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The changing nature of museology in the digital age: Case studies of situated technology praxis in U.S. art museums
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THE CHANGING NATURE OF MUSEOLOGY IN THE DIGITAL AGE:
CASE STUDIES OF SITUATED TECHNOLOGY PRAXIS IN U.S. ART MUSEUMS
by
Susana Smith Bautista
_____________________________________________________________
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(COMMUNICATION)
May 2012
Copyright 2012 Susana Smith Bautista
ii
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the debt that I owe to the Annenberg School for
Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. My department
welcomed me five years ago as an outsider to the field, coming from art history and
museum studies, and supported and encouraged me wholeheartedly along the way as I
strove to learn about communication, but more significantly as I applied this newfound
knowledge to museums and the arts. While I owe my deepest gratitude to my advisor,
Larry Gross, for his guidance over five years, I must also acknowledge all of my
professors for their wisdom and inspiration, and my wonderful colleagues, especially
when helping me wade through quantitative methods.
This thesis would not have been possible without the tremendous time,
dedication, and insight from my dissertation committee: Larry Gross (chair), Anne
Balsamo, and Selma Holo. I have been fortunate to work with Anne on various projects
at USC for the last four years, and she has consistently been a most generous and caring
professional of the highest integrity and intellect. I must acknowledge my gratitude to
Selma Holo for suggesting the Annenberg School when I first started exploring Ph.D.
programs six years ago. My friendship and respect for Selma has only grown over the
fifteen years that I have known her, first as director of the museum studies masters
program at USC that I attended and later as a committee member for both my
qualifications exam and dissertation. As I explored the changing nature of museums in
the digital age, Selma was vital in helping me to remember the traditional nature and
roles of museums. I would also be remiss not to acknowledge the cooperation of all the
iii
individuals that provided me with interviews, information, and invaluable assistance
while researching the museums and their communities described in this thesis. And last
but certainly not least, is my family, to whom I must thank for giving me their never-
ending encouragement, patience, confidence, and love.
iv
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements……………………………………………………… ii
List of Figures……………………………………………………………. vi
Abstract………………………………………………………………….. xi
Introduction……………………………………………………………… 1
Chapter One: The New Museology…………………………………….. 11
Chapter Two: Framing a Changing Museology in the Digital Age……... 18
Place/ Space/ Experience………………………………………… 21
Community: To Be, or Not To Be……………………………….. 28
Technology and its Implications………………………………… 40
Culture Matters to Society………………………………………. 44
Chapter Three: Methodology……………………………………………. 53
Case Studies……………………………………………………… 54
Digital Ethnography……………………………………………… 59
Chapter Four: Indianapolis Museum of Art…………………………….. 72
Place + Localized Culture……………………………………….. 72
The Museum and its Community………………………………... 82
The Role of Digital Technology…………………………………. 92
Lessons Learned…………………………………………………. 108
Chapter Five: Walker Art Center……………………………………….. 111
Place + Localized Culture……………………………………….. 111
The Museum and its Community………………………………... 117
The Role of Digital Technology…………………………………. 128
Lessons Learned…………………………………………………. 142
Chapter Six: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art………………….. 147
Place + Localized Culture……………………………………….. 147
The Museum and its Community………………………………... 157
The Role of Digital Technology…………………………………. 170
Lessons Learned…………………………………………………. 187
Chapter Seven: Museum of Modern Art…………………………………. 191
Place + Localized Culture……………………………………….. 191
The Museum and its Community………………………………... 204
The Role of Digital Technology…………………………………. 217
v
Lessons Learned…………………………………………………. 234
Chapter Eight: Brooklyn Museum………………………………………. 238
Place + Localized Culture……………………………………….. 238
The Museum and its Community………………………………... 250
The Role of Digital Technology…………………………………. 264
Lessons Learned…………………………………………………. 292
Chapter Nine: Reclaiming Place………………………………………… 297
Greater Than Five………………………………………………... 303
Marking Place: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art………. 332
Chapter Ten: A Balancing Act…………………………………………… 342
Conclusion……………………………………………………………….. 350
References……………………………………………………………….. 358
Appendices
Appendix A: Social Media Descriptions………………………… 398
Appendix B: Museum Data Compilation………………………... 401
Appendix C: Interview Subjects…………………………………. 402
vi
List of Figures
1. LOVE (1970) by Robert Indiana, in front of the Indianapolis Museum of
Art, 2011. Photograph by author………………………………………… 72
2. White River State Park, 2011 (Sculpture in the Park in the center, NCAA
headquarters on the right). Photograph by author……………………….. 76
3. Connections (2008) by Electroland at the Indianapolis International
Airport, 2011. Photograph by author…………………………………….. 77
4. 2011 advertisement for popular Midwestern fast food chain, White Castle.
Photograph by author……………………………………………………. 81
5: The Lilly House and Gardens, Indianapolis Museum of Art, 2011.
Photograph by author……………………………………………………. 84
6. 100 Acres, 2011, with Bench Around the Lake by Jeppe Hein in the
foreground, and Indianapolis Island by Andrea Zittel in the lake.
Photograph by author……………………………………………………. 86
7. Exhibition on the Miller House at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, 2011.
Photograph by author……………………………………………………. 88
8. Gallery space devoted to the IMA’s participation in the Venice Biennale,
2011. Photograph by author……………………………………………… 91
9. IMA website, Collection Tags (1/13/12 screen capture)………………… 95
10. IMA website, ArtBabble (11/4/11 screen capture)……………………… 103
11. The Davis Lab, Indianapolis Museum of Art, 2011. Photograph by
author……………………………………………………………………. 107
12. The Walker Art Center, front view along Hennepin Avenue (Barnes
building on right, Herzog & de Meuron building on left), 2011.
Photograph by author……………………………………………………. 111
13. The Walker Art Center, back view (Barnes building on left, Herzog & de
Meuron building on right, open field in the foreground), 2011. Photograph
by author…………………………………………………………………. 111
vii
14. Lake Calhoun, with downtown Minneapolis in the background, 2011.
Photograph by author……………………………………………………. 112
15. The Mall of America, Bloomington, MN, 2011. Photograph by author… 116
16. Spoonbridge and Cherry (1985–1988) by Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van
Bruggen, Walker Sculpture Garden. Photograph by author……………... 117
17. Walker Art Center flyer, 1940 (©Walker Art Center)…………………... 119
18. 4C Model, 2003 (©Walker Art Center)…………………………………. 122
19. Best Buy Film/Video Bay, Walker Art Center, 2011. Photograph by
author…………………………………………………………………….. 124
20. The Dolphin Oracle II, Walker Art Center, 2011. Photograph by author.. 129
21. Walker website, WACTAC (11/8/11 screen capture)…………………… 132
22. 50/50: Audience and Experts Curate the Paper Collection, Courtesy
Walker Art Center. Photograph by Cameron Wittig. Reprinted with
permission……………………………………………………………….. 136
23. Walker website home page (12/6/11 screen capture)……………………. 140
24. SFMOMA in the foreground, 2010. Photograph by author……………… 147
25. SFO Museum, The Allure of the Decoy exhibition, June 2011. Photograph
by author…………………………………………………………………. 155
26. SFMOMA Museum Store at SFO, 2011. Photograph by author………… 157
27. SFMOMA Artists Gallery at Fort Mason, 2011. Photograph by author… 162
28. The Mission District, San Francisco, 2011. Photograph by author……… 167
29. SFMOMA website, ArtScope (11/18/11 screen capture)……………….. 179
30. SFMOMA website, Open Space (1/13/12 screen capture)……………… 183
31. @SFMOMA (Twitter), 2010. (Courtesy SFMOMA)……………………. 184
32. SFMOMA signage, 2011. Photograph by author………………………... 185
viii
33. Second-floor Learning Lounge, SFMOMA, 2011, Photograph by author. 186
34. Second-floor Learning Lounge, SFMOMA, 2011. Photograph by author. 186
35. Second-floor Learning Lounge, SFMOMA, 2011. Photograph by author. 186
36. The Koret Visitor Education Center, SFMOMA, 2011. Photograph by
author…………………………………………………………………….. 187
37. The Koret Visitor Education Center, SFMOMA, 2011. Photograph by
author…………………………………………………………………….. 187
38. The Koret Visitor Education Center, SFMOMA, 2011. Photograph by
author…………………………………………………………………….. 187
39. The Museum of Modern Art, 54
th
Street Entrance, 2011. Photograph by
author…………………………………………………………………….. 191
40. Lower East Side Tenement Museum, New York, 2011. Photograph by
author…………………………………………………………………….. 196
41. Museum of the City of New York, Fifth Avenue, 2011. Photograph by
author…………………………………………………………………….. 196
42. 42
nd
Street Station, New York. Times Square Mural (1994) by Roy
Lichtenstein, 2011. Photograph by author……………………………….. 201
43. 9–11 Memorial and Museum, Lower Manhattan, 2011. Photograph by
author…………………………………………………………………….. 203
44. MoMA storefront window on 53
rd
Street, 2011. Photograph by author…. 205
45. MoMA PS1, Long Island City, Queens, 2011. Photograph by author....... 209
46. The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, MoMA, 2011.
Photograph by author. …………………………………………………… 212
47. MoMA membership sign, Café 2, 2011. Photograph by author………… 216
48. MoMA Guide at MoMA, 2011. Photograph by author…………………. 223
49. MoMA website, E-Cards (12/5/11 screen capture)……………………… 223
50. MoMAudio, MoMA First-floor Lobby, 2011. Photograph by author…… 224
ix
51. MoMA website, I went to MoMa and… (12/5/11 screen capture)……… 227
52. MoMA PS1 website home page (12/5/11 screen capture)………………. 228
53. The Brooklyn Museum, 2011. Photograph by author…………………… 238
54. Brooklyn Borough Hall, 2011. Photograph by author…………………… 240
55. Park Slope, Brooklyn, 2011. Photograph by author……………………... 241
56. Brooklyn Historical Society, Brooklyn Heights. Photograph by author… 241
57. Brooklyn Borough Hall, 2011. Photograph by author…………………… 242
58. Red Hook, Brooklyn, 2011. Photograph by author……………………… 246
59. DUMBO, Brooklyn, 2011. Photograph by author………………………. 246
60. Lobby of the Brooklyn Museum, 2011. Photograph by author…………. 255
61. Entrance Pavilion, Brooklyn Museum, 2011. Photograph by author…… 263
62. Egyptian Galleries, Brooklyn Museum, 2011. Photograph by author…… 265
63. E-comments, Brooklyn Museum, 2011. Photograph by author…………. 265
64. Brooklyn Museum website, Exhibitions (12/20/11 screen capture)…….. 267
65. Brooklyn Museum website, partial compilation of works shown in the
gallery for Click! exhibition (12/21/11 screen capture)…………………. 271
66. Brooklyn Museum website, Split Second Rankings (12/21/11 screen
capture)………………………………………………………………….. 274
67. Brooklyn Museum website, #mapBK (12/21/11 screen capture)……….. 276
68. Flickr website, #mapBK mysteries (12/21/11 screen capture)………….. 276
69. Brooklyn Museum website, Author Archives in Blog (12/26/11 screen
capture)…………………………………………………………………... 279
x
70. Brooklyn Museum website, Community: Network (2/29/12 screen
capture)………………………………………………………………….. 283
71. Brooklyn Museum website, Virtual Graffiti Online Gallery (12/23/11
screen capture)………………………………………………………….... 284
72. Go Mobile! signage at the Brooklyn Museum, 2011. Photograph by
author…………………………………………………………………….. 290
73. Flickr website, Fill the Gap! at SAAM (12/29/11 screen capture)……… 307
74. The Metropolitan Museum of Art website, Connections (12/29/11 screen
capture)…………………………………………………………………... 313
75. Guggenheim website, Stillspotting nyc, Noise Map (12/29/11 screen
capture)…………………………………………………………………... 316
76. Tate Museum website, Tate Kids (12/3/12 screen capture)……………... 323
77. Adobe Museum of Digital Media website, Map (1/3/12 screen capture).. 329
78. MUVA website, Information (12/29/11 screen shot)……………………. 331
79. Watts House Project, 2010. Photograph by author………………………. 338
80. Edgar Arceneaux & Mario Ybarra Jr., Watts, 2010. Photograph by
author…………………………………………………………………….. 338
81. Transporting the Boulder to LACMA, March 9, 2012. Photograph by
author…………………………………………………………………….. 340
xi
Abstract
The digital age is a networked space of individuals, places, and information that flow
together. Within this global, distributed space lies the museum as one of its active nodes.
