Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies are finding their way into museums and exhibitions, which hope to provide new experiences for visitors.

A common thought is that China has a strong advantage in VR because of the huge amount of data generated by its 840 million internet users. As of the end of last year, China had more than 5,000 museums, which drew in more than 1 billion visitors in that year alone. Proponents of the technology are hoping to push that number even higher.

Roger Yang, founder of Zixi Tech, believes VR and AR will create "another level of immersiveness" for visitors.

"People can put on the headsets and they can literally go to the paintings, go to the project we designed for them. So they can learn about new things in a 360 way," Yang said, adding that VR and AR equipment is cheaper and easier to update compared to projection mapping.

James LaLonde, the co-founder of Yodo1, is convinced that adopting cutting-edge technologies such as VR and AR will push museums forward.

He used the famous Mona Lisa painting as an example. "The experience is terrible – 20,000 people come through there. You get maybe 30 seconds of fun and then walking away … It's an amazing work of art, but you don't really get the time to spend with it when you're there."

"Experience in a VR way brings her alive," he said. 

LaLonde argued that new technologies will grant more people access to artworks. "Only 10 million people a year can go to the Louvre Museum. There's a lot more people on the earth that could probably be exposed to that same thing," he told CGTN.

The technology's involvement also benefits education. For example, the World Expo Museum in Shanghai is sending its VR headsets to students in rural areas, allowing them to visit the museum even without being there.

"Many children are not able to leave the mountain areas and come to our museum. We were thinking about how to solve the problem, so we put our museum shows onto VR glasses, which allows them to experience a tour," said Zhang Ke, information director of the World Expo Museum.