In “Take Your Time, Olafur Eliasson”, Madeline Grynsztejn said: “The context between the cultural and commercial spheres over thinking and doing is one of the defining tensions in contemporary Western society. And the museum is the knife-edge location where this context is being played out, for there the conditions that determine or influence our sense of self are scrutinized in a conscious and concentrated way.”
Major art museums have been grappling with this question of providing a place for the public to look at themselves and their world through a non-commercial lens. As Ms. Grynsztejn puts it: “…we have arrived at a point when art, the museum, and cutting-edge commerce increasingly share visual modes of organizing meaning and express related ambitions to provide the individual with what have been described as “models of experience, opportunities for self-recognition, and the ingredients of identity”.”
One approach to maintain this identity space for the public (in large institutions) is to offer big, bold, and sometimes luscious immersive experiences- such as Eliasson’s. I’d like to talk about another. It’s a local, low fi, and nimble approach we’ll call the “Community Museum” model. Yes, along with farmer’s markets and food carts, museums have a place in the back-to-local world.
These are small institutions or ad-hoc spaces where the primary ingredients for visitor experience are: location, participation, elevation, and sharing. What they have in common is that they are more about providing a place for their public to shine and share, and less about suggesting what they ought to know.
In the Denver Community Museum, Jaime Kopke created a place for her neighborhood to respond to her “challenges” and participate in culture and identity- all in a neighborhood setting. At the San Francisco Mobile Museum, we are experimenting with taking the “making” and the museum to the neighborhood (and our first exhibit is a collaboration with the DCM).
When I began the Mobile Museum I wondered if it would result in a nuance on the “wisdom of the crowds”. Yet through the process of making and sharing our participants are having deeper experiences and deeper thinking about their world than they would have without it. They are also inspiring their peers (our visitors) to participate. These informal environments also fit their level of making experience. All together, it seems to fill a need for creating moments of intellectual pause and reflection for the public, as well as a platform for cultural expression by the curators.
In this small scale context, I see a world where the curator is also part journalist, part community ringleader. The visitor is at times audience, artist, and critic. The coming together of these two groups makes the museum.
Recently, I read an article about arts engagement, and a quote the author plucked from a poem by Aleda Shirley struck me as appropriate in describing the precarious position the museum assumes when exhibiting work that could or does stir up controversy. Shirley, in The Rivers Where They Touch, writes “Falling backwards from his boat, the diver would see, beneath the surface busy with leaves and eels, how the rivers don’t seem separate after all and perhaps tell us what night so often tells the pilot, the cartographer, the pair of lovers sighing from a bridge: that an edge is never a simple or a sudden thing”(1). Without too prosaically dissecting the museum with this quote, it is useful to ponder the edges that arise neither suddenly or simply in museums, most tangibly in the intersection of values, rhetoric, and experience that is the art exhibition. At a macro-level, with the whole picture spread before us, when a museum exhibits art that could be deemed controversial or incite conservative ire, it is seemingly justified by how it communicates the goals of the institution as a space for talking about the “tough stuff.” However, from a staff’s perspective, often what we see is the here and now, a scary drop into the dark abyss ahead as we attempt to appease the public, to push the boundaries of art and conversation, as well as sate the aesthetic tastes of our funders. Navigating sharp edges that appear to push and pull in a myriad different directions. How do we delve below the surface, as the diver in Shirley’ poem, and see where these many currents fuse as one? In response, I want to explore Marking Portland: The Art of Tattoo, a popular culture exhibit at the Portland Art Museum.
As part of the Marking Portland exhibit, visitors could stand behind this monitor and get pictures taken with superimposed tattoos on their bodies. This is another example of the museum bringing in the public as part to the exhibit and not simply as spectators.
I had the fortune of interning there this past summer and witnessed first-hand the public outpouring of support for Marking Portland, which was actually kept up for longer than planned because it was so popular. The show took place in what I call the thoroughfare gallery; the museum is two buildings and this gallery space connects the two in a long, wide corridor. Here, a projector screen was placed on one wall and images of tattoos were projected in a rotating fashion for the public to view. The photos were all publicly-sourced; the museum set up a Flickr account strictly for the purpose of collecting images of body art from Portland residents or whoever had a mind to post their photos. Every day, a crowd gathered in front of the screen and on the benches in the gallery for long periods of time, as if watching a movie. The statistic that states that visitors only stand in front of an art work for an average of 3 seconds, or an equally dismal figure, did not apply here. The shared authority evidenced in this exhibit allowed the public a conduit for contribution, and ensured that meaningful dialogue around Marking Portland was not simply the responsibility of the museum, but was shared by the public. Of course, not everyone who saw the show thought it was something the museum should be exhibiting. But on a larger scale, the museum must be commended for smartly attempting to connect the popular culture aspects of the tattooing with examples of tattoos in its ancient Asian art collection. For some, this helped elevate the topic from mere spectacle as it linked it to the wider art historical narrative.
Fiona Cameron writes, “In attempts to marginalise conflict, many institutions deny the inherent politicalness of topics and audiences and instead promote the public reinforcement of a particular set of values” (2). Here, Cameron like Aleda Shirley, is addressing edges, not simply from a safe aerial view, but below the surface where institutional narrative and community values are not so divergent. They can successfully be united around a controversial exhibit as the Portland Art Museum demonstrated through the shared authority that made Marking Portland a success and not simply another attempt by a museum to institutionalize popular culture or become a gimmick for attracting a younger, hipper audience.
(1) Katz, Jonathan. Understanding the past; Envisioning the future. WESTAF Symposium Proceedings: Re-envisioning state arts agencies, 71-78.