The space of the new museology is similarly de-centered and nonlinear, as museums
adapt their traditional roles and practices to this changing cultural environment. Recent
developments in mobile telecommunications, wireless technology, Web 2.0, and
geospatial technology, contribute to a dispersed museum experience in the digital age
with authority and interpretation also dispersed onto the visitor. Yet despite shifting away
from their local, physical museum spaces, museums are not disregarding their local
communities or their physical collections and spaces, but rather are undertaking a
synthesized vision of local and global, fixed and mobile, physical and virtual, hegemony
and populism. Through their use of technology today, museums disregard the limitations
of these traditional binary terms, focusing more on visitor interests and affinities that
provide strong bonds to the museum and cultivate social relations.
This thesis analyzes five case studies of art museums in the United States that are
remarkable for their innovative uses of technology (onsite and online). Each museum was
analyzed regarding the relation to its physical locality, its online use of technology
(website, blogs, social media), onsite use of technology, and through individual
interviews. While these cases illustrate the most pioneering uses of technology in art
museums today, their significance lie rather in understanding the cultural and localized
contextualization of how they use technology. The new museology places a priority on
serving and engaging community, yet defining one’s community becomes challenging in
xii
the digital age, despite the reductionist efforts of visitor-centric museums. Each museum
has its own trend-setting story to tell about its own places, communities, cultures, and
how technology is applied towards those ends. To understand museums in the digital age
is to understand the interrelation of their local and global places, communities, and
cultures, and to all the points and flows of interaction within their distributed network.
1
Introduction
The space of museums in the digital age has been defined by the distinctive ways in
which visitors use and transform it. As society changes, so do museums (slowly, but
surely). Michel DeCerteau (1984) makes an important distinction between space and
place, defining space as a “practiced place” in the sense that as people walk they
transform a street (place) into a space. The “representational space” of Henri Lefebvre
(1991) is also a lived space, a social space that is a distinct product of every society. The
modern museum has undergone a transformation from an early place-based cultural
institution to a more dispersed (Post)modern space. Digital technology has affected
practically every aspect of modern society, from the economic to the social to the
personal. It has transformed the ways in which we acquire information, how we shop and
pay bills, how we listen to music and watch television, how we communicate with our
friends and family, and how we make, save, and share our creative expressions such as
photography or video. For these reasons, we call the present time the digital age.
1
This is
not to propose a strict technologically determinist view, but to consider how new digital
technologies are influencing the ways in which individuals and institutions continue to
function within society, and likewise how museums continue to function. The post-
Postmodern age of museums today represents not so much a step forward, but one
backward, embracing more traditional elements still within the context of a digital age,
1
Other popular terms include the Information Age, the Internet Age, the Global Age, the Creative Age, the
Age of Access (Jeremy Rifkin), the Age of Relevance (Mahendra Palsule), and the Network Society
(Manuel Castells), yet all are still based upon the social implications of new digital technologies.
2
such as the importance of place, locality, culture, and community that assimilate well
with populist tendencies from the late twentieth-century.
All of these changes reveal the extreme fluidity that defines the institutional
boundaries of museums today. This fluidity is a good thing, because when we define
museums too rigidly we risk losing sight of their widespread potential. Ironically, their
ability to endure as a socio-cultural institution that embodies authority, trust, and
expertise, lies in their ability to adapt to a changing society. Most writings about
museums and technology today focus on how technology offers unprecedented
opportunities for museums, completely transforming the ways in which they operate.
While this thesis acknowledges the changes and possibilities, it focuses more on what
remains the same in the midst of a rapidly changing socio-cultural environment. And
furthermore, why such dependable and continuous features of the museum as an
institution are needed in a changing digital age.
Both the empirical research and the theoretical framework of this thesis address
the place, community, and culture of museums in the digital age; not only the physical or
virtual space as defined by those who use it most, but its nodal place within the shifting
framework of what is meant to be a social institution in the larger, global socio-cultural
network. To understand a museum in the digital age is to understand how its online
(global) community is related to the physical (local) community and to all the points and
flows of interaction within its distributed network. Whether the space of museums is
determined top-down by the cultural elites, bottom-up by the communities that are
actively engaged, or through a negotiated process that somehow reflects both interests,
3
will emerge from the research and its theoretical framework to shed light on how
museums are navigating a larger, more diverse and demanding public in the digital age.
The incorporation of technology, through its various historical manifestations, has
been integrally related to changes in both culture and its contextual conditions. Culture
will be addressed throughout this thesis as both a local culture and as the broader culture
of museums (which is now global in scope). The anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1973)
wrote that, “The study of culture…is thus the study of the machinery individuals and
groups of individuals employ to orient themselves in a world otherwise opaque” (p. 363).
Jennifer Daryl Slack and John Macgregor Wise (2005) propose the cultural studies
approach to understanding technology, which they refer to as “a site for significant
cultural struggle and change” (p. 98). Rather than technological determinism, Slack and
Wise believe that cultural determinism is a more effective term. They state that, “as
culture changes, it needs and develops new technologies to accomplish its goals” (2005,
p. 46). They explain how our modern view of technology is closely related to the ideas of
science and rationality (values of the Enlightenment), and therefore also to progress,
which is not always helpful in understanding situated technology praxis today. Raymond
Williams (1983) describes culture as a process rather than an absolute. James Clifford
(1988) similarly describes culture as, “a process of ordering, not of disruption. It changes
and develops like a living organism” (p. 235). Rosalind Williams encourages us to view
technology less as tools or objects and more as environments. As she writes, “In the late
20
th
century, our technologies less and less resemble tools–discrete objects that can be
considered separately from their surroundings–and more and more resemble systems that
4
are intertwined with natural systems, sometimes on a global scale” (Williams, 1990, p. 1).
Technology continues to permeate the museum institution and in the process it continues
to change the institution, changing technologies as they are adapted to new uses and
changing culture as both a product and consumer of the creative adaptations of
technology in museums, and particularly in art museums.
This thesis analyzes five case studies of museums in the United States that are
most remarkable for their innovative uses of technology (onsite and online). The focus on
art museums is due to their particular ability to sustain a discussion around issues
pertinent in the digital age such as authenticity, contemplation, discourse, expertise,
creativity, and authority. These five museums include The Indianapolis Museum of Art,
The Walker Art Center, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of
Modern Art in New York, and the Brooklyn Museum. All five museums were analyzed
regarding the relation to their physical locality, the extent to which their blogs and social
media engage communities online, their website strategies, onsite uses of technology,
and, through interviews with staff to ascertain their views about technology, success, and
goals. The initial objective of this research was not to compare the five museums to each
other, an unavoidable outcome which ultimately revealed how the differences were a
factor of internal museum administrative strategies and goals, as well as highly
distinctive geographic and demographic communities. While the five museums are large
museums with international reputations and substantial budgets, each of their particular
approaches to technology and community uncover great insight that can be applied to
museums of all sizes and types. The analyses may often seem overly congratulatory of
5
the museums and their practices rather than a critical evaluation, a consequence of my
decision to select the most technologically pioneering art museums in the United States.
The purpose of this research was not to highlight or critique best practices in the field of
museums and technology, but to explore how these museums’ uses of technology are
determined by their particular localities and cultures.
The Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) is located in the Midwest, but Indiana is
known as the Crossroads of America for the number of interstate highways that connect
its capital to the rest of the country. Indianapolis is also known more as a destination for
sports than for arts and culture, but the museum remains the most important art museum
in the city and state, with a world-renown encyclopedic collection, a new contemporary
art and nature park, and a growing international presence having just represented the
United States at the 2011 Venice Biennale. Digital technology is used carefully inside the
museum, serving a community that has the highest poverty rate of all five museums
studied and the least educated. Its audience is not as technologically comfortable as in
other parts of the country and more used to a traditional museum experience–despite a
large percentage of youth–so its online and behind-the-scenes uses of technology is
where it has made its mark: ArtBabble, Dashboard, the IMA Lab that develops open
source software and social tagging. These technological innovations, along with a strong
Web presence, provide the museum with an audience larger than that of its immediate
community and one which, according to museum officials, in turn generates local interest
in the museum. The museum and its director, Maxwell Anderson, are open to
6
experimenting and taking risks, shielded by a substantial endowment of $308.3 million
and the longtime, local support of Lilly Endowment.
The Walker Art Center is also situated in the Midwest, yet Minneapolis is a very
different city. Using data from the Civic Life in America 2010 study, Minneapolis
consistently scored highest of all five museums studied regarding measures of service,
social connectedness, giving, political action, and belonging to a group. The Twin Cities
region is home to a large number of Fortune 500 companies, including Target and Best
Buy, and adjacent to the Mall of America, the nation’s largest shopping center and the
region’s number one attraction. Minneapolis is also a city with a long theater tradition;
the historic Guthrie Theater recently rebuilt by the Pritzker Prize winning architect Jean
Nouvel. The Walker Art Center’s recent expansion was by Herzog & de Meuron, another
Pritzker Prize winning architectural firm. The Walker Art Center focuses on
contemporary art as well as on its local artistic community. Its technological innovations
can be found inside the galleries–a result of early artist commissions and its rich holdings
in new media art–and online to facilitate specific programs with teens (WACTAC),
Minnesota artists (mnartists.org), and educators (ArtsConnectEd). The museum receives
generous support from local foundations, individuals, and corporations. Since its previous
director in 2003, the Walker has espoused the notion of the museum as a town square, a
metaphor that still best describes its approach to onsite and online programming.
