VR-driven museum opportunities: digitized archives in the age of the metaverse

VR technology has brought new prospects and energy to art museums, prompting the advancement of new technologies that can tackle future challenges while catering to the demands of the metaverse era. Today’s digital archiving and guided tours, which rely on VR and more portable information retrieval, provide optimism for museum development. VR technology overcomes the limitations of traditional museums constrained by space and time as digital archiving gradually becomes a reality. This study highlights the benefits of metaverse-driven online archiving from the users’ perspective, followed by a review of recent examples of using VR for media art archiving. We emphasize the importance of further research into unexplored emerging technologies in media art archiving and propose that VR technologies in the metaverse are essential enablers for online archiving purposes. Our work aims to help art researchers, archivists, professionals, and artists to comprehend the challenges and future needs of archiving media art in the developing metaverse. Furthermore, we discuss present cases of employing VR for media art preservation after outlining the advantages of metaverse-driven online archiving from the users’ viewpoint. We stress the need for additional studies on new technologies in media art preservation. Moreover, metaverse VR technologies play a crucial role in achieving online archiving goals. This research contributes to a better understanding of the challenges and future requirements of archiving media art in the evolving metaverse for art researchers, archivists, and artists.