Technology offers countless ways to enhance the visitor’s experience in museum galleries. As museums continue to search for ways to employ new technology, it is important to ensure that these technologies enhance rather than eclipse the collection objects on display.

As museum audiences, especially younger visitors, increasingly gravitate to the next shiny new screen in any given gallery, how can we maintain the primacy of the physical object? What museums have successfully used new technology to enhance the visitor’s experience, and how have they done so? What pitfalls should be kept in mind when considering the use of new technology in museum galleries? In what instances might digital materials serve as a useful replacement for an object too delicate to be displayed for prolonged time periods?