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) also serves a geographic
region that is highly committed to culture and community, including a strong literary
tradition and a dedication to local historical preservation. San Francisco is urban,
7
cosmopolitan, a major tourist destination for its natural beauty and historical landmarks,
and adjacent to Silicon Valley that houses the world’s largest share of technology-related
start-up companies, venture capitalists, and eight Fortune 500 companies including
Hewlett-Packard, Google, and Yahoo. SFMOMA’s previous director David Ross was
instrumental in strengthening the museum’s focus on digital and Internet-based art, as
well as its use of technology for visitor interpretation and education. The museum’s
visitors are largely from the Bay Area, and it dedicates substantial resources in reaching
out to its local creative community with its Artists Gallery at the marina and through its
community producer who manages its blog Open Space and the Talk and Conversation
series at the museum. Despite this strong local focus, the museum’s website is globally
ranked far above the other four museums (except for the Museum of Modern Art), and
reports a desire to begin inviting national and international contributors to its blog.
The Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) is first and foremost an
international museum that strives hard to maintain a commitment to its local community.
While these last two museums–MoMA and Brooklyn–are both based in New York City,
it is only by studying their immediate communities (boroughs) that we understand their
profound differences. Founded in the late 1920s, MoMA embodied Manhattan’s rise to
fame as the new art center of the world and the recognition of a uniquely American,
modernist art. Manhattan is an area with the highest education and income of the five
museums studied (16% of all household incomes are over $200,000), and it is the
commercial and tourist center of New York City, adjacent to Times Square, Central Park,
the Empire State Building, and major cultural destinations. MoMA has 2.8 million
8
physical visitors a year (60% or which are foreigners), its website receives 18 million
visits, it has an international membership category, and opened a design store in Tokyo.
MoMA uses the Internet to better serve its international audience; its website is translated
in seven languages, it offers Courses Online, and through social media it reaches 928,291
Twitter followers, 1,002,320 Facebook fans, and almost 5.2 million video views on
YouTube (as of March 19, 2012). However, its partnership with PS1 in Queens was
instrumental in connecting with the local artistic community, both physically and online
through Studio Visit, and the museum serves twenty-nine local organizations in its
Community Partnership Program.
The Brooklyn Museum opened in 1897, just one year before Brooklyn formally
became a part of New York City. Brooklyn has long defined itself as a region through its
relationship to neighboring Manhattan just across the river. With its own world-class
encyclopedic art collection, the Brooklyn Museum has likewise been in the shadows of
its Manhattan neighbors, including the Metropolitan Museum and many tourist
attractions. Yet today Brooklyn has become the cultural capital of New York City with
rapidly growing artistic communities, cultural organizations, and rich, ethnic diversity.
Brooklyn is the largest community of all five museums studied with 2.5 million people,
and the most diverse (84% African American, 20% Hispanic, and 10% Asian). And while
there is high crime and poverty, Indianapolis fares much worse. The Brooklyn Museum’s
use of technology can be characterized by a focus on its visitors and a willingness to take
risks. Its endowment is the smallest of all five museums, but perhaps its position away
from Manhattan and nearby great museums takes the pressure off and gives it more
9
freedom to take risks, both programmatically (the infamous Sensation exhibition and the
first to begin free First Saturdays) and technologically (Click! A Crowd-Curated
Exhibition, 1stfans on Meetup.com, BkynMuse, and Posse members that play tagging
games online and onsite). Like the IMA, there is surprisingly little digital technology in
the galleries; rather the Brooklyn Museum’s mark is in how it uses technology
strategically and holistically, integrated throughout the entire museum’s practices.
Recent developments in mobile telecommunications, wireless, geospatial, and
location-based technologies support a more mobile society that is no longer dependent on
physical, static places. Nevertheless, place remains a critical component of the digital age
in the same way that the physical object remains critical to art museums despite the
ubiquity of their digital images. All museums–from the Enlightenment to modern day–
begin with a place-based idea, whether they are small community museums, ethnic
museums, national museums, or great encyclopedic museums that represent the
aspirations (and financial support) of local elite. Bruno Latour (2011) writes about what
he calls the rematerialization of digital techniques; “…the expansion of digitality has
enormously increased the material dimension of networks: The more digital, the less
virtual and the more material a given activity becomes” (p. 802). Museums have
historically had an imposing physical presence since their beginnings in eighteenth
century Europe, the combination of great architecture and a series of interior spaces that
offer a glimpse into rare, beautiful, and provocative objects. These physical, place- and
material-based experiences remain essential to museums in the digital age, defining their
authenticity, authority, and most importantly their idiosyncratic representations of place,
10
culture, and community. The following two chapters focus on the multidisciplinary
theories that have guided this research, and how their intellectual synthesis have led to an
understanding of the importance of place, community, technology, and culture as
providing the critical contextual framework for understanding the changing nature of
museology in the digital age.
11
Chapter One: The New Museology
The significance of this thesis lies in recognizing the role of museums as important socio-
cultural institutions. Museums are relatively modern institutions–much like public
libraries–that have their roots in the Age of Enlightenment that spread across Western
Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Great private and princely collections
were opened up to the public, a relative term at that time. Through the establishment of
public universities, libraries, museums, even coffeehouses and debating societies, men
could participate in the public sphere and educate themselves in the hopes of becoming a
valuable member of society. While the ruling elite certainly understood the meaning of a
public collection of valuable objects from around the world that reflected the nation’s
wealth and cohesion (as well as its colonial supremacy), they likewise understood that the
masses of the Industrial Age needed to be properly socialized into this new urban society.
Early museums were socially reformist in providing not so much an education about the
denotative history of their objects, but more the values and morals of proper society.
2
At
the same time, however, social classes and differences were reified by such altruistic
aspirations while hegemonic values of the ruling and educated classes were imposed
upon the masses. Museums became more than repositories of precious objects; they were
bastions of authority and tradition that represented social norms, cultural capital to be
2
Tony Bennett (1995) refers to British cultural reformers of the late-nineteenth century such as Sir Henry
Cole and George Brown Goode who looked to certain social institutions to civilize the masses (museums,
libraries, parks, reading-rooms, and theaters). Bennett quotes Cole as saying in 1884 that, “The Museum
will certainly lead him to wisdom and gentleness, and to Heaven” (p. 21). A particular concern was
drunkenness of the working classes, as evidenced by the 1834 Committee on Drunkenness.
12
acquired by all citizens, memories to be preserved for future generations, and public
displays demonstrating what society valued most.
The new museology that began in the late twentieth century marked a significant
shift in museums’ attitudes towards society in the United States. Museum administrator
and scholar Stephen Weil (2002) claims that economics turned the focus of museums
from collections care to public programming. Objects became too expensive to purchase,
and museums were increasingly concerned about the repatriation of historic objects from
other countries, export controls, and rising insurance costs. In The Birth of the Museum,
Tony Bennett (1995) also notes economic bases for the populist nature of the modern
museum; “In order to attract sufficient visitors to justify continuing public funding,
[museums] thus now often seek to imitate rather than distinguish themselves from places
of popular assembly” (p. 104). At the same time, an explosion of new museums in the
mid-twentieth century created fierce competition for funding, both public and private,
which drove museums to appeal more to popular interests while also appealing to the
increasing interest in education and outreach on the part of philanthropic foundations.
Museums of all types became more socially relevant in their curatorial and public
programming, responding to social issues in a myriad of new ways. Being accessible to
all types of visitors became a main concern, with museums expanding their programs in
surprising ways that appeared more like popular entertainment and community centers:
yoga classes, Alzheimer’s programs, jazz concerts, gourmet restaurants.
The participatory culture of the digital age is based upon the constructivist theory
of learning first proposed by French developmental psychologist Jean Piaget in the 1960s
13
(himself influenced by John Dewey and Lev Vigotsky), and later applied to museums in
the early 1990s by Georg E. Hein. The constructivist approach suggests that museum
visitors actively construct their own meanings rather than passively accept those imposed
on them by museum curators and educators. Vigotsky contributed to the social
constructivist theory in his 1962 book Thought and Language, where he suggested that
language and the articulation of ideas were central to learning and development in
children. Dewey’s most influential publications were on the topics of education and
philosophy, including Moral Principles in Education (1909), Art as Experience (1934),
and Experience and Education (1938). Dewey founded what later became known as the
progressive education movement that claims children learn best through an active
experience. Piaget asserted that children build cognitive structures to adapt to the world
of physical experiences, an idea which he developed in Origins of intelligence in the
child (1936), Play, dreams and imitation in childhood (1945), and The child and reality
(1973), among other writings. His dual concepts of assimilation and accommodation
describe how people adapt to the world around them; the former by absorbing the
environment into their own cognitive structure or schema, and the latter by altering our
preexisting schema as a result of new experiences and information.
In The Constructivist Museum (1995), George Hein proposes that museum
knowledge and meaning is constructed by visitors based on their prior knowledge,
assumptions, interests and experiences, as well as through the active process of learning,
rather than the earlier transmission approach. Although he does not give examples of a
constructivist museum, Hein describes a constructivist exhibition, the 1999 Nehru
14
Gallery National Textile Project at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England.
For this exhibition, South Asian immigrant women were invited into the museum to
design and create their own embroidered tent hangings, which Hein credits as achieving
“the aim of making the museum more accessible to the community.” In her book on
Interpretive Communities, Eilean Hooper-Greenhill (1999) refers to Hein and the
constructivist ideas of learning. She describes these communities;
“Interpretation” is the process in which visitors engage in order to make
sense of the experience of the museum and its collections. Although at one
level this is an individual matter, the interpretations we make are mediated
through the communities of interpretation to which we belong. In
acknowledging the concept of “interpretive communities,” a museum
accepts the active processes of meaning-making that visitors deploy, and
accepts that communication is a partnership between the museum staff as
producers of exhibitions and (other “products”), and visitors, who
construct their own experience of the exhibition according to their
interpretive strategies and repertoires. (p. 1)
Hooper-Greenhill based her own notion of interpretive communities on Stanley Fish
(1980), who first used the term to talk about shared interpretive strategies for writing text,
but she then applies it to museums as a way of “going beyond personal meaning-making”
into the communal level. John Falk and Lynn Dierking’s (2000) Contextual Model of
Learning is similarly based on constructivist theories, emphasizing that all learning is
contextual on three levels: personal, socio-cultural, and physical (meaning the physical
environment and properties). The model suggests that museums provide connections and
opportunities for interaction that directly relate to visitors’ different interests and
motivations in these three levels for free-choice learning.
Starting in the late 1980s, a proliferation of museum visitor studies created visitor
typologies in order to better serve specific groups and to understand the growing diversity
15
of visitors in ethnicity, age, socio-economic levels, and education, partly a result of
increased outreach efforts. The Visitor Studies Association was founded in 1988 in the
United States as a professional organization to serve as an informational forum for the
emerging field of visitor studies and evaluation, offering an annual conference and bi-
annual journal. Through its Office of Policy and Analysis, the Smithsonian Institution
began conducting visitor studies in 1989 (Visitor Perspectives of Tropical Rainforests: A
Report Based on the 1988 “Tropical Rainforests: A Disappearing Treasure”) and
continues actively today with all reports archived on its website at
http://www.si.edu/OPANDA/studies_of_visitors.html. The American Association of
Museum (AAM) in Washington, D.C. focuses on visitor studies through its standing
professional Committee on Audience Research and Evaluation (CARE), publishing its
own conference proceedings from the field since 2004 in Current Trends in Audience
Research and Evaluation. In 1990, the AAM commissioned a report by museum
consultants Randi Korn and Laurie Sowd titled Visitor Surveys: A User’s Manual. The
Association of Science-Technology Centers, also in Washington, D.C. was founded in
1973 as a professional organization for science centers and museums and published two
important books; Questioning Assumptions: An Introduction to Front-End Studies in
Museums by Lynn Dierking and Wendy Pollock (1998), and Planning for People in
Museum Exhibitions by Kathleen McLean (1993). In addition to these national
associations and federal institutions, most large museums have conducted visitor studies
for some time now, either through their own education departments or by hiring outside
consultants. For example, the Exploratorium in San Francisco has a Visitor Research and
16
Evaluation department. Within the academy, most well-known museum studies programs
also teach students about visitor studies, publishing papers and organizing conferences.
