Category : General
Last week, I made a call out for a web app coder/programmer. I know I was vague on details at the time because I hadn’t fully formed the idea.
I spoke to 8 people about it. 8 people have all rejected/pulled out for a variety of reasons.
So now, I’m going to describe the idea as best I can (remember, I am no programmer) and kick the idea out there to see what happens.
This idea/design/thing (and only this idea) is going under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported Licence. This means I want you to share this idea, remix this idea, tell people where you got this idea (preferably a link), not to try to make money from this idea and give whatever you make from this a CC license as well.
The rest of this blog is under All Rights Reserved, Copyright, Voodoo Curses etc.
So I’ll begin.
MUSEUM BAILOUT
Through no previous planning or collaboration, both me and Nina Simon made a call for people to sign up to a Brooklyn Museum membership because of the recent news of them having quite a large budget cut. Turns out we made quite an impact. I saw that it was retweeted a lot. Which got me thinking. So much news about the doom and gloom of the financial state of museums, not much news about how we can fix it (bar wishing for handouts). Not many of us can conjure up several million to plug a hole in a museum budget. But several million of us could conjure up a little bit of cash that could go a long way to improving things.
This requires some activism. It requires a people-sponsored bailout of our museums.
At least this bailout won’t go into an undeserving executives bonus. Even better, you actually get something back! You get to be part of something and they give you stuff in return!
I notice how almost every museum has a membership program. I also notice how these are often tucked away in the corner of a website. I also notice there seems to be nothing anywhere looking like a directory of membership plans.
The Webapp would be a way to promote as many museum’s membership plans as possible in the simplest way. I think its better if I describe the process:
-A Museum Membership Officer (or similar) registers on the site.
-They are validated, probably through making sure the email is the museum’s own domain.
-The Museum then logs in, fills out a form of all their membership details. (name of member, length of time, costs, benefits etc) and links to website where you can sign up. This avoids the potential mess of trying to trying to mash together checkouts/credit cards/billing operations.
-Museum adds its location to a Google map.
-User goes to app, looks up town/city etc…
-User finds locations of nearest museum locations.
-User clicks on museum location, brings up separate database entry (So the “map tag” is a link to something else, not having just text attached to the “map tag”. This is because more clever things may be required later)
-User looks at a Museum’s membership details. Clicks a link to Museum’s own membership website
-For the sake of analytics and maybe learning something from the numbers, the Museums get stats on how many people clicked their map tag, or looked at their membership plans, or clicked on the link to their own Museum’s website.
-User then signs “pledge” to promise to buy membership X from museum Y, using email and CAPTCHA as validation to avoid spam. This looks like a petition. Name, Email (not to be shown), age, location, drop-down menu of museums, then a secondary drop down menu of there different plans.
-This then forms a big list of people promising to buy a membership. “Jeff promises to buy an 1stfans membership from Brooklyn Museum” etc. I know this isn’t exactly accurate, but this way doesn’t require any linking to Museum’s own billing system and also doesn’t require the Museum to report back with confirmations (because they probably wouldn’t anyway). This is why we’re planning on tracking promises, not sales.
-User then gets little badge/widget saying that the are supporting the museum bailout with a membership X to museum Y. They can put this on their blog/myspace etc. This is to spread the word.
-Here’s a TRICKY BIT. There should be a big running totals/stats on the front of the app. A total of every “pledge”, so 10 people promise to buy 10 memberships costing $100 each, there’s a thing on the front saying “Museum Bailout Total Promised $1000″ or something or “10 promises so far”. These number could possibly go onto the widget. Then there’s a big list of people’s promises.
That’s it. Essentially a big directory of museum membership information, a Google map, a widget and a petition. There’s a lot of scope of adding extras, like a delicious.com/digg feed of new reports on museums financial plight (to remind us why we’re doing this), or signing the pledge with a twitter account means (with your permission) you tweet “I will buy this membership” or something, or make the whole thing a facebook app.
Please, by all means spread this idea. Whilst I do want to hear from you if you plan to do something with it, please don’t email me saying “I’m interested in doing this” and then email me a bit later saying “Sorry, can’t do it”. If you’re serious, then I’m serious and will help any way I can and will blog the hell out of it (as will, I imagine, lots of others). In fact, contact me with something approaching a working beta. Put questions into the comments below.
I am, as always, reachable via pete(at)newcurator.com
Newcurator.com is going on hiatus for this week. I have all kinds of things to do as well as work on two interesting projects. I’m rarely going to be at the computer for most of it so I figure it would be best to have a week off than try to squeeze in rushed posts.
I will still probably kick about on twitter and, as always, I’m reachable at pete(at)newcurator.com
ArtFriday is still going to be on.
As you may have noticed, newcurator was done for the best part of three days.