(2) Cameron, F. (2006). Beyond surface representations: Museums, edgy topics, civic responsibilities and modes of engagement. Open Museum Journal, August 2006. Retrieved November 1, 2009, from http://archive.amol.org.au/omj/volume8_index.asp
Megan Blankenship is a graduate student in the arts and administration program at the University of Oregon, blogs at MJ Writes, and is currently immersed in researching the role of the art museum in facilitating dialogue concerning controversial exhibitions. Questions, comments, and wine recommendations can be directed to mjwritesblog(at)gmail.com.
Museums have been around in the real world for a while and a rich set of understandings and expectations have grown up around them. But the web is still something like a western boom town. We’ve tossed up some buildings overnight but we have yet to live in them for very long. Some are just facades.
Facade by Jeff Doyle. Used under Creative Commons License
So far museums have done a better job of putting their content online than they have of reproducing the social architecture and topology of “the old country.” With only a few notable exceptions, most museums web sites are not “places” in a way that even remotely compares to their brick and mortar counterparts.
My sense is that most museum web sites do a pretty good job on the content side compared to how well they do on the social side. Museums don’t necessarily understand the social function of objects and spaces in their own museums and thus aren’t able to reproduce those functions online.
Museum by Jeff Doyle. Used under Creative Commons Licence.
What is the role of this painting (Picasso’s Artist and his Model) and this museum (Pinakothek der Moderne) in these young people’s lives? I couldn’t even find this painting on the Pinakothek website, but supposing I could: do you suppose they would provide anything remotely resembling the same “value proposition” to website visitors the the physical museum is providing here? Has anyone gotten married to somebody they met at your museum website?
Museums are places to make passes at people who wear glasses. They are places to show off your new wardrobe, practice your French pronunciation, people-watch, eavesdrop, and show off the fun facts you learned about Matisse or the boiling point of helium, or just stroll with a friend…
It’s hard to do any of those things at most museum websites, though if you think about it, you can do some of them on Flickr. Flickr has done a pretty good job at turning digital images into social objects.
Sociologists speak of “boundary objects” serving as interfaces between different communities of practice. There is a sense in which all museum objects serve as boundary objects. But the interactions occasioned by those objects are phatic as well as interpretive. Objects serve as pretexts for both small and big talk. They are the MacGuffins of our personal and public dramas; they create social possibilities that would not exist otherwise.
MacGuffin by Jeff Doyle. Used under Creative Commons Licence.
In object-centered social interactions, objects play the role of the ball in soccer, the cards in whist, the book of “Launcelot” in the story of Paolo and Francesca, by Ingres (above left).
Obviously, people won’t do exactly the same things in online museums that they do in real museums. But they will certainly want an equally rich experience. And for that experience to have anything to do with a museum’s mission, it is going to have to include social objects. Otherwise we might as well go to bar or chat with our friends on Facebook.
Objects are props. They share a social space with humans. The social space they share is the museum.
Jeff Doyle is the Technical Director at Zirgoflex, who are developing the software that powers Open Museum Online. You can also read his blog and follow him on Twitter.
Describing herself as both artist and procrasinator, Haley Nagy made an immediate impact on me with The Nagy Family Cookbook, a beautifully evocative artist’s book.
Working in mixed media, with a real feel for using encaustic, Haley creates captivating work often addressing contemporary issues such as homelessness and cultural rituals like birthdays. The crux of her work is to explore the ‘hidden’.
It was difficult to choose only three pieces of Haley’s work, but I have selected the following pieces to show her range. The first is a detail from the artist’s book which first captivated me. The second is from her Seen but not Heard series about the homeless. The third (look closely) shows the subtlety of her latest work.
“The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.” Marcel Duchamp
Say what you will about his art, Duchamp was right in his idea of turning spectators into contributors. While this is an important concept in art appreciation, it’s perhaps even more important as a survival philosophy for museums and historical societies.
From the beginning, museum spectators (visitors) have taken a passive stance in their relationship to their museum. This, it goes without saying, needs to change. The continued growth of social media tools can not only be beneficial in enabling museums to start intentional conversations with their visitors but also can be used to turn those visitors into participating contributors. It’s allowing visitors to do everything from helping to shape the direction an exhibit will take to supplying some of the content to be displayed.
The advantages to developing this relationship with the visitor are numerous. At the top of the list though may be the way that this entrenches a visitor within your (or perhaps more accurately their) museum. Additionally, a visitor with items on display is perhaps the strongest advocate a museum could have. With a personal connection to something to talk/Tweet/Blog about the contributing visitor is now not only part of the curatorial team but also part of the marketing unit as well.
Let’s look at a few examples of this concept. As you consider these remember that there are opportunities to integrate visitors through technology no matter the size of your organization.
One of the best examples can be found at the Ontario Science Centre. In a space that focuses on Toronto, they have an exhibit that explores the city by using a web-enabled kiosk loaded with a map from Yahoo! Maps. The exhibit encourages people to take pictures of themselves around the city, tag the photos, and then upload them to the museum’s Flckr account. These photos are then pulled directly into the exhibit map so that when the visitor tries to learn more about say the local coffee shop, the image that comes up is the one of that visitor at the coffee shop which they took and uploaded before leaving for the museum
In a completely different environment, The US Army created a mobile exhibit trailer for its recruiting efforts. When you enter the trailer, there is a touch screen panel whose initial graphic is a map of the United States. You can use that map to find your region and there watch videos which were created and uploaded to the site by other potential recruits.
At a different level, The Summit County (Ohio) Historical Society (in conjunction with other local organizations) has established the Summit Memory Project. It’s a place that allows people to share everything from postcards to first person accounts of the area’s history. People submit their photos and stories and then members of the Historical Society scan and format the material to maintain a consistency.
