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• Bodelwyddan galleries reopen with a novel interactive

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The National Portrait Gallery has re-opened its galleries at Bodelwyddan Castle, Wales. The new displays include a novel interactive developed by Cogapp which lets visitors create photos of themselves in the style of a Victorian carte-de-visite.

The new galleries consist of three themed rooms and use a variety of display techniques. The Artist's Studio has a series of mises en scènes based on five self-portraits in the collection. Visitors are encouraged to explore how portraits are made by copying the sitters' poses. Three group portraits are explored interactively in A Sense of Occasion, with children able to dress-up and "enter" into the portraits. Portraits for All explores mass production of portrait photographs during the Victorian period by focussing on the studio practice of Victorian photographer Camille Silvy. Visitors pose for their photograph and create a "virtual" carte de visite using backdrops and props drawn from Silvy's portraits which they can then e-mail to themselves, their friends or their school.

The Castle is one of the Gallery's three regional partnerships and houses over 100 portraits from the 19th-century collections including works by John Singer Sargent and the Pre-Raphaelites. Highlights include the majority of GF Watt's Hall of Fame series and important works by William Holman Hunt and Ford Madox Brown. Visitors to Bodelwyddan can also use Woodward Portrait Explorer, designed by Cogapp for The National Portrait Gallery, to access tens of thousands of portraits in the Gallery's collection.

The project has been funded through the Heritage Lottery Fund, and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport as part of the Gallery's grant-in-aid.

“The new interactive galleries at Bodelwyddan Castle will bring the National Portrait Gallery’s Collections to a new audience…the content of the interactive exhibitions is nicely done” Jane Morris, Museums Journal June 2003