The University of Leicester offers a distance learning course entitled Learning and
Visitor Studies, and John F. Kennedy University’s program offers graduate courses
entitled The Visitor Experience: Learning Theories and Understanding Audiences,
Interpretive Methods and Applications.
A problem with applying the constructivist approach to museums is its tendency
towards reductionism and narrowcasting, resulting in a highly complex (and
paradoxically simplified) categorization of visitors. While this now plethora of typologies
may be useful to museum staff and may serve to personify the masses, they disregard the
multidimensionality of visitors’ characteristics and actions, their multimodal networks of
social relations, and the fundamental unpredictability of human nature. Furthermore, in
studies of online communities, categorization was found to produce in-group competition
and discrimination among members.
3
The practice of narrowcasting has become a trend
in the digital age not just with museums, but principally with corporations and the media
in order to more efficiently target their customers, now enabled by technological
developments in data mining, pattern mining, and web mining, among others.
The incorporation of technology by museums raises new questions about how
museums are considering the notion of their community and how they are serving that
community (or communities). Ross Parry (2007) notes the year 1967 as the momentous
3
A few of these studies include Dellarocas (October 2001), Building trust on-line: The design of reliable
reputation reporting: Mechanisms for online trading communities, MIT Sloan Working Paper No. 4180-01;
Rohde, Reinecke, Pape & Janneck (2003), Community-building with web-based systems - Investigating a
hybrid community of students, Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 13, 471–499; and Yan & Xin Li
(2009), Group identity and social preferences, American Economic Review, 99, 431–57.
17
birth of computerization in the museum at The Smithsonian Institution in Washington,
D.C., Computers in those early days were mainly used for internal purposes of efficiency,
record keeping, communication, and facilitating access to students and scholars.
Museums today are incorporating the latest technologies in their continuing attempt to
better serve their visitors, now a much wider and diverse group. Their websites offer
games, extensive image databases, social network connections, online shopping, videos,
and a calendar of events that often overshadow the more scholarly aspects of museum
activities. Interpretive tools within the physical galleries include digital kiosks, digital
labels and iPads, and tours that are now mobile, multi-media, and digital. The digital age
has spawned a participatory culture–particularly with the younger generation–that is
accustomed to immediacy, visual culture, less entry barriers, and an abundance of
publicly available information. Museums have successfully managed a balance between
upholding their traditional, scholarly standards of collection, research, conservation and
exhibition, while at the same time responding and adapting to a changing society. The
need for a holistic vision of museology that incorporates the local and global, virtual and
physical, fixed and mobile, becomes more manifest in the digital age where technology
has contributed to a distributed museum experience. The institution of museums is once
again (re)defining its social role, its authority, and its popularity in post-Postmodern
society.
18
Chapter Two: Framing a Changing Museology in the Digital
Age
Museology is experiencing a significant shift once again due to the institutional survival
of museums in the digital age. But to understand this shift is not merely to study the new
technologies used (both by museums and their visitors) or the new digital experiments
conducted. The digital age has affected nearly every aspect of modern society, causing a
cultural shift throughout the world. Therefore, it is necessary to frame a study of the
shifting museology with four major constructs that are tightly interlinked in the digital
age: place, community, technology, and culture. This chapter will describe these four
notions as they have been described by other scholars, raising critical issues, debates, and
questions about each that become more pronounced (and complicated) in the digital age,
serving as the theoretical foundation upon which this thesis investigates situated
technology praxis in the five case studies.
Edward S. Casey (1997) writes a remarkable philosophical history on the notion
of place that references great theorists, historians, and philosophers throughout the ages
starting with Aristotle and encompassing Newton, Kant, Heidegger, Lyotard, and
Deleuze and Guattari. He traces how place was prominent in early Greek thought, but
disappeared into the shadows of space throughout late Hellenistic times, medieval
philosophy and seventeenth century physics, only to return again in modern culture. This
thesis will not attempt to enter into the great debate over place and space–whether place
is in space or space is in place, which came first, or which is more relevant today–but
19
acknowledges the presence and significance of both in the digital age. Casey (1997)
describes how the reappearance of place requires a distinctly different form; “To spread
out in places is to leave (behind) the extensiveness of homogenous infinite space and to
inhabit a new kind of space, one that is heterogeneous and open, genuinely spaced-
out…it is open precisely in places” (p. 341). One of these different forms is proposed by
Eric Gordon and Adriana de Souza e Silva (2011), who argue for the primacy of locality
rather than physicality or place in the digital age (they call it the “networked world”).
Locality, they suggest, is a new hybrid space “composed by a mix of digital information
and physical localities” (p. 56). Manuel Castells (2000) prioritizes the “space of flows”–
another form–over the “space of places” in his idea of the global network society. Henri
Lefebvre (1974/1991) offers the idea of rhythms as one more form. Lefebvre believes that
rhythms invest places but are not a thing, aggregation of things, or even a flow, and are
derived from a relationship between space and time.
Today the central notions of place and space are integrally tied to the equally
central notions of community and culture. Nevertheless, all of these isomorphic concepts
(including the related terms public, public sphere, and society), have been points of
discussion, debate and writing since ancient times, with culture emerging later during the
Industrial Revolution. What has changed in modern times, however, is the fluidity with
which they are all correlated. Raymond Williams (1958/1983) and the modern field of
Cultural Studies declare that culture and society are separate in modernity, with the
former being more a social idea that came to be associated with an elite part of society.
Just as with place/space, this thesis will not enter into the debate over culture and society,
20
but acknowledges the presence and significance of both in the digital age. One cannot
discuss how culture is actively created and transformed without studying the social
conditions within which that process takes place. When Glenn Lowry, the director of the
Museum of Modern Art in New York, claims that, “museums across America have
become the defining public institutions of their communities” (as cited in Cuno, 2004, p.
131), he is referring to a modern (or post-Postmodern) institution that somehow
encompasses place, space, culture, community, public, public sphere, and society. The
road towards greater inclusion has not been a smooth one–and for some public museums
more bumpy than others–but we can certainly acknowledge the great efforts of art
museums in responding to diverse, and often competing, voices. And digital technology
is one very crucial tool with which museums are using to aid them in their continued
efforts. As public institutions where physical visits are still more social than individual,
museums are ever more concerned with inclusiveness and plurality regarding their
visitors and local communities, however, they also strive to place themselves within a
global framework. Museums have subdivided their members into groups that, aside from
adding to their hierarchical, dominant nature, provide a stable base of interest-based
constituents and financial support. The social capital that museums supply presents an
opportunity for the public to interact socially (especially certain privileged membership
groups), but more importantly, for the different classes, races, and ethnicities to interact
within a legitimate public space that still reflects normative, societal values.
An ethnographic study of art museums in the digital age looks at how museums
and their visitors are using technology across all the contextual constructs of place/space,
21
community, technology, and culture/society in order to discover the broader implications.
Because museums and museological practices today are engaged in their respective
places/spaces, communities, and cultures/societies, any contemporaneous study of them
must be as well, including their uses of digital technology that ultimately displace our
familiar understanding of all these terms. Each of the four concepts will now be discussed
in further detail. Despite their division as separate subchapters, they are considered
interrelated and so each will be woven throughout this theoretical discussion, as well as
in the five case studies.
Place/ Space/ Experience
This thesis claims, like Casey, that place has regained its prominence in the digital age.
This is not such a simple statement, however, as the notion of place has changed radically
from ancient times to the Enlightenment to the Industrial Revolution to the Digital Age.
What do we mean by place today? Does place imply physicality? Not if you consider the
validity of places in Second Life, or even when considering common Internet
terminology such as “landing on a Web site.” Does place imply locality? James Clifford
(1997) gives the example of the great world’s fairs starting in the nineteenth century
(London, Paris, and Chicago) where the local was always global. And even more so
today with synchronous digital communication technologies such as Skype, chat, web
conferencing and the latest, telepresence videoconferencing where place becomes that
indeterminate point of intersection within a global network of users; what Casey (1997)
22
refers to as the “omnilocality” of place. Finally, we can ask if place implies permanence?
For this answer, we turn both to theory and technology. Feminist theorists such as bell
hooks (2000) write about the marginality of women in democratic society, philosophers
such as Deleuze and Guattari (1980) write about nomads inhabiting a “special kind of
place,” and cultural theorists such as Stuart Hall (1997a), Homi Bhabha (1994), Nestor
García Canclini (2001), and Seyla Benhabib (2002) write about the causes and
consequences of the migration of classes, races, and ethnicities from the periphery to the
center, and the fluctuating nature of that new center. Similarly, developments in mobile
and location-based technologies, including virtual and augmented reality, allow us to talk
about the transference of place in the digital age. “We are where our devices are,” claim
Gordon and de Souza e Silva (2011). To describe this portable nature of social
connectedness due to online and mobile technologies, Mary Chayko (2008) uses the term
portable communities, which are “groupings that use small, wireless, easily transportable
technologies of communication (portable technologies) to facilitate interpersonal
connectedness and to make and share a collective identity and culture” (p. 8).
There are two main reasons why place has receded for the modern museum; one
is due to technology and the other due to the primacy of experience. Both are related,
however, as new digital technologies allow for new kinds of experiences, a rather
continuous cycle of dependence. In her book on public art, philosophy professor Hilda
Hein (2006) argues that the primacy of experiences in the mid-twentieth century served
to displace the museum’s collection, coining the term the “experiential museum.” As
museums became about experiences–“process over stasis”–they became less connected to
23
place; objects became “vehicles for the delivery of experience rather than as ends unto
themselves” (Hein, 2006, p. x). Nevertheless, Hein acknowledges that in our modern
society saturated with opportunities for experience and entertainment, the museum is
distinguished by the authenticity and materiality of its objects. Visitor experience can still
be place-based as museums and other institutions offer experiences within their physical
spaces, but ultimately experiences are defined by the individual that receives the
experience in a unique manner, and less by institutional intentions. Experiences subjugate
the place because they can be taken away by the visitor, stored in memory, and often
recalled through various strategies (analog and digital) that may no longer relate to the
original place-based experience.
Falk and Dierking (as cited in Tallon & Walker, 2008) concur with this idea that
museum experiences detach visitors from the physical museum place.