These are just three examples of many. While museums continue to work on social media as a method of communicating, there should also be equal time spent on exploring how those tools can be combined with existing exhibits or used separately as a standalone exhibition tool. If the goal is to move visitors from Duchamp’s passive “spectators” to participating contributors, what better way is there to do that then by re-purposing the tools they are already using?
Noell Wolfgram Evans is the Senior Writer/Producer at Mills James. You can follow him on Twitter at Noell_MJ. He can also be reached at nwolfgramevans[at]mjp.com
For one week only, Museopunk Thursday will move to a Monday. There’s still lots going on over on Museopunk.ning.com and we are now up to 63 members which is brilliant. This week:
There is a review of the Steampunk exhibition in Oxford. Have you been to it yet? Tell the rest of us what you thought.
There is an interesting discussion started by Erika Dicker about being the official blogger for your museum. It would be great to hear from more of you on that.
“I want to be in New York City,” said my friend Paul Slocum, who ran a predominant new media gallery in Texas called And/Or. I’m definitely thinking about what he just said. No one is born in a small market that doesn’t dream about being able to move to New York or Los Angeles and thrive. It’s romantic; the whole art world is full of that romance stuff, and so few of us do anything but dream about what could be.
I look out the window and see the storefronts around the gallery space, thriving a few years ago, now mostly empty, with little hope now that the art events will feed them with people. I don’t think Paul knows what he gave to everyone around him, but with the economy, and the limited amount of people in his field working around him, he felt it was time to move on.
If it wasn’t for And/Or gallery, I’d never have seen a physical Corey Archangel piece, I wouldn’t know who Micheal Bell Smith is, I would have never encountered JODI in a gallery setting, and I wouldn’t have thought YTMND’s could actually be transformed into a quirky show. If it wasn’t for his small gallery endeavor, I don’t think the digital art scene in Texas would even be what little it is. Paul worked like a shaman, spinning the air of technology around himself and drawing us all into his web of laptop death matches and 8-bit chicanery. He is always calm, calculating, and smart, and the few months his gallery has been closed have felt like a black hole ripped open in the fabric of our little regional continuum. I feel like those of us who are staying behind are holding our breath and wondering if the promise of budding art communities in smaller cities – once a hot spot of attention – will continue to have any relevance now that the patrons of the big art markets are feeling the money pinch.
The rest of the country is feeling it too; weekly you hear about another gallery shutting its doors locally or in one of the larger markets. The people who tell you “hey did you hear XYZ is closing” look at you with watery, fear-soaked eyes, like they want a solution and just don’t know what to do. The answer isn’t that simple. As long as the United States art community refuses to do anything but hold onto the traditional gallery setup, which lofts anything displayed in a few overpriced and barely livable cities, things are going to take a very long time to recover. The investors who fuel the art market just aren’t going to invest when times get tough. Galleries and artists seem to respond to this by just bearing down and hoping that if they can forge the long winter, things will be fruitful again when the ice thaws.
I can’t help but look at And/Or’s doors closing, its contribution to the small scene it was in, and wonder if more people would be willing to just put together shows right now, in any space – virtual or physical – if this would help push more artists through this difficult time. Paul’s space was never doggedly traditional, and he paid for it with a day job and by living in a closed-in area in the back, but what he did that was amazing was expose otherwise isolated people to new things. He brought in artists from around the country and world, and I don’t think this is something local collectives, online collectives, or progressive people should be unable to do. After all how many artists have Flickr accounts, YouTube channels, twitter, etc? How many artists are just an e-mail away? If the art world wants to thrive instead of just falter, it needs to start thinking about working together in less ordinary, and more extraordinary ways.
Vanessa VanAlstyne is a digital artist in her third year of an MFA. You can see more of her work on her website, her blog and follow her on twitter.
In the last Listen to the Gears, I talked a lot about research, dissemination and perceived value for money. Really, it seems it is all about Impact. Unusually for this column, I am going to discuss only one podcast. There was a very interesting panel discussion, recorded at the recent Cambridge Festival of Ideas and put out on the Guardian Culture podcast. In ‘Austerity for the Arts?’ four British arts professionals considered the state of arts and culture in the UK in the light of the recession.
Sue Hoyle discussed the economics of mixed funding and the decline of arts funding at a local level. Calling for strong leadership in the arts, she championed those who would innovate and not just keep chugging along the same way people had done it for years because ‘that’s the way we have always done it.’ Huge changes in funding need to happen, but someone has to be strong enough to take those risks.
Peter Florence from the Hay Festival made a very good point: the arts did not end in the 30s/40s/50s. Austerity in itself is not bad for the arts. He’s right. Creative people are not going to stop making/writing/creating just because there is little funding for it. Florence again stressed the importance of finding new and creative ways of funding and claims that people in Britain are good at this due to a very rich cultural education. In fact referring to the SAS in the first instance and bemoaning the Olympic bid he uses the marvellous line:
‘We are not world class in anything other than killing people and culture’
So, that’s our impact then? That is what we are known for? Help me out here, rest of the world! Really?
Sheryl West from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (one of the main funding bodies in the UK) addressed the impact of the cultural sector in her talk. What can the public be seen being done? What is the impact of their research? She argues that academics and arts professionals need to demonstrate the value of funding to the taxpayer more. So, how can we all do that? Make it more accessible? Would websites work? TV programmes? Exhibitions? Blogging?
Oh. Hang on a minute. Remember how they don’t like that? What to do? It seems there are polarised debates on Impact – some say it is good: tell everybody about what you did and how it can help them! Some say it is bad: keep your head down and only publish it in esoteric journals. West argues that there are real problems with academics being too embarrassed or modest about their research, so nobody gets to hear about it. She also hits upon the same problem with dissemination that I discussed last time: namely that academics are not rewarded for impact but for things like journal based research which mainly stay within the academy. Her ending statement is this: ‘In a period of austerity we need to OWN the idea of impact and get behind it.’ So, in museums, galleries and other cultural institutions, how does that affect us?
