National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens (EMST): Μodernized and adapted to the new era

Uni Systems undertook the complete digital transformation for the National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens (EMST) from the infrastructure and equipment level to collection management software and the public facing guiding application and e-shop.

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Τhe Customer

The National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens (EMST) began its operation in 2000. Its permanent home is the former Fix brewery on Syngrou Ave., the reconstruction of which was completed in 2014. The Museum’s constantly growing collection is formed around a very important nucleus of works by Greek and international artists. From 2003 until 2008 it presented exhibitions and events at the Athens Concert Hall, the Athens School of Fine Arts and in the public space. From September 30th, 2008, it was hosted in sections of the building of the Athens Conservatoire. In May 2015 EMST moved to its permanent premises. From October 2016 to January 2019 it made use of the building’s temporary exhibition spaces, educational facilities, screening room, the museum shop and other facilities, producing or supporting a large number of exhibitions and other activities including conferences, talks, book presentations, film screenings, and dance and musical performances. EMST opened fully operational to the public in February 2020.

Need

More than 20 years after it was founded, and following several long administrative delays in the opening of its renovated home in the former Fix brewery in Athens, EMST has acquired a €3m funding from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) for the purposes of the museum’s digital upgrade and opening. As Uni Systems has collaborated with SNF in the past as part of the National Library of Greece relocation project, the foundation trusted the goal of the digital transformation of EMST to Uni Systems.The project aimed at the design and technological support for the functions of the National Museum of Contemporary Art in order to meet modern technology requirements and provide better services to the public. 

Solution

This project was a major challenge for our company due to the complexity and the variety of services that needed to be developed in order for the museum to be modernized and adapted to the new era. The project included a combination of infrastructure, technological solutions and services for the installation, implementation, data clean up and migration, customisation and staff training of all the project’s software and the creation of e-shop, ticketing system and audio guide application for Android and iOS operating systems. In order to deliver a unified collections management system, Uni Systems’ team undertook the data clean up and migration of three different types of collections, the main collection of contemporary art comprised of mixed media artworks for conservation purposes, the artists’ historic archives collection and the bibliographic collection from the old databases of Museumplus and OpenBiblio to the TMS Collections system. The project, also, covered the need of the museum in terms of network infrastructure and hardware equipment.

Products

CultureMapp

Audio guide application for the creation of the EMST App.

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Qprime

ERP/ Financials for the accounting internal processes

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TMS Collections

The Museum System, software for the Museum’s library and artistic archive.

Pretix

Physical and electronic ticket

Wix Shop

Network Infrastructure and equipment

Project Details

• New E-shop services

• Audio guide and ticketing system

• TMS platform for the library and artistic archive.

Benefits

The impact of this project was of paramount importance for EMST to open to the public. Based on the statistics the ticketing systems reported more than 3,000 visitors were counted within the first three days after opening. The new services such as physical and electronic ticket, E-shop and guide application with way finding feature are an innovation for the EMST making it even more accessible to the public. Especially, TMS Collections as the solution and with Uni Systems’ data cleanup and migration services, the conservation of museum’s art collections, the archival and the library material and workflows are in a central collections platform to organize and handle. The museum now provides valuable services to its audiences, creating a unique visiting experience, while at the same time museum’s staff enjoys easy to use technological tools. 

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