Since visitors do not make meaning from museums solely within the four
walls of the institution, effective digital media experiences require
situating the experience within the broader context of the lives, the
community, and the society in which visitors live and interact. (p. 27)
While museums certainly are not intentionally trying to drive visitors away from their
physical buildings and collections, they have largely come to accept the constructivist
notion of how learning and meaning are created by visitors within the context of their
personal backgrounds, interests, and lives. Based upon this modern museology is a
growing awareness that the emergence of personal mobile technologies allows visitors to
experience the museum wherever and whenever they choose. With mobile tours (such as
Art on Call at the Walker Art Center), visitors can call a number to hear more about work
they are standing in front of–either inside museum galleries, outside in museum gardens
24
or exteriors, or even throughout the city–or visitors can call the number from their home
at a later date and time, perhaps never intending a physical visit to the museum. Another
new feature called bookmarking creates a stronger connection between the physical
museum experience and a pre- or post-museum experience at the visitor’s home (or
wherever they may have Internet access). For example, Getty Bookmarks at the J. Paul
Getty Museum is a way for visitors to select their favorite works of art and then save
them on the museum website in a personal gallery. There are many variations of
bookmarks, with functions on audio and handheld tours where visitors are sent e-mails
with links to their bookmarks; visitors can access their bookmarks or personal galleries at
physical kiosks inside the museum, or through their own smartphones. A few more
examples of such personal spaces on museum websites include My Collection at the
Smithsonian American Art Museum, My Art Gallery at the Seattle Art Museum, My
Scrapbooks at the Art Institute of Chicago, and Art Collector at the Walker Art Center
and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
If place in the digital age no longer implies physicality, locality or permanence,
but rather a different form(s) such as those suggested by the scholars mentioned above,
then its reemergence in the digital age permits a symbiotic relationship with experience
rather than a contradictory one. Furthermore, the proposal of place/experience allows for
fluid movement through space and time as well as through society and community in
general. In Mobilities of Time and Space, Marita Sturken (2004) refers to the term
“nonplaces” first discussed by Marc Augé in 1995. She writes that,
If modernity was characterized by a separation of space and place, in
postmodernity, there is an emphasis on the proliferation of nonspaces–
25
airports, freeways, bank machines. The postmodern concept of the nonplace
thus bears a contiguous relationship to the modern sense of space as
compressed, traveled through, removed from actual places. (p. 79)
This thesis does not negate or reduce place, as in the postmodern concepts of nonplace or
nonspace, but proposes the additive, post-Postmodern concept of place/experience that
acknowledges its new form(s). Casey similarly suggests that “A place is more an event
than a thing to be assimilated to known categories” (as cited in Feld & Basso, 1996, p.
27) and James Clifford (1997) writes about location as “an itinerary rather than a
bounded site–a series of encounters and translations” (p. 11).
Ethnographers and anthropologists have long been aware that places are socially
and culturally constructed–contact zones–in turn influencing philosophers such as de
Certeau, Lefebvre, and even Albert Camus who stated in 1955 that “Sense of place is not
just something that people know and feel, it is something people do” (as cited in Basso,
1996, p. 88). This socio-cultural process, however, does not serve to transform place into
space, but rather remains an overriding and uninterrupted influence of space, place, and
locality throughout their digital transmutations. Gordon and de Souza e Silva (2011)
suggest that, “Now that our devices our [sic] location aware, we are much better
positioned to be location aware ourselves” (p. 54). As we pay more attention to place and
location today, we must remain conscious of their socio-cultural contextual framework.
Referring to the idea of place-based education, David Gruenewald (2003) uses the term
place-conscious education to demonstrate the need for the educational field to pay more
attention to places. Gruenewald also believes that places are social constructions, calling
this term “the new localism” that emerged in response to globalization. As the field of
26
education extends itself outwards towards places, it becomes more relevant to the lived
experience of students and teachers that consequently become more accountable so that
“places matter to educators, students, and citizens in tangible ways” (p. 620). A
consciousness of place, Gruenewald argues, is accordingly a consciousness of ourselves
as “place makers and participants in the sociopolitical process of place making” (p. 627).
This call for active participation–for place making–is associated with recent calls for
increased civic engagement (Putnam, 1995; Asen, 2004) and a recognition of the
participatory culture of the digital age.
When places are actively inhabited, created, and shared–like the practiced place
of DeCerteau (1984) or the representational space of Lefebvre (1991)–they become
public spheres. Jürgen Habermas (1962/1989) expounded on the bourgeois public sphere
in his influential book. The public sphere of eighteenth-century Europe united strangers
together, requiring only that one pay attention in order to become a member. The more
active acts of deliberation, argumentation, and ultimately agreement were also necessary
to form the ideal citizen that avoided violence by engaging in reasoned discourse.
Directly opposed to Habermas’ bourgeois public sphere is the proletarian public sphere,
as first proposed by Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge (1972/1993). The most important
distinctions are that there is not merely one public sphere but multiple public spheres, and
that the concept of community should be replaced with that of counterpublics (Fraser,
1990; Warner, 2005). Today’s public sphere is more accessible and democratic than its
predecessors, but discourse remains its defining factor. Museums can be considered
public spheres as critical places for individual development because they reflect societal
27
norms and values; they are places where public opinions are formed and presented, and
where participation and discourse are encouraged both by peers and authority figures.
Museums embrace the idea of the public sphere today; they offer free days to ensure
accessibility, free wifi to facilitate connectedness, they host lectures to encourage dialog,
create social groups (onsite and online) for their members to interact, and solicit
comments from visitors to publicly share.
While the public sphere is a useful concept to emphasize the need for individual
discourse, participation, and engagement on a macro level, it is still possible to talk about
place, or place/experience, as socio-culturally generated without needing to transform it
into other terms like public sphere, space, or public space. Public space is a more
contemporary notion of the public sphere that is used in fields such as urban design,
public policy, public art, and geography. Gordon and de Souza e Silva (2011) describe
public space as “a collection of minor social contracts” and refer to the urbanist William
Whyte’s description of “good” public space as the Seagram Building in Manhattan that
encourages casual conversation. Places have not disappeared (Castells, 2001; Lefebvre,
1974/1991), but have certainly been transformed by their inhabitants through changing
cultural practices, social relations, and through the developments of digital technology
and the ways in which such technologies are culturally adapted.
28
Community: To Be, or Not To Be
One of the most important changes in the modern populist museum is its increasing
concern for community as reflective of socio-cultural changes, particularly in the Western
world. The museum’s desire to deliberately incorporate its local community (or
communities)
4
has witnessed a parallel interest in strengthening civic engagement on the
part of governmental bodies, academia, and foundations that have all invested great sums
of time, knowledge and funding into the matter. It is generally assumed that a democratic
society is based upon the active participation of its members, resulting in if not
consensus, then at least dialogue and social interaction. In his influential work Bowling
Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Robert Putnam (2000)
demonstrates how social capital has been steadily declining since the 1950s, and is
especially worrisome with the youth of today. He proposes that the acquisition of social
capital through involvement in social organizations can lead to increased participation in
all aspects of society, which can strengthen the democratic process.
Despite his calls for greater civic participation, social capital, and community
engagement, Putnam acknowledges the complexities of the notion of community. He
traces the individualistic strain in the United States back to the Pilgrims that first came to
America escaping religious persecution in seventeenth-century England, and to Alexis de
Tocqueville’s idea of Democracy in America in the early nineteenth century. Putnam
4
The terms community and communities will be used interchangeably throughout this thesis,
acknowledging that some museums consider community in its singularity and others in its plurality. One
term is not judged to be better than the other, however it must be noted that when museums consider their
community in the singular, that entity is usually constituted by an intricate classification of subgroups that
could be construed as separate communities.
29
(2000) writes that, “Community has warred incessantly with individualism for
preeminence in our political hagiology. Liberation from ossified community bonds is a
recurrent and honored theme in our culture” (p. 24). The debate between the individual
and the community, and in particular, between the individual in relation to the
community, is similar to the debate between culture and its place within society. It is a
debate that started in an analog world hundreds of years ago, and one that continues in a
digital world where critics fear the socially isolating effects of technology. As with the
other debates–place and space, culture and society–this thesis will not argue for one
position or the other, but acknowledges the importance of both the individual and of the
individual becoming situated within community. This thesis also acknowledges the
ability of technology to support individual identity while concomitantly supporting
communities by creating new and improved means for communication on a one-to-one
basis as well as a one-to-many basis. In describing his notion of practiced place, de
Certeau (1984) asserts that, “The approach to culture begins when the ordinary man
becomes the narrator, when it is he who defies the (common) place of discourse and the
(anonymous) space of its development” (p. 5). Discourse is critical to place, to the public
sphere, to public space, to integrating culture into society, and most decidedly, to
building social capital and community as an active form of participation.
Before engaging in a conversation about museum communities, we must first ask,
when and how did the masses or the public of the eighteenth century become the
community of the twentieth century? Our modern-day notion of community encompasses
the masses that Frankfurt school philosophers Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno
30
warned about, as well as the somewhat restrictive public in Habermas’ public sphere, the
more inclusive counterpublics of Fraser and Warner, and even allows for the notion of
culture in the very classification or constitution of communities. The notion of
community empowers its members because it depends upon public participation and
formation, as with online communities with chat forums and personal recommendations.
However, communities can also be restrictive when imposing rules, social norms, and
expectations (explicit or implicit). Museums are increasingly concerned about their
community, but how do they define that community? And if there are multiple
communities, how are they classified? With practically every museum today having its
own website, community now takes on a global perspective through the ability to reach
anyone, anywhere, and at any time with an Internet connection. How does this new
global community of virtual visitors relate to the local community of physical visitors?
While at the same time expanding the notion of a museum community, digital
technology has also allowed museums to more efficiently serve many of their different
communities that they have already classified. Teachers can download lesson plans from
websites, members can renew online, students and scholars can search online collection
databases, mobile tours of exhibitions offer detailed information, and those more inclined
to participate can comment on blogs and social media, upload photos, tag objects on the
website, and play online games. This subchapter will briefly discuss how museums have
considered their community; it will describe a number of ways in which to consider
community today, and it will illustrate the impact of digital technology on community. I
31
will now briefly note different types of communities (physical, virtual, and hybrid) as
used by different theorists and fields for different purposes.
Interpretive Community
Sheila Watson (2007) writes about museums that work with and for a number of
communities rather than a single one in her edited book, Museums and Their
Communities. She refers to Dr. Rhiannon Mason’s (2005) typology of museum
communities as a useful way to extend Hooper-Greenhill’s notion of interpretive
communities: 1) shared historical or cultural experiences, 2) their specialist knowledge, 3)
demographic/socio-economic factors, 4) identities (national, regional, local or relating to
sexuality, disability, age and gender), 5) their visiting practices, and 6) their exclusion
from other communities. Watson notes that a target audience and a “public” are entirely
different from the notion of a community, although they are all related. Hooper-Greenhill
(1999) acknowledges the problem with museums targeting their audiences, but supports
her idea of interpretive communities.
We have become accustomed in recent years to thinking about “target
audiences,” and know that each target group needs to be considered
separately. We tend to talk about school-groups, families, tourists, people
with disabilities and so on. The concept “target group” is a marketing term
which enables the division of museum visitors on the basis of
demographic variables such as age, disability or life-stage. “Interpretive
communities” takes this a step further by focussing [sic] on those varying
strategies of interpretation that differentiated visitors will use to make
sense of the experience of the museum. (p. 8)
The complexity of community can clearly be seen here. Just as Samuel Huntington
(2000) said about culture, if community includes everything, it explains nothing; hence
32
the drive to deconstruct community into target groups, behavioral groups, and even
interpretive groups which themselves morph into separate (micro)communities to once
again become a target. How can a community be distinguished from a group, culture,
counterpublic, or more? The term community is most often used–despite its relative
uselessness–to describe the nature of any group, its individual members, and how they
are related.
