Every day I feel more and more behind the times, because I don't own and have never owned a smartphone of any kind. Nevertheless, I've been working on a proposal for a smartphone application for a major art gallery as my final project for a class I'm taking in Johns Hopkins' Museum Studies MA program. Even though it makes me feel even more out of touch, it's nice to see that other institutions have already implemented similar applications, like the National Gallery's Love Art iPhone app.
It's also interesting that museum applications are becoming pretty mainstream. It seems like these applications are both appealing and expected. From outside the museum blogosphere, GeekSugar featured the MoMA's iPhone app as their download of the day yesterday. And from the perspective of museums, CFM interviewed a 5-year-old "museum director" who says that "of course there will be" iPods and iPads in art museums of the future. Of course!
Monday, August 16, 2010
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Museums on the moon
Via io9: Was there a miniature art museum on the moon?
Supposedly, six artists including Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenberg contributed drawings to be miniaturized and put on a ceramic chip, which was supposed to have been left behind on the moon by the Apollo 12 moon mission.
When I read this, my thoughts were immediately:
1) Does a single, tiny chip constitute a "museum"?
2) Do doodles constitute "art," even if they're by celebrated artists?
My answer to both of those is "no," but cynicism aside, I love the idea of leaving behind some tiny representation of human culture (or at least human snarkiness) on the moon. And I'm curious to know about the other stuff "smuggled" up there, that they refer to in this longer article.
Supposedly, six artists including Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenberg contributed drawings to be miniaturized and put on a ceramic chip, which was supposed to have been left behind on the moon by the Apollo 12 moon mission.
When I read this, my thoughts were immediately:
1) Does a single, tiny chip constitute a "museum"?
2) Do doodles constitute "art," even if they're by celebrated artists?
My answer to both of those is "no," but cynicism aside, I love the idea of leaving behind some tiny representation of human culture (or at least human snarkiness) on the moon. And I'm curious to know about the other stuff "smuggled" up there, that they refer to in this longer article.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Treasure hunt
Over the weekend, I visited the Saint Louis Art Museum and saw their current exhibition by Yinka Shonibare MBE, Mother and Father Worked Hard So I Can Play. Enough has been written about him, including this June 2009 piece in the New York Times, that I'm not going to try to review his work here. I liked the art, but I was equally interested in the format of the exhibition itself.
If you were paying attention when you entered the museum, you would have seen signage about the show going on, but unless you stopped to read it, you might not have been able to find the exhibition at all - it's an installation of Shonibare's headless mannequins dressed in Victorian costumes, placed in SLAM's period rooms:
And if you missed the exhibition information when you came in and were touring through the decorative arts section of the museum, it might have taken you a while to figure out the deal with the headless kids playing in the period rooms. Only one of the rooms, that I noticed, had a sign outside it mentioning the Shonibare exhibition.
I like that. It's obviously intentional - the museum's website describes the installation as "akin to a treasure hunt," and the visitor is encouraged to look for, or puzzle over, the "mischievous, playful children" hidden in the period rooms. I think there probably were a lot of baffled responses like the one I overheard from one visitor: "Well, there's another one of them things!" I like that this exhibition bends the rules about how museums present information to their visitors. There's no attempt to obscure anything, but neither is it very upfront about what you're seeing or why it's there. As you start to figure it out and, maybe, discover one of the brochures explaining the exhibition, you begin to understand the larger themes Shonibare is playing on - but it initially engages you by not directly telling you anything. I think that process of discovery would work well in other exhibitions as well.
If you were paying attention when you entered the museum, you would have seen signage about the show going on, but unless you stopped to read it, you might not have been able to find the exhibition at all - it's an installation of Shonibare's headless mannequins dressed in Victorian costumes, placed in SLAM's period rooms:
And if you missed the exhibition information when you came in and were touring through the decorative arts section of the museum, it might have taken you a while to figure out the deal with the headless kids playing in the period rooms. Only one of the rooms, that I noticed, had a sign outside it mentioning the Shonibare exhibition.
I like that. It's obviously intentional - the museum's website describes the installation as "akin to a treasure hunt," and the visitor is encouraged to look for, or puzzle over, the "mischievous, playful children" hidden in the period rooms. I think there probably were a lot of baffled responses like the one I overheard from one visitor: "Well, there's another one of them things!" I like that this exhibition bends the rules about how museums present information to their visitors. There's no attempt to obscure anything, but neither is it very upfront about what you're seeing or why it's there. As you start to figure it out and, maybe, discover one of the brochures explaining the exhibition, you begin to understand the larger themes Shonibare is playing on - but it initially engages you by not directly telling you anything. I think that process of discovery would work well in other exhibitions as well.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Fast food still life
Via Serious Eats: Roel Roscam Abbing created these awesome still-life-style photographs of deconstructed fast food.
They especially remind me of Luis Meléndez's still lifes, with the emphasis on the ingredients rather than the finished dish. There was an exhibition of Meléndez's work at the National Gallery of Art this summer, which inspired my own photographic take on it:
Not quite as impressive as Roel Roscam Abbing's photos, and the tomato salad I ended up making wasn't as tasty as a burger, either. Oh well.
They especially remind me of Luis Meléndez's still lifes, with the emphasis on the ingredients rather than the finished dish. There was an exhibition of Meléndez's work at the National Gallery of Art this summer, which inspired my own photographic take on it:
Not quite as impressive as Roel Roscam Abbing's photos, and the tomato salad I ended up making wasn't as tasty as a burger, either. Oh well.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
User participation
Last week, the New York Times ran a story about museums, Web 2.0 and user participation in collections: Online, It’s the Mouse That Runs the Museum. It mentions a few museums that encourage visitor contributions of objects, information and/or opinions, including one I'm looking forward to seeing: "the Museum of Afghan Civilization, an entirely Web-based institution scheduled to make its debut later this year."
