The incorporation of cultural productions and virtual experiences in museum spaces adds to the objects' significance and also turns them into important contributions to adult education. Yet, how far do they trouble, decolonise, revisualise, tell alternative stories, interrogate intolerance and privilege or stimulate critical literacies? This article examines 3D virtual reality (VR) installations by the artist Tamiko Thiel as technologies of critical cultural public pedagogy that not only recreate politically charged locations but place them in transnational perspective. "Beyond Manzanar" conveys a feeling of imprisonment beyond Japanese American experiences; the "Virtuelle Mauer" provides an immersive experience of living 'in the shadow of the Wall' that applies to other contexts. Thiel's "The Travels of Mariko Horo" revolves around the question of potential agency of the Other and can be understood as a form of 'Oriental' cultural production that returns the exoticising gaze. In general, VR installations as Thiel has created them for museal contexts seem ideal in initiating learning processes that in turn need to be translated into social practice.