“Bandwidth Exceeded” is an odd badge of honour. It shows that a lot of people are interested and the numbers of readers are steadily growing.
The problem is that all this is coming out of my own pocket and I don’t get paid for this. The only income stream so far are the Google Ads and the bookshop. (Every Ad click make me happy. The bookshop may go as nobody uses it)
So when I’ve used up my monthly allowance, I’m not in a position to really put more money into upgrades. Not yet anyway.
So, thank you for being patient for my return and putting up with my abuse of twitter in that time.
Also, expect odd and curious ways that I’ll try to make this website pay for itself.
Newcurator.com t-shirts?
100 posts in 49 days. I would like to take a moment for this small landmark achievement for me. Thank to all those who visit and commented and all those who follow me on twitter and retweet my stuff. Big shout out to Julia Kaganskiy (@juliaxguila) who seems to give me five more followers every time she mentions me. I would struggle if I knew nobody was reading this. Thanks to the guest posters who account for six out of the 100. Thank to all those who link to me, especially Nina Simon, who when she first mentioned me in her blog absolutely destroyed my bandwidth for the month.
In order to keep this post relevent, here’s some links I’ve been reading and from interesting today and can’t add any additional comments.
The video from the Museum Association sparked a huge response, partly as the Museum of Modern Art in New York asked it to their 3000 followers.
Here are the ones I’ve managed to collect.
Mine: To provide meaning.
Beth Dunn of Small Dots: To tell us our own stories, and the stories of others.
tahlib: The single most important function is to preserve cultural history.
Andreas Backoefer: Thinking about “ästhetische Autonomie” and create the “differánce”
Tiberious: preserving and displaying historical artifacts…as a means to educate the public and provide concrete truths about our history…
Krutcha: to advance progress through accumulating preserving sharing and passing by the creative knowledge to the future generations
RichardMcCoy: To provide first-hand experiences with cultural property.
Juliaxguila: To educate, challenge and inspire (also mentioned in the video). But I like @RichardMcCoy’s answer, too.
Margue: transmit and transform.
TheWomensMuseum: The single most important function of museums is to take content and present context that inspires and invites conversation
Paulastudio: to quench the thirst of souls and awaken the the parts of them that are asleep.
OhThatLaura: To enrich the lives of visitors through careful cultivation and presentation of works by different masters of artistry.
Lowconcept: Museums should strive to find the ideal balance between preservation for future generations and access for the current one.
stalyn: function is to inspire & educate. (yes really, it is that simple).
lauraah: To provide access and open eyes, to educate and foster discussion and opinion.
mjkopa: To create communities around historic and artistic objects.
Abi_Annette: to inspire understanding of our past and present.
LucieConnors: Make visitors think for themselves by creating thought provoking exhibitions, create a space for the circulation of ideas.
5easypieces: Museums should be a stage upon which a multiplicity of interactions can occur.
MattressFactory: to provide more questions than answers.
erickogelschatz: To inspire creativity
lauraloveslux: A museum’s most important function is to provide deep aesthetic respite & contemplative space to city dwellers.
chris_walsh: Museums have reponsibility to make preserved work available to the public; hopefully new media can further that mission!
rentonhistory: to document, preserve, and research, and *then* to engage the public in conversations informed by that work.
jeffrey_r: Preservation and access
I use these three sources: The Guardian’s Arts & Heritage page, museumjobs.com and the University of Leicester’s Department of Museum Studies job desk. Make sure you quote the original source in your application.
- Exhibitions Assistant – National Portrait Gallery – London, UK - £19,837 per annum – Full Time – Closing date 26/01/2009 (via The Guardian)
- International Curator - Liverpool Biennial – Liverpool, UK - c. £32,500 – Full Time – Closing date 02/02/2009 (via The Guardian)
- Technical Support Officer, Collections Services – British Museum – London, UK - £25,221 pa – Full Time – Closing date 05/02/2009 (via The Guardian)
- Assistant Education Officer – National Coal Mining Musue m- Wakefield, UK - £19,885 p.a. – Full Time up to 12 months – Closing date 30/01/2009 (via museumjobs.com)
- Curator - Kamloops Art Gallery - Kamloops, Canada – CAN$50,000 – Full Time – Closing date 20/02/2009 (via Uni of Leicester)
Hearing a lot about a plane crashing into the Hudson River near the Intrepid Museum.
I’m currently looking at the Intrepid’s webcams to see if anything is happening.
- rentonhistory: Do new museums qualify as economic stimulus? Las Vegas “Mob Museum” as case study. http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/11/americas/vegas.php
- SDASM: Want to golf with some astronauts this February? Here is your chance to during Spacefest San Diego: http://tinyurl.com/9h7vbt
- NMNH: Did you know? The average depth of the ocean is more than 2.5 miles.:
- TheWomensMuseum: New blog post from our conversations yesterday about body image: http://thewomensmuseum.blogspot.com/ Thanks to everyone for your help!