What do you feel about impact? How do you measure it? Is it to do with money? Value-for-money? Visitor numbers? Is it how much outreach you can do in the local community? Or for your institution is it about how many journals your staff can get published in and how much funding you can get from that? Or do you even think that you can measure impact?
As you know, Pete is away this coming week. If there is anybody who would like to write a guest post, you can reach me at August(at)newcurator.com. Tell me your ideas for the future of museums. I’d like to hear them.
There were plenty of fascinating and diverse topics to listen to this week, but I am drawing these together in order to think about two tier systems.
New policy and technology podcast, Surprisingly Free Conversation had an interview with Tim Lee. He advocated for bottom-up processes where nobody is in charge (eg wikipedia or linux) rather than top-down processes like government (or microsoft) where you can easily lay the blame on one entity, which we seem hard-wired to do. In discussion, they considered the inefficiencies of top-down organisations, but realised that it would be hard to run some of them bottom-up.
It is an interesting concept to think about in terms of cultural institutions. Are most museums bottom-up or top-down systems? I think that there are probably both out there and also many shades of grey inbetween. I would suggest most are top-down systems: we’re always having to get permission to do something, aren’t we? Collections management systems are one place that bottom-up processes take place in a lot of museums. Records can be added to and altered as time passes. How could bottom-up systems be spread to other areas of museum and gallery running?
Also somewhat tied into a two-tier model is the dissemination of research. JISC talk about the recent report ‘Communicating knowledge: how and why UK researchers publish and disseminate their findings‘ published by the Research Information Network. What emerged is the same old argument about the traditional versus the new. Once more it all appears governed by money and what they described as the ‘value-for-money aspect’ of research funding. The report found the continued dominance of journal articles as a ‘highly legitimate form of scholarly communication’. This basically means that it is the method of dissemination which will attract you the most funding. Tell us something new?
They went on to discuss the ‘more rapid dissemination’ of conferences, briefings and working papers (still pretty traditional, there) and only latterly digital technology. For people who were debating something on a podcast, they didn’t seem to think that digital technology was all that great as a tool for publications or publicity. That given, they did admit change needs to happen, but that in research and academia these things take (aeons of) time to catch on. Apparently the theoretical physicists are blazing the trail with their wikis, blogs and podcasts.
I think museum people are pretty good at doing this too. How do you all disseminate your research? If it is via the more traditional methods, do you additionally get it out there via digital technology? If not, is it because it won’t attract the funding, as suggested? I’d be interested to know how this has affected your research.
Lastly, something on a lighter note. You might well wonder why I am asking you to watch Threadbanger‘s video tutorial on how to make a Michael Jackson costume for Halloween (apart from that you might be looking for costume ideas for this year). Real reason is: I would love to see this kind of tutorial for costumed interpreters or museum re-enactors to use. It challenges the notion that you have to spend exorbitant amounts of money to gain good costumes. There are so many people with making skills and with a little appropriate research, what a resource it could be for museums and freelancers on a budget.
Earlier this week I had a conversation with an American colleague about (amongst other things) the British way of holding your cutlery and the comedy value of the thing in my garden that I call a water butt. After we had stopped laughing we got into a discussion about the extent that your own cultural background and the way in which things are presented to you affects personal interpretation. I kept this in mind while I was listening to and watching the gears.
The designer Stefan Sagmeister gave an insightful TED talk about the power of taking time off. He closes his design studio for a whole year every seven years, explaining that he is ‘…shifting five of his retirement years to his working life for greater creativity’. I really like that concept, and maybe one day I’ll be able to afford to do it too. Sagmeister spent his first sabbatical in New York, trying to look at his adopted hometown differently; his second in Bali where he made t-shirts and furniture inspired by the ubiquitous stray dogs. In an entertaining presentation he tells of how subsequently he ‘felt closer to design’ but also went on to make art inspired by his time out. Particularly striking are the products of the logo generator and his numismatic art which was ultimately taken into custody by the police.
Fostering creativity was also the topic of KCRW’s DnA podcast. Their case study was Central LA High School Number Nine (better known as the School of Performing Arts). This controversial building was discussed by its students, teachers and the architect Wolf Prix. He had wanted to create a ‘reference point in the city,’ that would inspire creativity not only in its pupils, but in the general public too. Can a building inspire creativity? Or is it about the people who are involved with its running and use? The building could be seen as a container for the creativity which goes on within and around it. Does it actually contribute though?
If you take as a basis the way a frame acts around a painting then yes, the building can and probably does contribute something. NG director Nicholas Penny talked about the way frames interact with images in the National Gallery podcast. ‘Frames isolate the picture [and] therefore they affect the way we view art.’ Using a case study, he discusses how frame colour and decoration affect our perception of paintings.
In addition to talking about the practical aspects of using frames, Penny advocates telling the gallery public whether they are looking at an original frame or not. But how important is this really? It is not something that I have ever really considered. However, our perception of a Mondrian or a Gainsborough will be altered by the way in which we view it as a whole. By this I mean that the frame is as much a part of this experience as the information on the label, the colour of the gallery wall or even just having somewhere to sit and look at it. If there was simply the canvas itself, our personal interpretation may be different (like viewing a painting online in white space, you might say). So in thinking about the artist’s original intention: this might be entirely altered by our viewing it in a non-original frame. We could be taking a wholly different experience away with us. Does that matter? Or do we do that anyway, simply by all coming from different backgrounds?
