The Virtual Money Gallery – Vortic’s Collaboration with the Ashmolean Museum

Vortic is thrilled to announce its collaboration with the Ashmolean Museum, creating a digital experience of The Money Gallery and providing an exclusive online tour for an enriched viewing experience. This interactive exhibition is available to view online on vortic.art and on the Ashmolean’s website, offering a unique opportunity to examine the coins up close and enjoy additional audio commentary from the curator, Dr Courtney Nimura. 

The Money Gallery is a curated selection from the extension coin collection at the Ashmolean, featuring highlights such as coins from the Heberden Coin Room’s collection, Iceni Coins and the Oxford Crown. The exhibition explores the evolution of money and the geographical spread of the coins.

Vortic collaborated with the Ashmolean to create a new virtual environment based on the museum’s current gallery space. Artefacts from The Money Gallery’s four exhibitions were scanned to construct a bespoke exhibition on Vortic. In the words of Vortic’s Head of Engineering and Product, Igal Nassima, the collaboration was “taking advantage of how digital can actually improve the viewing experience of these objects.”  A challenge was presented by The Heberden Coin Room, consisting of small, shiny coins. Vortic overcame this challenge by creating digital replicas through photogrammetry and projecting images onto the geometry, and manually refining them using ZBrush. 

The virtual exhibition allows users to zoom in and out, as well as rotate around these historical objects. This digital experience broadens the Ashmolean’s reach to an online global audience and serves as a lasting resource that enriches the experience of virtual visitors. 

Vortic had the privilege of speaking with Dr. Courtney Nimura, Curator for Later European Prehistory at the Ashmolean Museum, about the Heberden Coin Room, the challenges curating coin-focused exhibitions, and Ashmolean’s collaboration with Vortic, how Voritc’s technology provided an opportunity for audience engagement and accessibility. 

“This project is only the beginning of what I hope will be more moves into interactive, creative digital exhibitions. With this online platform, we are better able to reach audiences across the globe”

Can you tell us a bit more about the Heberden Coin Room and the relevance of its collection?

Just over a hundred years ago, on 24 October 1922, the Ashmolean Museum opened the University of Oxford’s newly constituted Coin Room. This was the culmination of a 40-year campaign by Sir Arthur Evans to bring together the coin collections of the collegiate University. The Heberden Coin Room is now one of the leading international coin cabinets, with particular strengths in Greek, Roman, Celtic, Byzantine, Medieval, Islamic, and South and East Asian coinages. The coin collections in Oxford go back to the 17th century, representing, after Cambridge, the oldest surviving collections in the country. Twelve curators and researchers currently provide the scholarship that powers the Heberden Coin Room – they represent only a fraction of the Coin Room’s staff from its 100-year history.

What are the main challenges in creating exhibitions focused on coins?

Coins are generally quite small – this is the main challenge in creating exhibitions with coins as the focal points. As curators of coins, we often rely on displaying enlarged photographs with the coins to ensure that visitors can see their often intricate and ornate designs. More recently, we have used 3D laser scanning and 3D printing to create enlarged coins that can also be exhibited alongside the original coins.

What prompted you to look for new digital solutions for the display of these historical artefacts? 

As academics and curators, we are always in search of new ways to engage the public with the material culture we study, while also preserving these priceless artefacts. We can’t let everyone hold the coins in their hands, therefore we need to find new ways to let people interact more directly with them. 

How did you find working with Vortic? How do you think the Vortic technology will help you achieve in terms of audience engagement/accessibility?

Vortic technology has made it possible for us to create an entirely virtual museum experience, which enables the viewer to engage with the coins in new and interesting ways. Anyone with internet access and a computer or phone can ‘visit’ the museum any time of day or night, making this type of exhibition more accessible for many members of the public.

Is there an aspect of the digital exhibition that stands out to you? 

I love how you can spin the coins on any axis and see how their designs change as you twist and turn them in your virtual hands. This is especially true of the coins that contain so-called ‘hidden faces’. The hidden face on one coin is only revealed when the coin is turned and a lock of hair turns into a second eye. It is fantastic to be able not just to show people two sides of a coin, but allow them to move it around at their own pace. 

Are you planning to work on more digital exhibitions in the future?

Absolutely – this project is only the beginning of what I hope will be more moves into interactive, creative digital exhibitions. With this online platform, we are better able to reach audiences across the globe and share the amazing collections housed in the UK’s first public museum.