Community of Interest
In The Age of Access, Jeremy Rifkin (2000) describes how corporate management and
marketing professionals discovered that establishing communities of interest is a
productive way to engage new customers and keep them loyal to the product over the
long term. The strong ties between customers and the product, as well as between
individual customers, are based on a shared interest in a product that in turn strengthens
the overall community. Most communities of interest are online because of the Internet’s
ability to connect like-minded people from around the world. Rifkin (2000) states,
“Private communications networks are forging new communities of interest that have
fewer and fewer ties to geography” (p. 224). Museums have long created physically-
grounded membership groups based on shared interests, and are now digitally
transforming them through their websites and social media use. Watkins and Russo
(2007) argue that, “increasing digital literacy within cultural institutions could be integral
to the further development of a co-creative relationship between institutions and
communities of interest” (p. 219). The Internet is enabling museums to forge stronger
33
connections between their online visitors and the museum, but as of yet, the ability for
individuals with similar interests to develop strong ties between themselves is still in its
infancy.
Community of Inquiry
Matthew Lipman (as cited in Garrison, Anderson & Archer, 2000) explains a community
of inquiry within the context of learning and educational experiences as a means of
“questioning, reasoning, connecting, deliberating, challenging, and developing problem-
solving techniques” (p. 91). Lipman (2003) writes that,
Inquiry is generally social or communal in nature because it rests on a
foundation of language, of scientific operations, of symbolic systems, of
measurements and so on, all of which are uncompromisingly social. But
while all inquiry may be predicated upon community, it does not follow
that all community is predicated upon inquiry. (p. 83)
The ideal educational experience within this type of community is based on the
overlapping factors of social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence that
constitute the community of inquiry model (Garrison, Anderson, Archer & Rourke et al.,
2007). A community of inquiry is essentially an educational community based more on
the practice of inquiry and learning than on a particular interest or affinity, and is most
often adapted to online/distance learning as mediated by computers. An example of this
type of community will be reviewed in the Museum of Modern Art’s Online Courses.
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Community of Practice/ Knowledge Community
First proposed by Etienne Wenger & Jean Lave in 1991, communities of practice are
knowledge-based, informally composed, self-organizing, and depend on deep individual
commitment. Participation is not mandatory in these communities, but is encouraged by
focusing on common interests, tasks, and goals. Wenger (2000) further explained these
communities by stating that their effectiveness is a factor of how well they connect with
other communities and constituencies, “not a matter of their internal development alone”
(p. 11). Communities of practice are not principally educational communities, nor are
they solely based on shared interests despite being compared to affinity groups (James
Paul Gee), but are formed around common practices such as discourse (also known as
discourse communities) and knowledge transfer that prioritize social relations between
members.
Communities of practice are also referred to as knowledge communities, based on
the sharing of knowledge and specific topics of interest. Most knowledge communities
are online (called virtual communities of practice) facilitated by digital communication
technologies; a few examples are wikis, online forums, comments on blogs, and social
media. Caroline Haythornthwaite (2011) distinguishes between knowledge crowds
(crowdsourcing) and knowledge communities as two ends of the spectrum, the main
difference being that the former is comprised of anonymous individuals with no defined
commitment to contribute, and the latter with known participants that contribute often.
Museums have experimented with crowdsourced exhibitions, and now commonly use
blogs and social media that solicit public comments, as well as occasional wikis for
35
special projects. All of these participatory practices, however, do not imply that the
overall structure of museums is to be considered a community of practice or a knowledge
community, but that certain programs may benefit from the social, collaborative nature of
these communities.
Collective
The concept of a collective is not a new one, or even one created by academics. It is,
according to Douglas Thomas and John Seeley Brown (2011), “a community of similarly
minded people” (p. 21). The collective can be perceived as an alternative to the notion of
community, and Thomas and Brown clearly make the distinctions. Communities can be
passive (although not all are), but collectives absolutely cannot be passive as they enable
agency. In communities, people learn in order to belong, and in collectives, people
belong in order to learn. Communities are strengthened by creating a sense of belonging
to something greater than oneself such as an institution, but collectives are strengthened
by participation where there is no sense of a center. Collectives are defined by, “an active
engagement with the process of learning” and not by shared interests, actions, or goals (p.
52). Thomas (2011) describes the importance of the collective as an outcome of the
growth of the networked age and imagination (largely due to the Internet and social
media): “the creation of new social formations that radically transform the relationship
between structure and agency” (p. 1). Thomas and Brown’s concept of a collective is not
related to the idea of collective intelligence that is based on collaboration (collective
behavior) towards achieving a common goal, or even to collective action theory (Olson
36
Jr., 1965) which is more applicable to social movements and also dependent on group
action for the collective good. While the authors position communities and collectives at
opposite ends of the spectrum, they also believe the two to be compatible.
Network
The concept of the network is another alternative means of perceiving community. J.
Barnes was the first to study social networks in the context of a Norwegian island parish
in the early 1950s. Much like Putnam’s emphasis on the value of social capital, social
network theory views social relationships in terms of nodes and links between individuals
which are ultimately more important than individual attributes or agency. Social networks
are structured to increase individual connections, as well as to provide information and
set policies. Again favoring the communal over the individual, Mark Granovetter (1982)
proposed his idea about “the strength of weak ties” where a large network of weak ties is
more powerful than a small network of strong ties in relation to innovation. From a
sociological perspective, Barry Wellman and Keith Hampton (1999) claim that,
“communities are clearly networks…people usually have more friends outside their
neighborhood than within it” (p. 648). They observe a modern shift from living in “little-
box societies” that deal with only a few groups such as home, neighborhood, work or
voluntary organizations, hierarchically structures, to living in “networked societies” with
more permeable boundaries, more diverse members, and more opportunities for social
connections. Providing an important perspective to social network theory is Manuel
Castells’ idea of networked individualism that highlights the increased individuation of
37
the digital age. Castells (2001) states that, “Networked individualism is a social pattern,
not a collection of isolated individuals. Rather, individuals build their networks, on-line
and off-line, on the basis of their interests, values, affinities, and projects” (p. 131).
The emergence of the Internet generated a more comprehensive study of networks
and patterns of relationships, now facilitated by digital technology. Computer-supported
social networks, or computer networks that bring together people and machines, emerged
in the 1960s when ARPANET (The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) was
developed by the U.S. defense departments (Wellman et al., 2000; Wellman & Hampton,
1999). Peter Lyman (2004) proposes the idea of a network-mediated community as a new
kind of public space that originally referred to basic Web functions such as chat groups,
electronic mail and lists, but eventually created a sense of intimacy and belonging for its
users. However Ross Parry (2007) detects a problem with assigning the network concept
to museums in the digital age. He believes that, “the modularity of the distributed
network was incompatible with the singularity that had for centuries defined the
museum” (p. 95). While museums have for years now used the Internet to reach out to
their entire known community and beyond, Parry is concerned that the distributed,
modular nature of the Web can fragment the centrality of the institution by deepening
social divides and facilitating the broadcasting and publishing of content.
There has been a tremendous amount written about motivations to join and participate in
communities, the effects of belonging to communities, and how communities can best
sustain themselves. The homophily theory (McPherson; Smith-Lovin & Cook, 2001;
38
Kandel, 1978) suggests that people seek out others similar to themselves, which leads to a
networking effect. For these individuals to find new information or different sources they
have to look outside the group, which could lead to either a weakening of the group or an
infusion of new members if they are successfully brought into the group. Also related to
the homogenizing of networks, the contagion effect states that different people become
more similar if they are in the same network. In 2007, Ren, Kraut, and Kiesler proposed
the common identity and common bond theories as ways to predict the causes and
consequences of individual social attachments. Common identity theory focuses on
individual attachments to the group where members feel a commitment to the
community’s mission caused by interdependence, inter-group comparisons, and social
categorization, with effects such as high conformity to group norms, newcomers feeling
welcome, and generalized reciprocity. Common bond theory focuses on individual
attachments to other individual group members, where members feel a social or
emotional attachment to other people in the group caused by social interaction, divulging
personal information, and interpersonal similarity, with effects such as off-topic
discussion, low conformity to group norms, direct reciprocity, and newcomers feeling
ostracized. The social identity theory (Tajfel, 1978) claims that people are motivated to
join certain groups in order to develop a positive self-image. Whether an individual
identifies more with other group members (interpersonal attraction) or with the
community (social identification) determines how much an individual self-categorizes,
also known as self-categorization theory (Turner et al., 1987). Personal identity becomes
more pronounced when individuals have greater interpersonal attraction (similar to the
39
identity-based attachment theory). If individuals are not categorized by the community,
then they will self-categorize, which could lead to self-stereotyping and de-
personalization, often based on perceived characteristics of the community. A person’s
identity, however, can be both personal and social, with one appearing more salient than
the other at any given time. Relevant to the topic of online communities and computer-
mediated communication is the social identity model of deindividuation effects (Reicher,
Spears & Postmes, 1995), which proposes that in virtual conditions of anonymity, a
common group identity become more salient. In face-to-face, interpersonal interaction,
those possessing a strong social identification with the community are more likely to
develop interpersonal attractions with other members.
Rather than fixed and static, communities are heterogeneous and transformative,
places are like circuits, flows, processes and experiences, and cultures are adaptable and
migratory. Change is inevitable, but it nonetheless causes uncertainty and suspicion.
Marita Sturken and Douglas Thomas (2004) comment on these repercussions, “New
communities are continually made possible by the innovations of new communication
technologies, yet as these new communities form, fears surface that they will undermine
existing networks of connectivity, the family and the neighborhood” (p. 4). A review of
these different concepts of community, as well as the many theories that explain
motivations to join and participate, allows for reflection on the notion of museums and
community that will frame the case studies. Can museums be considered a community
unto themselves and if so, what type of community, how do they motivate participation,
and what are their rules of engagement? Is it more appropriate to talk about museums as a
40
collective that have no hierarchy, center, or restrictions. Are museums a network of social
relations, or a network-mediated community? And if museums are themselves
communities or networks, how do they relate to their external communities and networks
on the local, national, and global levels? The answers to these questions depend to a large
extent on how much museums change in the digital age, and so the five exemplary
museums will demonstrate how the latest digital technologies are being used in relation
to place, culture, and community, in all their contemporaneous complexities.
Technology and its Implications
Artists have always incorporated new innovations into their practice, starting with the
invention of portable easels, canvas, and oil paint. Museums, on the other hand, have
historically been more resistant to changing their practices. Museums benefited early on
from technology in the 1920s such as the inventions of plate glass and electric spot lights
to accommodate the working classes that visited in the evenings (Tallon, 2008), and they
later embraced the development of computers and database systems for internal working
purposes. Nonetheless, it was not until the emergence of the new museology in the late
twentieth century that technology became utilized for visitor-centric practices that gave
visitors agency in their own experiences and learning. The very large and dynamic field
of digital art (also known as net art, computer art, electronic art, or new media art) visibly
manifests the convergence of art and technology, and art museums are one of the main
media for the conservation, display, dissemination, and interpretation of digital art. This
41
thesis does not attempt to study these artistic practices because the socio-cultural
relevance of art museums in the digital age is best understood independent of their
specific collections.
