Massachusetts museums embrace tech for immersive history tours
Massachusetts museums embrace tech for immersive history tours
Publish Date: 2026-06-14 06:02:00
Source Domain: www.bostonglobe.com
Today, in museums across the state, people can experience what historic sites used to look like, have a conversation with Frederick Douglass, and virtually fire a cannon at a British ship.
In May, the Lexington Visitors Center began offering virtual reality tours tied to the opening battles of the American Revolution, blending real-time experiences with digital reconstructions. The tours let visitors explore two sites lost to history: the original meeting house where Colonists stored gunpowder and held town meetings, and the belfry where the alarm sounded on April 19, 1775, alerting the militia that the British troops were approaching and starting the Revolutionary War.
Namrata Shajwani of Boston looks up while visiting the site of the Boston Massacre while wearing a mixed reality headset as she takes See Reality’s tour of the Freedom Trail called, “Relive 1776.”Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff
“These tours are not just about the battle that occurred there,” said Jackson Rhodes, an employee of the visitor center who handles the virtual reality tours. “They’re about what it was like to live in Colonial America.”
At the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum, immersion goes beyond technology. Visitors board replica 18th-century ships and throw tea crates into the harbor, reenacting the Colonists’ protest against the Tea Act.
Evan O’Brien, the museum’s creative manager, said the museum’s philosophy stems from a quote commonly attributed to Benjamin Franklin: “Tell me and I forget; teach me and I remember; involve me and I learn.”
“That involvement is really critical to our teaching methods here at the museum,” he said.
The museum, reopened in 2012, has been trying to make history more immersive by blending live performance with new technology like holograms, portraits that come to life and debate politics, and a multisensory film that simulates musket fire.
“We combine traditional first-person historical interpretation and live theatrical performance…