There is a lot of interesting discussion about copyright on the airwaves at the moment.
Charles Arthur from Guardian Tech Weekly interviewed Joi Ito, CEO of Creative Commons who talked about the different levels of licencing available and how they might be used in different situations. Of course, Creative Commons is of most use in countries which are concerned with enforcing copyright, so it is not necessarily of interest worldwide. Those who do use it to effect include Ridley Scott, the White House, Al Jazeera and the Powerhouse Museum (amongst many other museums), whose case study makes interesting reading if your museum or gallery is thinking of contributing to The Commons on Flickr.
View of Woman Holding a Fancily Decorated Bicycle from the Powerhouse Museum Collection, used under Creative Commons licence.
Ito discussed some of the cases which had come to court recently involving Creative Commons licences: it was ruled in the US that breaching a Creative Commons licence was a breach of copyright. Will this now make Creative Commons seem more safe as the law has been tested?
As an investor in Twitter, Ito also addressed the growing push to monetise the service as part of a general discussion of business models and friends networks. That is a whole other discussion which there isn’t room for here, but is worth listening to for the latest developments.
If you’re in the UK, keep listening. The second segment of Guardian Tech Weekly discusses putting together a new BBC programme about the impact of the last 40 years of technological change on the British family. In researching for Electric Dreams, Gia Milinovich visited the Centre for Computing History’s Computer Museum in order to find the most appropriate technology for the family to use in each year of their realistic-as-possible journey. Some interesting observations were seen during the programme’s making including the apparent confirmation of a 1980s gender divide in computer use. I wonder, is this kind of social phenomenon reflected in computer or science museums?
Mark West’s The Mr Science Show branched out this week into enhanced podcasting in order to give a slide show of photographs. West had been affected by the red dust storms in Sydney and illustrated his meteorological explanation using some amazing Creative Commons photographs from Flickr.
Sydney Dust Storm by Ianz, used under Creative Commons licence.
Lastly, I think it’s pertinent that you all see this Monocle Culture video about Alfred Sirleaf, a newspaper editor in Monrovia. Each day he writes up the Daily Talk using local vernacular on a large blackboard outside his office, in order that the people can have access to the news where otherwise they could not afford to.
You can contact me at August(at)newcurator(dot)com
‘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 power of images on the imagination.
Photographer Taryn Simon’s recent TED presentation was about her work taking images of ‘secret sites and worlds we wouldn’t normally get to see’. She discussed two projects: photographs of other-wordly, behind-the-scenes locations, and wrongfully convicted people at crime scenes. Simon is interested in the multiple truths attached to images and opined here that the viewer’s perception hinges on the intent of the creator. She brings forth some compelling ideas about the use of photographs in criminal convictions for instance. In explaining the intent behind her own photographs, she outlines her own intent in presenting them, but what if she didn’t? What would we think? As she suggested, I would bet that it might not be exactly what she had just explained to us. There are always other stories surrounding the work: the idea of the other, the alternative.
The reading of art changes over time and with new evidence or thinking comes reinterpretation. Traditionally we learn from art historians about the meanings behind works. ArtBabble’s newest partners, SmartHistory made use of new technology to present a different kind of discussion about classical art. Describing themselves as a ‘dynamic substitute’ for traditional art history learning, they used Second Life ‘correspondents’ (real-life art historians) to interpret using a recreation of Michelangelo’s ceiling to the Sistine Chapel. In conversation they explained its significance, making, which techniques were used and focus on particular scenes, all of which you might expect from a traditional lecture. What made the difference is that it being Second Life, it can be viewed in the round and they can also fly about to see things close up. I would love to see this used to greater effect giving alternative explanations and with opposing historians and interpreters having debates in-situ in Second Life.
Or what about some children giving their opinions? In the Our City podcasts, schoolchildren made recordings about their hometowns in a worldwide learning experiment. I do wonder how much input the children have into what they think is important in their city and how much the adults guide them. The episodes I have listened to describe their cities in rather pedestrian terms. Whilst I realise that there has to be guidance, they could use the children’s own language and creativity to a greater extent.
This leads me to an idea. Make a podcast wherein children could to tell others about both the real and imagined stories of the paintings. What would it be like to step inside a Gainsborough or a Mondrian. Would it be hot or cold, would there be other people or creatures in there? What might have happened just before that captured moment? This could lead to a large-scale outreach project set up between museums and galleries worldwide to supplement traditional art history and promote wider engagement between children and paintings.
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, he really brought the period to life for the visitors. They could ask him questions and recieve an accurate answer (I believe that he was an archaeologist who was also an amateur actor); they could see how a Stone Age person would dress and how he would use weapons. But none of this would have really come together had it not been for his verbal delivery. That made it come alive.
I have already addressed what makes a ‘good’ podcast (for me). I came up with a number of suggestions for ease of use and interest. One thing that I didn’t mention was the perhaps the most important: the style of presentation. When listening to podcasts and watching videos, I’m sure you notice as I do that no matter how interested you are in the subject, sometimes the presenter just bores the pants off you. That’s when I find my mind wandering from the latest developments in exhibition design to what I’m going to have for dinner, or what might be on at the cinema. This is clearly not what the makers of these media intended.
One of the most charismatic podcasts for storytelling that I have found (well, apart from The Moth, of course) is The Memory Palace. The latest episode reported on German prisoners of war escaping an Arizona prison camp in the 1940s. While this might not sound all that enthralling to you on the face of it, the presenter Nate DiMeo has that same great delivery as the Stone Age man. This coupled with an evocative backing track that lent itself to the spirit of the story really kept my attention.