The new museology started museums thinking about how to best serve society
and their community. Today in the digital age, museums are no longer working for their
community but with their community; meaning that the participatory culture of the digital
age, armed with the technology to facilitate instantaneous communication from anywhere
in the globe, inspires new museum experiences including user-generated content, crowd-
curated exhibitions, personalized online collections, and social media-supported affinity
and membership groups. In his introduction to Museums and Communities, Ivan Karp
(1992) claims that “the best way to think about the changing relations between museums
and communities is to think about how the audience, a passive entity, becomes the
community, an active agent” (p. 12). Karp distinguishes communities as demanding more
active participation from their members, but by generalizing audiences as passive he
denies the inherent value of a community that allows for plurality of experiences,
cultures, voices, histories, and even modalities of learning and participation that may
prefer passivity. Although the new museology embraces such a plurality, it also actively
seeks participation from its visitors; how to reconcile these two constitutes one of the
great challenges facing museums in the digital age.
Some of the most prominent scholars working in the area of participation,
learning, youth, and digital media include Henry Jenkins, S. Craig Watkins, Eszter
Hargittai, Mizuko Ito, and Sonia Livingstone. A great amount of research has been
42
supported by institutions such as The Pew Research Center (Internet and American Life
Project), The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (Digital Media and
Learning initiative), and the U.S. Institute for Museum and Library Services (Engaging
America’s Youth initiative). As described by Jenkins et al. (2006), “Participatory culture
is emerging as the culture absorbs and responds to the explosion of new media
technologies that make it possible for average consumers to archive, annotate,
appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful new ways” (p. 8). A serious
concern for these scholars and institutions is the participation gap, which is based on
access to online spaces and experiences that enable participation, rather than the more
well-known digital divide which concerns basic access to computers and the Internet.
Jenkins et al. (2006) cite the goal of a participatory culture as to encourage families,
schools, governmental policies, and media companies to encourage more youth to
participate by teaching the necessary skills and cultural knowledge. John Palfrey and Urs
Gasser (2008) call these youth digital natives. They focus on the importance of social
identity for this group, where online creativity and digital creations are forms of self-
expression inherently social and collaborative. According to Palfrey and Gasser (2008),
“Interaction and a sense of community are the key requests of those born digital when it
comes to online learning” (p. 248).
Slack and Wise (2005) propose a Cultural Studies view of technology with their
notion of technological culture. Technology, they argue, is caused by culture rather than
conversely being a cause for cultural change (technological determinism). “As culture
changes,” they claim, “it needs and develops new technologies to accomplish its goals”
43
(p. 46). In this view, the adoption of technology in museums is a means of adapting to a
changing culture that develops new technologies to serve its changing needs. Anne
Balsamo (2011) proposes the term technoculture that addresses both technology and
culture as unified rather than oppositional. British museologist Ross Parry (2007)
summarizes this socio-cultural constructivist view of technology in his book, Recoding
the museum: Digital heritage and the technologies of change.
In every case we see a culture attempting to make sense of its material
surroundings, its knowledge and its experience, by containing them within
a closed, ordered and logical system. Museums belong to this history of
structured knowledge. In a sense the museum project represents the
endeavor of many societies, in their own time and cultural context, to
extract and then give meaning to fragments of their past and present. (p.
33)
While it is relatively easy to theorize about the cultural ground on which
technology is used within society, and about the symbiotic relationship between
culture and technology, it becomes much more difficult to research and establish
current technocultural practices in museums. As museums become more place-
conscious due to new digital technologies, so must they remain culturally-
conscious in the integration of new technologies. Museums continue to struggle
with what it means to be culturally conscious and inclusive in regards to their
traditional roles and practices, but their speedy entry into the digital age is forcing
them to determine their position on culture–to determine what is meant by their
particular museum culture–and to determine how that culture influences their uses
of technology.
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Culture Matters
5
to Museums
The notions of culture and the public sphere overlap because of how they both engage
discourse, conflict, and convergence on a social level. As we briefly discussed the
complexities of place in the digital age (space, nonplace, localism, mobility, virtual
places, public sphere), so can we also discuss the possibly even greater complexities of
culture (cultural production, cultural consumption, cultural imperialism, cultural
hybridity, cultural plurality, cultural systems, cultural identity, etc.) and how the modern
museum approaches the subject as relates to its use of digital technology. Raymond
Williams (1976/2002) claims that partly due to its complicated historical development
during the Industrial Revolution, culture “is one of the two or three most complicated
words in the English language” (p. 36). The other reason is because it is a popular term
that has been applied to a broad array of intellectual disciplines, fields, and ways of
thinking. Which is why Samuel Huntington (2000) argues that, “if culture includes
everything, it explains nothing,” and therefore proposes to define culture in purely
subjective terms. This leads to one of the great debates in the field of Cultural Studies;
the universalist versus the relativist view of culture. Is identity based on shared
experiences and histories (universalist), or is it self-constructed through everyday
practices (relativist)? Can diverse identities be incorporated into a larger society by
indoctrinating normative values through the education system or the global economy
(universalist), or can society be reshaped instead through the multiple voices that refuse
5
Harrison, L. E., & Huntington, S. P. (Eds.). (2000). Culture matters: How values shape human progress.
New York: Basic Books.
45
to be assimilated (relativist)? These are questions not only for scholars, but also for
museum professionals that have discovered how difficult–and contentious–can be the
treatment of culture in a modern, social institution, and in particular one focused on art.
There are various meaning of culture due to its inherent ambiguity and ubiquity.
Precisely because this thesis studies art museums, it will not consider the notion of
culture as high (the fine arts generally considered to include painting, drawing, and later
sculpture) or low (a factor of class, income and education as expounded by Pierre
Bourdieu). The modern art museum has aptly proven its ability to rise above this
restrictive dichotomy by incorporating popular culture, folk culture, and outsider art into
its hallowed exhibition halls, aided by the more recently formed departments of
education, public programming, and interpretation that serve to coalesce high and low
culture. Rather, this thesis will use culture in its manner of describing the shared
characteristics of a group of individuals (ethnic, racial, religious, and social), a physical
community, or an institution. The two meanings of culture are not dissimilar, however, as
we observe in Horkheimer and Adorno’s (1944) concept of the culture industry that
describes the socio-economic system in which symbols of high art are threatened by its
very popularization.
6
The early art museums encouraged interaction between the working
and upper classes for the purposes of urban socialization, but they also served as
important spaces that was set apart from the mundane world, encouraging contemplation,
reverence, and reserved sentiment through their art objects and sacred environment.
6
Horkheimer and Adorno did not specifically mention the art museum in their writings, but other notable
authors that have similarly approached the subject include Pierre Bourdieu and Alain Darbell (1969) in The
Love of Art: European Museums and their Public, Nestor García Canclini (1995) in Hybrid Cultures, John
Berger (1972) in Ways of Seeing, and more recently Bill Ivey (2008) in Arts, Inc.
46
This thesis will address both the local and diverse culture of the physical
communities in which each museum is situated, as well as the broader culture of
museums from their historical antecedents to their current place in the digital age. It must
be noted, however, that the local does not imply provinciality; nor must it be treated as
antithetical to the global. More pronouncedly in the digital age, local culture is
unquestionably global due to increased migration, international commerce, and digital
technology that facilitate both factors, including communication and the global
distribution of entertainment. Similarly, locally-based museums (Boston Museum of Fine
Arts, Art Institute of Chicago, Detroit Institute of Art, etc.) can also be considered
international institutions that owe their founding and still much funding to their local
communities, but are increasingly global in reach and reputation. Two hundreds years
ago or so, local community leaders aspired to acquire encyclopedic collections of the
highest quality from around the world to draw attention to their burgeoning cities that
would rise in stature together with these great museums.
The argument of Cultural Studies scholars that culture is formed through social
relations and individual agency was a reaction to the great nineteenth-century German
theorists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848), who instead believed that culture was
purely a result of the economic system. Supporting Marx and Engels, Horkheimer and
Adorno (1947/2002) wrote about the culture industry that they feared was systematically
“inflecting everything with sameness” (p. 94). Modern capitalist societies produced
culture as a commodity, and objects previously valued for their utility were now valued
based on the extent to which they could be exchanged. These early debates within the
47
field influenced later scholars that more deeply explored ideas of the hegemonic impact
on culture and the extent to which culture is formed as a result of individual agency as
related to external forces. Williams (1980) offers an important contribution to the field
with his belief that hegemony depends on a process of incorporating both residual and
emergent forms, which explains how the dominant culture changes while remaining both
dominant and relevant. American scholar Lawrence Grossberg (1997) suggests that
people are often “complicit in their own subordination” (p. 8). Although people are often
manipulated and lied to, Grossberg believes they are not passively manipulated by the
media or by capitalism. Hegemony, he states, seeks to dominate “through consent rather
than coercion, through representation rather than falsification, through legitimation rather
than manipulation” (p. 152). The British cultural theorist Stuart Hall (1982) similarly
discusses the consensus theory of hegemony. He claims, “Hegemony implied that the
dominance of certain formations was secured, not by ideological compulsion, but by
cultural leadership” (p. 85). Hall (1980a) distinguishes between the humanities definition
of culture and the structuralist one which he espouses. He wants to rethink culture as a
set of everyday practices that are part of what he describes as moments of encoding and
decoding, and how they correspond to the potential positions of dominant, negotiated,
and opposition. Writing about popular culture, Hall (2002, p. 187) sees its relation to the
dominant culture as “the dialectic of cultural struggle,” with popular culture representing
an alternative form but still subject to the forces of domination.
Raymond Williams is probably the most influential scholar to tackle the concept
of culture. He views modernity as “constituted by the separation of culture and society,”
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yet he refuses to accept such a separation. Hall (2002) also considers the separation of art
from politics and everyday life to be a recent and uniquely Western historical
phenomenon. Culture is a fundamental part of society and our idea of perfection must
include the culture of the individual, the culture of the group, and the culture of the whole
society as well. Another key area in which Williams influenced Cultural Studies is the
discussion of culture (high and low) and the masses. In Culture and Society: 1780–1950,
Williams (1958/1983b) warned that “the masses…formed the perpetual threat to culture.
Mass-thinking, mass-suggestion, mass-prejudice would threaten to swamp considered
individual thinking and feeling” (p. 298). The culture he is referring to here is of the
“high” nature because he describes the masses as having “lowness of taste and habit.” In
the new world of mass communication, Williams makes a distinction between a “physical
massing of persons in industrial towns and factories” and a “social and political
massing,” the latter of which would lead to mass-democracy and “the rule of lowness or
mediocrity” (p. 299). Nevertheless, Williams believes there are actually no masses;
“There are only ways of seeing people as masses…What we see, neutrally, is other
people, many others, people unknown to us. In practice, we mass them, and interpret
them, according to some convenient formula” (p. 300). The masses are partly a result of a
primitive desire for solidarity that Williams claims is necessary for society. He argues for
a common culture and a common experience, but clearly writes that this does not mean
an equal culture; in fact, he states that inequality is “inevitable and even welcome” in
society.