- nyc_mom: @newcurator is one of the absolute best twitterers for anyone interested in arts, museums, architecture, culture-thanks for ur great posts!
- learnit: The story of Berlin museum is brilliant – and explains how printing money can lead to hyperinflation and Hitler.
- brooklynmuseum: Bklyn Bytes: from our collection online, tagged “over engineered”http://bit.ly/wWOP
- portableant: Just scared British Museum’s Bronze Age curator with what the new database can do for his research! Must be working well then!
- philamuseum: Load your iPod with some or all of our 379 tour stops bring them when you visit Tip: Same #s as our rental players http://tinyurl.com/7o4dwx
- giv_p: @richbs meh. it’s only a museum
I use three main sources for online museum job hunting.
The Guardian’s Arts & Heritage page, museumjobs.com and the University of Leicester’s Department of Museum Studies job desk. There are hundreds upon thousands of job listing services out there, but these three do something right.
For one, there are few agency positions. These are job coming through a third party to which you have to sign up to them to get any information etc. They are also clearly marked out, so if you don’t want to, you don’t have to waste your time with them. The job postings are (mostly) international, so they’re not entirely closed off. The information is quite thorough. You will find very few “TBC” or “Depending on experience” when it comes to salary, or finding out the job is part-time/pro-rata at the very last moment of application.
From these sites, I’ll collect the best vacancies of the week and post them here. I’ll include salary and contractual status but any futher information will be linked to. I will tend to look at mid-range positions, so no directors/heads and no part-time receptionists. I will post the occasional internship if its interesting enough.
Make sure you quote the original source of the job when applying.
Thus began Culture Job Friday.
- Collections Curator - National Museum of Health and Medicine - Washington DC, USA – US$3,650 – US$4,038 Bi-weekly – Full Time – Closing date - 18/01/2009 (via Uni of Leicester)
- Education and Public Programs Officer - Museum of the Riverina - Wagga Wagga, Australia - circa AUS$59,000 (inc. Super) – Full Time – Closing date 02/02/2009 (via Uni of Leicester)
- C’mon, who wouldn’t want to work in Wagga Wagga?
- Manager of Historic Small Arms Collection/Exhibition - Royal Gunpowder Mills - Waltham Abbey, UK - up to £20,000 p.a. (pro rata) – Part-time or full time – Closing date 30/01/2009 (via musuemjobs.com)
- Manager of Guns. Sounds fun.
- Development Co-ordinator - National Maritime Museum – London, UK - £16,000 – 18,000 p.a. – Full time – Closing date 23/01/2009 (via museumjobs.com)
- Curator: Schools & Teacher Programmes – Tate Modern – London, UK - £25,500 p. a. pro rata – Part time – Closing date 16/01/2009 (via The Guardian)
- Content Commissioner, Multimedia Guide Project – The British Museum – London, UK - £25,221 pa fixed term 12 months- Full time – Closing date 23/01/2009 (via The Guardian)
- mediamuseum: If anyone saw Batman on top of the Telegraph & Argus building a couple of hours ago it wasn’t Christian Bale, it was a photo op for us
- lunder: Removing aged varnish from a 1934 oil painting by Pino Yanni titled: Waterfront Scene – 4th floor paintings conservation lab
- brooklynmusuem: sneak peek – 5000+ images from our Libraries and Archives just went into our collection online. deb blogging tomorrow. http://bit.ly/geie
- ninaksimon: Loving your 2009 predictions, esp “will construct an ewok village” and “will adopt a robot.” Join the fun: http://simonforecast.tumblr.com
- museum_exhibits: @ninaksimon I thought you already lived in an Ewok village! ;-)
- tandmark: A hideous pun for art lovers and art museum staff/volunteers — what do you name a 19th C art scam?http://is.gd/eLJA
- RichWhite: @smannion - Cobalt framework would be wonderful for building distributed “Museum Worlds” ! Google 3D warehouse support
- kloh: Taking family to the Bowers Museum.
- xeno: @kloh I thought that said “The Bowser Museum”. I almost had a happy attack.
- rentonhistory: Useful advice for nonprofits in an economic crisis: “Declare an emergency.”http://www.blueavocado.org/…
- sorgsorg: OHH I forgot to metion.. I saw the Dan Quail Museum today, yes, the Dan Quail Musuem.
Everything looks set for a 2009 launch. During this time of year, very little is going on, people are otherwise distracted and museums tend to close.
NEW CURATOR will look at topics, issues and news surrounding museums and politics, technology, internationalism, individualism, expansionism, presentism and architecture. All together acting as a lens to see how the future of museums is being planned out.
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