About

The project will produce a digital exhibition planning platform where AI will search museums' materials for common themes that can be used in joint exhibitions. The goal of the project is to support the collaboration between museums, to digitize exhibition planning from start to finish and, above all, to gain new insights into the possibilities of AI in exhibition planning. During the project period, we will also develop EODEM-compatible support for the process of lending digital art.

The project will include plans for a pilot exhibition about the ocean for two museums that use Collecte. The partial digitization of the nautical charts of the John Nurminen Foundation and training AI with the resulting material will also be a part of the project. A major part of the project is gathering information about the requirements for an exhibition planning platform.

Schedule

The project started in May 2025, and it ends in June 2025. The ending seminar is in the Suomenlinna Sea Fortress on June 11th, 2025. The seminar is open to everyone who is interested in the project and its results. More information on the seminar: maija.soljanlahti@jnfoundation.fi.

Webinar: In a morning webinar on Wednesday, April 9th, the subject is the digitization and use of AI in exhibition planning. The AiAiSea combines the collection of the John Nurminen Foundation, the digitization expertise of the Finnish Heritage Agency, and the development of AI-supported tool that is tested in the Collecte collection management software.

Status of the project 

News from 2025: The map collection of the John Nurminen Foundation has been digitized. Read more about the process in blog post (in Finnish): https://johnnurmisensaatio.fi/mita-teemme/itameri-media/blogi/nain-vanha-atlas-sai-uuden-digielaman/.

In February, the AiAiSea project group took part in the info and networking day of the Baltic Sea Day in Lennusadam in Tallinn. The networking day was organized by the John Nurminen Foundation, the Estonia Institute of Finland and the Estonian Maritime Museum. Mikko Sola, the project manager of AiAiSea, talked about the goals and progress of the project.   

The development of the platform is progressing well. In addition to the object search view, the platform has the planning view for exhibition which was one of the most significant requirements that were brought up in the workshop. The platform is shown to public in the ending seminar in June. 

Vuoden 2024 kuulumisia: The funding decision was received in July 2024. The development of the planning platform has started, and at the end of October, we held a service design workshop where we clarified the goals for the collaborative planning platform. Experts from five museums took part in the workshop. Thank you for attending!

Background of the funding

The Ministry of Education and Culture has granted the project NextGenerationEU funding from the European Union. You can read more about the structural renewal support for cultural and creative industires on the ministry website (in Finnish). The official name of the project is A digital, AI-aided exhibition planning platform for the collaborative use by museums, archives and foundations. We gave it a shorter name: "AiAiSea".