Reimagine Curation with New Technologies and Old Dreams

The advent of digital technologies such as 3D imaging, data visualization, Extended Reality (XR), and Artificial Intelligence Generated Content (AIGC) is rapidly transforming how we experience, interpret, and engage with art. Building upon decades of digitization efforts, museums are not only embracing these new tools but also reviving “old dreams”—historical hypotheses, speculative designs, and fictional projections—that have long imagined alternative ways of seeing and sensing the past. What happens, for instance, when a period room meets digital reconstruction? How might early experiments in interactive design—long before the digital age—be reanimated through immersive interfaces? Or how can overlooked curatorial visions—whether rooted in fictional writings, historical artworks, or cultural memory—inform today’s technological choices in museums?

This panel invites papers that explore the interplay between curatorial imagination and technological innovation, especially those that challenge linear narratives of progress. We welcome contributions that critically examine how museums use digital tools not simply to replicate or preserve, but to reframe histories, resurface silenced stories, or embody alternative futures. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Speculative design in museum practices
• Immersive or virtual experiences in museum
• Reconstructed period rooms as sites of technological and narrative layering
• Curatorial strategies inspired by fiction, fantasy, or “failed” historical models
• The ethics of technologically mediated curation

We particularly encourage interdisciplinary perspectives that draw from art history, media studies, architecture, digital humanities, human-computer-interaction, and museum studies. By revisiting old dreams with new tools, this panel seeks to open up space for experimental, reflexive, and imaginative curatorial futures.