I think it is well worth museums utilising people who can deliver the stories into museums and galleries to bring their exhibitions alive: even if only for special events. Get your podcast-makers to lay more emphasis on the delivery of the content too. The podcast and its presentation is one more layer of the interpretation, and one which needs equal standing with the gallery exhibits. In fact, it could even be just one part of the whole of the exhibit or collection, where you have to listen to the podcast to gain specific information in a museum version of transmedia storytelling.
I like to think of it like this. The most important person in the museum for the visitor is the assistant at the front desk who can tell them about that day’s tours and events, why the museum has loads of Simian ware but little flint and where is good nearby for lunch. The most important person to the podcast listener or video viewer is the presenter. They are the public face; the first impression for the whole outfit. It’s all in the delivery, people.
You can contact me at August(at)newcurator(dot)com.
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 like business and architecture: you’ve got to think laterally here. During the past week, I’ve picked up on these three.
Harvard Business Ideacast discussed the pros and cons of giving the consumer what they have asked for. Does it really work? In talking about business strategies in the recession they championed ‘Innovation that transforms the meaning of things.’ (Isn’t that kind of what curators do in interpretation?) Business professor Roberto Verganti argued that the Wii would never have been invented if Nintendo had listened to the gamers. Players wanted more powerful passive consoles with more functions. Seems they didn’t know they wanted something to get them up and actively moving and interacting until it was presented to them. His argument was basically, if you ask people you get more of the same and nothing new. While I realise that not all curators will go for radical reinterpretations of their collections either, this does appear a good case in point against relying too heavily on market research or crowdsourcing. It will just be the same old, same old.
On the other hand…
Carol Coletta’s Smart City radio show took the theme of city planning in response to emotions this week. Talking to Vancouver planner Larry Beasley, Coletta asked why experiential planning was better than the more traditional efficiency-of-services based way. Beasley argued that designing at the level of the human being, appealing to our emotions, would make us want to live in cities again and ‘feel true affection for them’. It is not made explicit but it seems that they have done extensive market research to come up with these conclusions, which are then actioned by ‘the city’. Obviously there is an element of selection going on, or Vancouver could have have ended up with giant candy floss trees and bright yellow municipal buildings. Essentially though, the idea is that the city can then choreograph an innovative vision for their community in accordance with all the things that its people need for feelings of wellbeing.
In the middle of talking about magazines branching out onto the web, NPR Pop Culture put forward that the magazine is the only medium with a distinct point of view, that of the editor, and this distinguishes it from all others. This comment made me stop and think. Of course, I have to disagree. Museums do this too. Exhibitions, galleries and whole museums are put together from the point of view of their editor: the curator(s). So, if we took crowdsourcing to its logical conclusion, museums would not have the distinct point of view of their editor anymore, the curator. Does that matter?
Last weekend I had my first real-life demonstration of Layar. It was pretty impressive and it occured to me that you just can’t appreciate how it works as you move the phone, when viewing a demo of it on a computer monitor. Listening to KCRW’s Design and Archtecture podcast, I hit on the begininnings of an idea. They reviewed the film (500) Days of Summer which has an architecture driven plot. The film’s co-writer, Scott Neustadter talked about filming in Los Angeles, using only pre-1940 buildings as a backdrop. The premise for this was that the main character ‘…sees beauty and meaning only in the past.’
41c Angelus Temple by Kansas_Sebastian. Used under Creative Commons.
So, say he has a phone with Layar on it. It might work best for him by showing him information not about what is there currently, but was was there in the past. A museum of information through time and space. If you think about it, this is what Google Street View will become. Their 2008/2009 images of the world are a snapshot; an archive of a moment.How often will they update them? What will they do with the old ones? I hope they keep the images available and build onto them.
Could museums and archives use old photographs, plans and title deeds of places to construct this kind of historical augmented reality treasure trove? It would be a massive undertaking admittedly, but I would love to see it.
Incidentally, on the same podcast there is an interesting interview with architect Richard Best. In a gamble to be proactive in the recession he went on a reality TV show with a real estate theme. And won. It paid off for him, but the thought of reality tv makes me shudder.
Sony’s Reader Daily Edition was critiqued by APM’s Future Tense. They postulated that it might overtake the market leader, Amazon’s Kindle. It will be able to facilitate wireless downloading of books, has a touch screen and will be able to read pdf files and google books. The most interesting thing for me is that Sony are linking with a scheme for borrowing library books in e-form. The loan will then expire in three weeks, like a normal library return. This seems like a great idea. Especially as buying e-books has not always meant that you got to keep them. This type of loaning service seems indicative of a point made in JISC’s recent documentary Libraries of the Future. That ‘…technology is adapting to meet the needs of users’.
Lastly, a great video from New Scientist showing how new laboratory techniques can be used to make you feel as if you are your virtual avatar by inducing an ‘out of body experience’. I don’t know how this might be used in museums and galleries, but I do like it. Enter, stranger.
Since listening to theMuseum of Science, Bostonpodcast about vaccines a couple of weeks ago, I have been mulling over ideas. They discussed developments in cancer innoculations, but I have been considering the concept that museum visits could be prescribed as defence against aspects of the human condition.
‘Visits as vaccines!
Don’t end up complacant, bigoted or bored: attend your local gallery now!’
A vaccine introduces a little of the disease into your system to produce antibodies against it. How could this work in a museum situation? Could visiting the slavery exhibits and education sessions at the Royal Naval Museum help to vaccinate against bullying? Too harsh? What about a prescription to view some Gilbert and George to dissuade homophobia? Could it be a way for museum education to branch out in the future?
Of course, these visits could also be prescribed as alleviators of existing symtoms. Tate Britain did this with leaflets a couple of years ago. They were pretty good, as I remember but I think it could go further than ‘maybe go and see this if you like cheerful yellow’.
