The National Gallery is going mobile with an online version of one of its cancelled exhibitions specially designed for phones.
Its original immersive take on Jan Gossaert’s 16th century masterpiece The Adoration of the Kings included sound effects and specially commissioned poetry but closed down just a week after opening in December.
The mobile exhibition, the first of its type designed by the gallery, will take users through the painting which is broken down into separate scenes allowing them to zoom in in greater detail and share the work on Instagram.
The biblical scene is accompanied by six poems spoken in the voice of one of the kings in the image which has been re-scanned at the highest resolution possible to make it work for a phone screen.
Emma McFarland, Innovation Programme Lead at the gallery, said: “Our aim through the innovation programme is to create enjoyable, meaningful experiences which engage new and more diverse audiences in the collection in different ways, placing our visitors at the heart of the design process. This experimental mobile experience was created as part of our response to the constraints on exhibition visitor numbers as a result of the pandemic.”
The exhibition itself is re-scheduled from May 17 until June 13 and the phone version can be seen at www.nationalgallery.org.uk from Friday.
