The National Museum of China now provides online exhibitions of cultural relics for people to visit at home. Recently, the "AR Cultural Relic Treasures" section has been launched on the website of the NMC. People can drag the three-dimensional model of the collection on PC or phone browsers to appreciate the details from different angles. Following the "virtual exhibition hall" and live broadcast of guided tours, the NMC has made further progress in online exhibiting.
Different from the previous picture display, the three-dimensional model can exhibit the multi-angle appearances of cultural relics. By dragging the models on PC or phone browsers, visitors can "rotate" the cultural relics and appreciate the details without dead angles, and even clearly see the back, bottom and interior of the cultural relics that are out of sight in a real exhibition hall. This function greatly satisfies the curiosity of visitors. With rigorous text description, visitors can learn the historic knowledge of these cultural relics as long as want. This section has depicted the real NMC onto a diversified "virtual" museum, so that the public can appreciate in various ways the cultural relics that features the quintessence of Chinese civilization.
Six cultural relics as the first batch will be launched in this section. The Eagle-shaped Pottery Ding and the Painted Pottery Jar with a Stork Catching a Fish and a Stone Axe have been launched on the NMC website, Weibo, and WeChat account, followed by other cultural relics.
Thanks to the project "Smart NMC" launched in 2018, the NMC can now exhibit the three-dimensional data of cultural relics to the public. After analyzing the development trend of the cultural expo industry, this project used digital and intelligent technologies to construct the museum, thus highly integrating its services with public needs. Among the technologies, the collection and storage of the three-dimensional data is an important procedure in building the museum's resource database, which will facilitate the digital protection of cultural relics. Several departments of the museum work with enterprises to carry out projects such as the digital collection of fine cultural relics and three-dimensional collection of cultural relics in the warehouse, so as to gradually improve NMC's resource database. Up to now, more than 1,000 cultural relics have been collected through reproduction, of which over 400 have been made into three-dimensional models. Efforts have been made to better inherit and protect cultural relics, and to lay a solid foundation in providing the public with in-depth cultural education, appreciation and research services.