I watched a wine podcast this week. I came away from it all gung-ho for trying out some red wine, and frankly I don’t even like it all that much. The point is that the presenter was really enthusiastic about his subject. I’d love museums to be that ebullient about their objects sometimes too. With some thought, this could work alongside the visits as vaccines idea.
This wine review had certain elements:
A bit about the region, how the wine is made, how much was produced, which were the best vintages, what the soil is like in the vineyard, a little about the owner, the maker, occasions you might drink it, and obviously its bouquet and palate. This would be a great way to talk about an object (well, except for the tasting). In fact it is exactly the way we are taught to look at an object. Hang on…
As I said, I don’t know much about wine and I particularly value the ‘what to eat with it’ part of a review. Its something I don’t yet have the intrinsic judgement for. This could be used to aid cautious museum visitors. How about a ‘what to view next if you liked this, or it made you feel better?’ kind of application for museums? Leaving behind the leaflets of the Tate, augmented reality could really bring this idea into play. How about a trail that could vaccinate against first-date nerves or feeling down? All through viewing objects and learning about them. Imagine a virtual curator asking you what kind of mood you are in and suggesting that you go and view this sculpture because it sounds just right for you. And enthusiastically telling you a bit about why once you got there. In simple terms it would be like one of those flow charts where the answer to a question might lead you in a number of directions. Through the museum? Outside to see some public art? To another museum entirely?
Enthusiasm for a subject can get people to try something new. It might even change their whole outlook and improve their life. Don’t you think museums should try these ideas out?
What were you doing when the Berlin Wall fell? Is it something you remember or just something that you’ve read about in history books? German cultural magazine, Arts.21, is running a series reflecting on the country twenty years after reunification. In their latest videocast they investigated how visitors and residents of Berlin remember the Wall. Surprisingly, on asking the public, people of all ages could not really remember where it had once stood. Although much of has been removed, this really surprised me. It really isn’t that long ago. Do our individual memories really overwrite such a monumental physical change in the cityscape so quickly? I tried to think of some more instances to mention and even investigate, but could not come up with anything on the same scale. Forgetting where the old town hall once stood is one thing; the Berlin Wall seems quite another. The question is, does it matter? The Wall lives on in museums, infilms, as the parts still standing and in souvenir form on mantelpieces the world over. Its significance will not be forgotten, but it seems that its location might.
NPR’s Pop Culture podcast discussed the seminal British TV programmePlaying Shakespeare. In 1984, Ben Kingsley was the only universally known actor featured in the programme but now it appears filled with the greats. However that’s not why I’m recommending that you listen to it. Pop Culture highlights a line from the then little known Sir Ian McKellan about how definitions of acting ‘naturally’ change over time. King Lear was played very differently in the British Empire of the 19th century to how he is interpreted today. The grand certainty of the delivery reflected how the nation was situated in the world. It is an argument that lends itself to museum collections. The interpretation of museum objects depends on the social norms of the time, often causing controversy if it does not. For instance, in the West we generally no longer display galleries of taxidermied stags’ heads as blood sports are less popular. There is discussion and debate about the inclusion of golliwogs in children’s museums. Cases that have not been updated for some time can reflect past racist, sexist, and colonialist attitudes on the part of the museum.
I must ask, is it right to just hide this history of interpretation? Museums reflect the cultural mindset of the times in the same way that theatre does, but we have the chance to tell a further story. Dilemma labels which highlight that which is ‘out of touch’ (often in ethnographic displays) are nothing new, but I suggest using them more often in all kinds of exhibits to provoke debate from visitors and from staff.
Child psychotherapist Camila Batmanghelidjh suggested an amusing 60 Second Idea to change the world. She believes that skating on rollerblades would make political meetings less boring and generate more creative thinking with faster outcomes to tough problems. She has tried and tested her theory with various physical activities in meetings, including yoyo-ing and reports that it works. Could this be an experiment for museum staff? Would the economy of thought help in curatorial decision making? Let me know if you try it out… if you can get it past a health and safety risk assessment, that is!
A recent email told me that the Museums Association is holding a seminar on podcasting. I expect that this will be about the technicalities of recording and producing; content, delivery and publicity. Listening to so many podcasts each week I often consider the pros and cons of each. Consequently I have in my mind my ‘ideal podcast’. Perfect not in subject matter so much as usability.
There is an abundance of cultural podcasts out there, created by museums, galleries, arts organisations and individuals. What makes some stand out from the crowd is not only engaging content but also ease of use. Too often these things seem mutually exclusive. Here are some things that I’ve noted.
Tl;dl With many of the most interesting ones running close to an hour, sometimes the sheer length of podcasts is offputting. Take the chance (given previous form) or skip altogether? A quick introduction always helps to get a feel for the content and its running order. Chicago’s Art Institute Musecast does a good one on their albeit short podcast.
Shownotes and Links Although their podcast is at times rambling, Bad at Sports has good show notes on its website which give an overview of the episode, enabling strategic fast-forwarding if short on listening time. Kansas Historical Society’s Cool Things in the Collection goes a step further with an essay on their featured object and outside links to relevant sites for further research.
Chapters I love chapters. If I’m not all that interested in a particular segment, I can jump to the next and not have to hunt around getting frustrated. It is like the difference between using cassette tapes and CDs. For such a seemingly simple function is available on very few podcasts. The National Gallery, I salute you.
Images While some cultural institutions produce video podcasts, they are in the minority. Images, like chapters are available on enhanced versions of audio podcasts, but again are seldom used. It is particularly frustrating when the recording is a commentary from a slide presentation. The National Archives, for instance could have made much more of their Summer of 69 episode had we been able to see the images of what was even billed in the RSS feed notes as an ‘illustrated talk’.
