I’ve been involved in discussions about what punk is before and they’ve never ended nicely. You’ll always get arguments about authenticity, terms like “true punk” or “real punk” get thrown about and soon afterwards someone makes the statement that everyone else is wrong.
I will hammer anyone who tries to push this discussion into those terms. [...]
Monthly Archives: September 2009
Sep 29
Yo Punk
Sep 28
Southampton’d
I’ve been keeping an eye on this business of Southampton City Council selling off artwork from the collection in order to pay for a Titanic Museum/heritage centre. Mainly because I hate the idea of politician meddling in collection management policies. Also because Southampton City Council hasn’t exactly been stellar in its stewardship of the museums [...]
Sep 28
Staffordshire Anglo-Saxon Gold
(Via Illicit Cultural Property)
I am enjoying showing this video to archaeologists, because they always wince at 1:20 to 1:32.
Sep 25
Listen to the Gears: 11
‘What’s the real story, then?’ asked a man of his eight or nine year old grandson, who had said that the museum’s text about the portrait of a 16th century gentleman farmer ‘wasn’t right.’ The boy told him an epic tale of bullfighting instead. It was fascinating to listen to and underlined for me the [...]
Sep 18
Listen to the Gears: 10
There was a storyteller in residence recently at my local gallery, as part of an archaeological exhibition about the Stone Age. Performing at the height of the school holidays, he held swathes of children rapt with tales of hunting, fishing and trading. More than the life-sized wall painting of a mammoth or the guess-the-smell-of-the-stone-age boxes, [...]
Sep 17
Most Important Function of Curators Part III #MIFC
Got twelve more responses, so let’s finish this.
* Catherine Manning – To act as ’story keepers’ and to encourage people to interpret the world we live in from different perspectives.
* J@simpleposie – To risk being with the art, immediately and contemporaneously and to offer it in that spirit; to love showing art to people.
* Max [...]
Sep 17
I Had To Share: AR and Google Earth
Okay, let’s ignore the potentially horrifying uses this may conjure up immediately, and think about the cool uses first.
If nothing else, you could become a town planner and pretend you’re playing a real-time, augmented version of SimCity.
Sep 16
Most Important Function of Curators Part II #MIFC
This is what I’ve got so far. Thanks to everyone for chipping in such profound and varied responses.
Ideally, I would want a few more before doing the Wordle. So please keep retweeting and reblogging to see what comes out of this small collaboration.
* Curated Life – To present and promote culture through creative, correct and [...]
Sep 14
Most Important Function of Curators? #MIFC
Last time was an interesting exercise. Want to ask another question and compare the results.
Usual process. Respond to @newcurator on twitter, use the #MIFC hashtag (so I can keep track) or answer in the comments with a single sentence. Don’t worry if it doesn’t appear immediately. It has to go through a validation process.
I would [...]
Sep 11
The New Mutant Curator
I don’t strictly know what to make of this. I’ve long been saying that museums are a media and can learn a lot from the problems of other media industries. Especially when it comes to adapting to the future methods of consuming media. One warning is when the media is entirely consumed by the methods. [...]
Sep 10
Makes Sense to Me
Via Donn Zaretsky of the Art Law Blog, Derek Fincham of Illicit Cultural Property posts his three part proposal for deaccesioning guideline. (Also, you should all be following these two blogs).
“My proposal has three parts. First, the unnecessary restriction on deaccession proceeds should be eliminated. Second, when an important work of art is deaccessioned, other [...]
Sep 08
Guest Post: Maryann Devine
Why real-time arts marketing is now a must
Marketing through social media and social networking is nothing new. Integrating your blog, your museum’s Facebook page, and twitter stream into your marketing plan is the smartest way to do it. But I want to talk to you today about real-time marketing and the opportunities it presents.
What’s real-time [...]
Sep 07
You Wanna Talk About The Vanishing Wilderness?
The Burt Reynolds Museum is threatened with being bulldozed to make way for a commercial development.
In other news, there is a Burt Reynolds Museum.
It clearly needs to be saved. Look at what you can buy in the gift shop for $19.95!
Sep 07
Comic Dilemma
How do I get myself into these things?
Thinking out loud on twitter, I said how I was thinking aloud that newcurator should have a weekly comic strip. Some kind of simple sitcom interlude.
Well, too many people liked the idea.
So I had to take it more seriously. After a weekend of thinking, I’ve come to some [...]
Sep 04
Listen to the Gears: 9
Crowdsourcing or curating, or a bit of each? It’s the talk of New Curator and the talk of the airwaves. Since Pete’s posts Death of the Curator I and II, I have noticed aspects of this debate turning up more and more in podcasts. None in the realm of museums themselves admittedly, but in areas [...]
Sep 01
Death of the Curator II
Remember this? Crowdsourcing, the darling of business 2.0, being able to replace the work of a curator trying to create a coherent set of displays. Even more worrying if the crowdsourcing if based upon the low-brow model of reality TV.
Thinking of algorithms for recommendation systems, I instantly think about last.fm. Music recommended to me based [...]
