The exhibition “divinely gifted” of the German Historical Museum in Berlin documents around 280 works of art by so called "divinely gifted" artists in Germany and Austria. We developed an interactive map that spotlights the artwork and enables the user to expand the collection.
Special exhibition: Artwork of "divinely blessed" artists
From August 27th to December 5th 2021, the German History Museum (Deutsches Historisches Museum) in Berlin will present "The List of 'divinely gifted' Artists of National Socialism in the Federal Republic" in a special exhibition. For the exhibition, 280 works of art by "divinely blessed" artists in Germany and Austria have been researched and documented for the first time. The origin for the special exhibition is the "list of divinely gifted", commissioned by Adolf Hitler in 1944. This list includes 114 sculptors and painters who were considered "indispensable" and gained ground in National Socialist Germany. The exhibition looks at the artists' careers and invites visitors to critically examine questions of continuity, expectations and the artist’s adaptation to the prevailing atmosphere.
An interactive map guides through the artwork
While the special exhibition takes place at the DHM, the artworks are distributed in (semi)public spaces all over Germany. In order to provide visitors with a complete presentation of the artworks listed, we developed an interactive map that is included on the website and on terminals in the exhibition of the museum. Visitors and users can access the locations and information of the documented works via the map. In addition, there is the possibility of submitting one's own references and photographed works via the "Citizen Science" function, so that the directory is constantly growing.
A map that meets individual requirements
For the development of the map, we first built a backend for the museum's staff to post the collected information for the exhibition. In the second step, we configured the map according to the client's requirements. The map is based on Google Maps and adapted to the design of the exhibition's website. We use tags, filters and cluster markers to clearly display the different locations. We also developed the "Citizen Science" contribution function, which allows users to participate in research for the exhibition themselves and add their own submissions to the digital collection. The map is an interactive component of the special exhibition and offers visitors to the exhibition as well as users of the website digital access to the artworks in Germany and Austria.
Data becomes tangible
The interactive map we developed can be used in a variety of ways and adapted according to requirements. Thanks to our experience with interactive map applications, we have a quick solution at hand to put location data or routes into a contextual format and create a long lasting user experience that goes far beyond a simple info text. As we have experienced with our maps for Greenpeace or Kadoin, the visualization of geographical data in interactive maps is an easily accessible and popular source of information for users.
