Putting landscape drawings in their place: Virtual tours in an exhibition context

We report on the use of a Google Earth virtual tour to place a series of landscape drawings into their spatial context. The tour was designed to complement an exhibition of paintings and drawings by Edward Lear which ran from July to October 2009 at the Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere, Cumbria, UK. We describe the technical aspects of the creation of the tour, experiences of its use during the exhibition, and emphasise aspects of the tour's design and context of use which show most promise. The tour is now available online at www.nottingham.ac.uk/~lgzwww/contacts/staffPages/gary/research/lear.html.