The article refutes the idea that inviting user participation is inviting chaos, and points out that rather than threatening curatorial authority, it enhances it - museums are still clearly providing the narrative and expertise for their collections, but they're doing it in a way that earns respect. Here's a good quote from Michael Edson, Smithsonian's new-media director: "I think the public genuinely does want the Smithsonian to assert its authority, but in this epoch authority and trust will be granted to institutions differently — through transparency, speed and a public orientation." Yes!
And Nina Simon is quoted a few times as well: "There’s a difference between having power and having expertise. Museums will always have the expertise, but they may have to be willing to share the power." Yes!
The article refutes the idea that inviting user participation is inviting chaos, and points out that rather than threatening curatorial authority, it enhances it - museums are still clearly providing the narrative and expertise for their collections, but they're doing it in a way that earns respect. Here's a good quote from Michael Edson, Smithsonian's new-media director: "I think the public genuinely does want the Smithsonian to assert its authority, but in this epoch authority and trust will be granted to institutions differently — through transparency, speed and a public orientation." Yes!
And Nina Simon is quoted a few times as well: "There’s a difference between having power and having expertise. Museums will always have the expertise, but they may have to be willing to share the power." Yes!
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Online catalogues and photography bans
Exciting news: LACMA to publish exhibition catalogues online (via Modern Art Notes). This is part of a Getty Foundation initiative to publish scholarly catalogues online. It seems like a great use of technology to make scholarship more available and up-to-date, both of which should be part of the educational missions of such museums.
Disappointing news: National Archives to ban photography (via the Washington Post). DCist offers a pretty reasonable opinion about it; apparently, the Archives recently changed their UV filters to make the documents appear in true color, but the new filters make them more vulnerable to flash photography. If the primary purpose really is preservation of the documents, that's understandable, and to be honest I wouldn't have expected photography to have been permitted before (I've never visited). Still, it is unfortunate that the Archives is forced to take a step away from making these things freely available to "reproduce."
Disappointing news: National Archives to ban photography (via the Washington Post). DCist offers a pretty reasonable opinion about it; apparently, the Archives recently changed their UV filters to make the documents appear in true color, but the new filters make them more vulnerable to flash photography. If the primary purpose really is preservation of the documents, that's understandable, and to be honest I wouldn't have expected photography to have been permitted before (I've never visited). Still, it is unfortunate that the Archives is forced to take a step away from making these things freely available to "reproduce."
Friday, January 22, 2010
Portrait of the Photographer's Mother
Slightly similar in theme to my post yesterday, here's another artist taking a recognizable image and rendering it in a different medium, as something new in form and meaning but visually still related:
I like how Aline Smithson brings her own mother, her own medium, and her own sense of humor to Whistler's idea. You can see the whole series on her website, but this one is my personal favorite.
I like how Aline Smithson brings her own mother, her own medium, and her own sense of humor to Whistler's idea. You can see the whole series on her website, but this one is my personal favorite.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
"Stolen" Jewels
Some museums and archives are hesitant about making images of their collections available online because they want to guard their reproduction rights. If it can be downloaded for free, why would anyone pay for the rights to use an image? Assuming that repositories really are entitled to control and earn income from the use of images they hold (a whole other debate entirely), one way that museums make collections available online while protecting them from theft is to offer only low-resolution images. That way, collections are freely available to be seen, but someone hoping to print an image in a book or on a greeting card would still need to go through the museum to get a reproduction of appropriate quality.
But what if the whole point is to grab low-res images?
"Stolen Jewels" by Mike and Maaike is "an exploration of tangible vs virtual in relation to real and perceived value." The designers used Google's image search to download low-res pictures of expensive jewelry, then doctored the images and printed them on leather. Though they emphasize the "stolen" part, these are, of course, new, original creations now.
Their point is to subvert value - the value of the actual jewels, which were rendered as digital images, which were then rendered again as new tangible pieces of jewelry. What's interesting is not just the perceived value of the original objects - it's not the jewelry that's "stolen," it's the images. That raises all kinds of provocative questions about the value of digital images and how effectively someone can really claim and enforce ownership over them, especially as it relates to museums. (One of the jewels Mike and Maaike "stole" is the Hope Diamond. I don't know whether the Smithsonian holds the rights to images of the Hope Diamond - if it does, could it reasonably claim that this almost unrecognizable blue blob is an infringement? And if not - if the Hope Diamond is in the public domain - what did Mike and Maaike really "steal"?)
But what if the whole point is to grab low-res images?
"Stolen Jewels" by Mike and Maaike is "an exploration of tangible vs virtual in relation to real and perceived value." The designers used Google's image search to download low-res pictures of expensive jewelry, then doctored the images and printed them on leather. Though they emphasize the "stolen" part, these are, of course, new, original creations now.
Their point is to subvert value - the value of the actual jewels, which were rendered as digital images, which were then rendered again as new tangible pieces of jewelry. What's interesting is not just the perceived value of the original objects - it's not the jewelry that's "stolen," it's the images. That raises all kinds of provocative questions about the value of digital images and how effectively someone can really claim and enforce ownership over them, especially as it relates to museums. (One of the jewels Mike and Maaike "stole" is the Hope Diamond. I don't know whether the Smithsonian holds the rights to images of the Hope Diamond - if it does, could it reasonably claim that this almost unrecognizable blue blob is an infringement? And if not - if the Hope Diamond is in the public domain - what did Mike and Maaike really "steal"?)
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