like you are there.
“Yea, we are really excited about this,” says Dante Centuori, Ex. Dir. Armstrong Air and Space Museum. “We see the virtual tour as adding a new dimension of what the Armstrong museum has to offer to people. Whether it’s someone in the area that want to check things out before they visit or someone sitting in their den in Seattle, who is really geeked out about aerospace.”
There are actually two different virtual tours, a free version for people to check out the museum and a paid version and for a one-time price of $4.99, people will be able to get more information and content that in-person visitors to the museum will not even get.
“You can learn exclusive content that do to spatial reasons that we couldn’t put out into the physical museum,” says Logan Rex Curator and Communications Director of the Armstrong Air and Space Museum. “This allows us to take those stories and take those artifacts and expand upon those in this virtual space.”
“We tried to add those other extra layers,” adds Centuori. “There are things in our collections, there is so much information. We normally limit it to a couple of dozen words on label copy, but the tour allows people to dig really deep, for the folks that really enjoy that.”
It is not a coincidence that the launch of the virtual museum is the same year that the actual museum will be celebrating its 50th anniversary.
“It’s really part of our mission, is making sure that we can inspire people,” adds Rex. “Not only across the community but across the country and across the world. So, we are trying to take the Armstrong brand globally and trying to inspire as many people as possible.”
The virtual museum will launch on March 16th on www.armstrongmuseum.org. The paid version with the additional content will be found in the online store on the website.