Update Regularly Please! Or if not, then say that you’re doing a limited run like the Monocle Summer Series and then having a break. Don’t just leave the listener hanging.
Presentation and Content Learning something new and unexpected is always welcome. Like dipping into a magazine, mixing up the presentation or not spending too long on each idea works well in podcasts. Arts.21: The Cultural Magazine‘s videos and Museum of Science, Boston‘s audio podcasts both have this down albeit in differering styles. Having a gimmick can also sometimes work. I’m not sure whether I’d have learned about intelligent search if it wasn’t for Tea with the Economist.
So, my perfect podcast is one which makes available a contents list, is easy to navigate, has images and notes to go with the recording, updates frequently and piques my interest in new areas. All this stuff adds value for me. Makes me subscribe to the RSS feed, recommend it to friends. Basically it makes me come back for more. Isn’t that what it is all about? What do you look for? Are cultural podcasters catering to that? If you are the person who makes your museum or gallery’s podcast, what are your views?
You can contact me at august(at)newcurator(dot)com or leave your thoughts in the comments.
We’re in a credit crunch. We all know that. I won’t bore you with the details you already know about budget cuts or the lack of jobs. What I have noticed recently coming through in the media lately is reflection on how people are working around it.
I started the week watching Alan Yentob’s Imagine: Art in Troubled Times.* He talked of art and austerity, Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s and speculated how recession affects the arts for the better. In the Great Depression the US government paid artists a salary to produce things to perk up everyone else. However municipal backing brings no guarantee of quality. I wonder if that were to happen in today’s recession who would get the say on what was a good piece of art and what wasn’t. Would artists conform to what Ben Bradshaw or Peter Garrett thought they should be making? Doubt it somehow.
This programme made for an interesting debate, asking who the arts are for and what they seek to inspire. Art (in its most encompassing sense) allows us to be transported from our everyday lives for a while. So what can we do to foster this idea and make it work for people? Can we do anything? And quite frankly in this recession can we even afford to? One way which has already been happening is to use the empty shopfronts which are increasingly a part of High Streets and Downtown areas the world over. Who wants to look at this?
Free Parking - For Lease by ryan-chow. Used under Creative Commons.
Curator of the latest of these ventures, Manon Slome thinks that art can thrive in this kind of environment and something positive can be created. She discussed the Manhattan No Longer Empty project on Bad at Sports. With galleries going under and artist representation lacking, it made sense for all to use what was available for the minimum price. In an attempt to revitalise these empty spaces, artists were invited to make installations in response to the economic crisis. Often they would make site specific pieces in response to, for example a fishing tackle shop ‘capturing the zeitgeist of the store.’ Slome reports a great response from the public, from artists, and increasingly from backers who appear to see the positive aspects of this kind of ‘community art’.
So there do appear to be some upbeat elements in these uncertain times. Art might help us all through. Even just going to the cinema or to a museum for an afternoon might be enough to transcend the credit crunch for a little while. Shouldn’t museums and galleries be making the most of this in their advertising?
This all seems redolent of the art of the Depression era doesn’t it? Cheering up the masses? Take heed of a final warning from Arts and Ideas. Their panel talked of the myth of positive austerity. That the willing embrace of WW2 rationing and ‘getting on with it’ really is a myth. Nobody saw it in those terms then; it was damned hard. We all know how tough it is at the moment. I wonder what folk memory will say about this recession. What nostalgia will have been created of this time when historians look back?
* Admittedly not a podcast but a BBC TV programme and hence not available worldwide.
There has been an interesting juxtaposition in the podcasts that have caught my notice this week. They have been either about the very latest developments in technology for the future or the preservation of things that are being lost.
APM’s Future Tense talked to NASA about their communications projects. They have already tweeted from space, but aim much higher (and further) than that. By building an interplanetary internet they want to be able to make the most of spontaneous interactions with space vehicles and telescopes. I’d love to think it could be this:
‘Take more macro photographs of that crater, send them to the Hubble telescope and copy the email to the Smithsonian so they can archive them at the same time.’
Normally in space exploration, you would have to plan to take those photographs on your next mission, so this would get things working much faster. How could this technology have an application for museums? Could we send data out there instead of just retrieving it? A virtual space museum? I would love to hear what you think.
The BBC World Service special report Save Our Soundsdiscussed the changing soundscape. In a thought provoking podcast, they covered urban sound design, lost soundscapes and are preserving sounds by charting aural turnover on an interactive map.
Sound is often used in museums: as part of audiovisual display, as oral history or in interactives. What I find more interesting though is the sound of the museum itself.
If you closed your eyes for a couple of minutes what would you hear? It really depends on where you are. There could be the hubbub of school groups or the quiet contemplation of people considering art on the walls. The hushed but frenzied excitement of somebody discovering an object they love and telling their friend. A film quietly playing to itself on a slow day. The scratch of a pen on paper as someone takes notes. Footfall, chatter, excitement, boredom. And behind the scenes? Typing and papershuffling in the offices. A telephone conversation. The whirr of machinery in conservation services. The clatter of someone making a cup of tea in the staff room.
I bet that your museum sounds different in all kinds of ways to the one where I work.
I think that it would be an interesting experiment to have a museum sound art exhibition. Chart a day in the life of a museum, edit the snippets and pipe it into a gallery. I would love to people-watch while the visitors figured it out. Very subtly done, it might seem like a haunting.
Too self indulgent? Or just seeing things from a different perspective? I think it is worth a shot.
I started off talking about new technology. All technology gets old eventually and will probably end up in a museum. Here is a great videocast by The Stuff of Genius about that once brand new technology, long range radio.
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