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Many of the issues that Cultural Studies has been struggling with are at the center
of the discussion of museums as cultural institutions. If museums are cultural (and
subsequently social) institutions, then how much must they reflect society’s values and
concerns? And which part of society, the popular masses or the power elite? Likewise,
which culture must a museum represent, that of the nation or the community or certain
sub-cultural groups (counterpublics) as defined by race, ethnicity and religion? Are
culture and society separate in modernity as Williams alleges, or if we consider ourselves
beyond modernity today can we reconcile the two? Williams and most Cultural Studies
scholars support a coming together of culture and society, but this places museums in the
controversial–and hegemonic–position of representing very specific elements of both
culture and society. Sheila Watson (2007) points out that, “The relationship museums
have with their communities must be based on the recognition that this is an unequal one,
with the balance of power heavily tipped in favour of the institution” (p. 9). While the
relativist view of culture recognizes the different features of different peoples and
societies around the world, refusing to make generalizations, the universalist view
stresses the commonalities that bring disparate peoples together.
The early museum of nineteenth-century Europe was not a cultural institution in
the sense of high culture–despite its valuable collections of paintings, sculptures, and
other treasure from around the world–but rather in its ability as an esteemed public
institution to attract more educated crowds that would teach the masses proper manners,
tastes, and dress. The culture of the masses was not recognized or even valued for its
diversity in a pluralistic society, but instead was seen as needing to conform to a
50
homogeneous ideal, that of civilized society. These museums were public only in that
they received scholars and members of the bourgeois that were required to present their
credentials upon entry. It took a while for museums to open up on Sundays and evenings
to accommodate the working class, as there was still pervasive fear that the masses would
disturb their precious collections and reverent atmosphere. By adopting functions of the
state that catered more to the needs of the uneducated public than that of the educated
bourgeoisie, the public museum soon became what Habermas called, a “sphere of culture
consumption,” due to its promulgation of mass culture.
The modern museum inherited this difficult position that vacillates between
representing interests of the state and those of the public(s). Today most U.S. museums
exist as a hybrid public-private institution, receiving funding from both entities and
responsible to both in varying degrees. The twentieth century saw a proliferation in
different genres of museums that responded to different groups: ethnic-specific museums,
community museums, historic house museums, open air museums, folk museums,
maritime museums, children’s museums, automobile museums, and railway museums,
just to name a few. Nancy Fuller (1992) describes the ecomuseums that started in France
in the late 1960s and can now be found around the world, where the museum is seen as
part of the larger landscape connected “to the whole of life.” These museums are
generally constituted from the bottom up, representing more the specialized interests of
local constituents and public masses rather than the power elite. Nevertheless, there
remain many museums today (mostly art museums) that would deny any association with
mass or popular culture, despite placing great importance on populist activities such as
51
community outreach, public programming, visitor studies, and the great equalizing force
of the blockbuster exhibition. Most museums try to remain neutral, believing this to be
their source of legitimacy and power, but even so, the modern museum addresses more
social issues in its desire to be relevant to current issues, as well as in response to many
artists who themselves address such issues in their work (e.g., agitprop art, activist art,
political art). British media scholar John Fiske (1992) raises the concept of cultural
distance as a key marker of high and low culture. He believes that, “The separation of the
aesthetic from the social is a practice of the elite who can afford to ignore the constraints
of material necessity, and who thus construct an aesthetic which not only refuses to
assign any value at all to material conditions, but validates only those art forms which
transcend them” (p. 154).
The critical issue of how modern museums relate to society not only involves
current social and political issues, but also the diverse peoples and cultures that comprise
modern society, and in particular, the local, marginalized, and immigrants. In 1988,
Clifford wrote that the predicament of culture occurs when “marginal peoples come into
a historical or ethnographic space that has been defined by the Western imagination” (p.
5). Whereas in the 1800s culture was viewed as a single, evolutionary process, Clifford
argues that in the 1900s culture is viewed in the plural, a view shared by Michel de
Certeau (1974/1997) in his book Culture in the Plural. De Certeau (1984) states that,
“The approach to culture begins when the ordinary man becomes the narrator, when it is
he who defies the (common) place of discourse and the (anonymous) space of its
development” (p. 5). Since their inception, museums have acted in the service of the state
52
and continue today to a lesser degree (yet not with the socially reformist intentions of the
past), but museums have only recently begun to act in the service of their public. In
writing about the fundamental relationship between museums and community heritage in
Ireland, Elizabeth Crooke (2008) declares that,
The links between museums, heritage and community are so complex that
it is hard to distinguish which one leads the other–does heritage construct
the community or does a community construct heritage?...communities
need the histories and identities preserved and interpreted in museums;
and the museum sector needs the people, in the many communities, to
recognise the value of museums and justify their presence. (p. 1)
To re-think museums as cultural institutions in the digital age is to critically consider how
they use technology to reflect and maintain their legitimacy and authority, the extent to
which technologies support difference and dialog, and how technology allows museums
to reflect cultural norms and values in the pluralist sense.
53
Chapter Three: Methodology
This thesis began with three general research questions based on a specific interest in art
museums in the digital age, their disparate uses of technologies, and their shifting roles
and practices as related to a shifting culture.
RQ1: How are art museums addressing digital technology today? What is their
motivation to use it and what do they hope to achieve with it?
RQ2: How are art museums addressing the notion of community online, how is that
online community related to their physical community, and what is the role of
place in the networked museum of the digital age?
RQ3: How can technology help all museums to better understand and engage their
communities in the digital age?
The theoretical bases previously described incorporate ideas from the various fields of
cultural studies, museums studies, digital humanities, ethnography, sociology,
communication, art history, education, and media studies. A similarly complex
combination of methods was necessary to study a subject that is relatively nascent, often
difficult to breach from the outside due to the traditional elite status of museums, and
rapidly changing as it tries to keep up with a rapidly changing society and its changing
modes of communication, socialization, creation, and learning.
54
Case Studies
I selected the methodology of case studies in order to more deeply examine the changing
nature of museology in the digital age. The five museums were chosen based on one
criterion alone; their exceptional use of technology at the time this research began
(summer 2010). Because the incorporation of digital technology is still largely a factor of
a museum’s economic abilities, availability of knowledgeable staff and overall
institutional support, it was only by removing these variables that this study could focus
on how technology (in its most current forms) is being used with respect to place,
community, and culture. The philosopher Martin Heidegger (1997) considers technology
as “a way of revealing” through ordering, referencing Aristotle and the ancient Greek
word τέχνη that connotes truth and a bringing forth.
7
The focus on museums’ use of
technology reveals significant insights into how museums are responding and adapting to
a changing society in the digital age.
The five museums were selected based on my thorough knowledge of art
museums, technology, and the digital age in general, as gleaned through my Masters
degree in art history/museum studies, years of working as an art curator, critic, and
historian, and most recently, five years of focused doctoral study on the topic at the
University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and
7
In modern Greece the word techne (τέχνη) is used for art as we know it today, yet the ancient Greeks’
idea of art was different, implying more of a skill, technique, or craft such as painting or sculpture;
activities that were based on knowledge and apprenticeship rather than divine inspiration such as with the
higher ranked forms of poetry and music.
55
Journalism.
8
During this period of doctoral study, I participated in and presented research
at numerous international conferences, biennials, and webinars including Museums and
the Web, the American Association of Museums, Digital Humanities, IMLS WebWise,
THAT (The Humanities and Technology) Camp Bay Area, The International Conference
on the Arts in Society in conjunction with the Venice Biennale in 2009, and the 2008
01SJ Biennial in San Jose, California. I attended the International School on Digital
Transformation in Portugal, organized by the University of Porto and the University of
Texas, Austin, and from 2008 to 2011 I was part of a research team at USC led by
Professor Anne Balsamo to study the future of museums and libraries as informal spaces
of learning and community building, supported by a grant from the MacArthur
Foundation.
In addition to reading numerous articles and books on the subjects of museums,
technology, and the digital age, as reflected in the References, I also read wikis
(MuseumMobile Wiki, the NMC Horizon Project: Museum Edition) and blogs,
subscribing to many RSS (rich site summary) feeds.
9
I participated as a HASTAC
(Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory) Scholar,
networking and blogging within a select group of international scholars in the digital
humanities field for a year. My research included frequent visiting of art museums and
8
A few of the research projects included museum teen websites, cell phone tours and the history of
systemic order in museums, museums and the knowledge gap, online communities, participatory culture in
museums, and the social effects of online public access of cultural information on the Internet.
9
A listing of some feeds: Museum 2.0, Museum 3, ARTSblog from Americans for the Arts, Museum Nerd,
Musematic, 3
rd
of May, fresh + new(er), Techdirt, Museum Media, Center for the Future of Museums,
MuseumNext, UpNext: The IMLS Blog, New Media Consortium’s The Pulse, TourSphere’s Points of
Interest blog, Agenda’s Museum Strategy.
56
spaces around the world, testing mobile tours and interactive devices and activities at
each museum and online, documentation by taking photographs, and interviewing and
maintaining relationships with museum professionals. It is noteworthy that while
conducting interviews at each institution inevitably the question arose about which other
museums are to be studied, and upon hearing the complete list, everyone consistently
agreed that those were indeed the most active, groundbreaking, and innovative art
museums today with regards to their use of digital technology.
While the museums were not chosen based on their geographic locations, it is
important to note that two museums are located in the Midwest in urban metropolises,
two on the East Coast in a large, cosmopolitan city, and one on the West Coast in a mid-
sized, cosmopolitan city. Each physical museum community is distinct, and each was
analyzed with regards to various public data such as crime statistics (FBI Uniform Crime
Report, Crime in the U.S.), quality of life (Mapping the Measure of America, American
Human Development Project of the Social Science Research Council), measure of civic
participation (Civic Life in America, Corporation for National and Community Service),
and demographic breakdown (U.S. Census). The physical communities varied based on
the data sources that were used and included city, county, city/county, state,
congressional district, and borough. Despite all being large, established museums, each of
the five museums still faces limitations and challenges that are relevant to any size arts
institution in any geographic location.
When studying the broad field of museums, a distinction must be made between
different types of museums for research purposes. The American Association of
57
Museums (AAM) describes museums as including museums of anthropology, art history
and natural history, aquariums, arboreta, art centers, botanical gardens, children’s
museums, historic sites, nature centers, planetariums, science and technology centers, and
zoos. While they are united by their “unique contribution to the public by collecting,
preserving, and interpreting the things of this world,” according to the AAM, each differs
greatly as far as their collections, the services they provide to their visitors, their histories,
and social environments. This dissertation focuses on art museums because of their
particular ability to sustain a discussion around issues pertinent in the digital age such as
authenticity, contemplation, discourse, expertise, creativity, and authority. Art museums
are different from scientific or natural history museums because they preserve and
display unique objects rather than a series of species, progressions through history, or
objects that principally demonstrate natural and scientific phenomena. The unique object
has its undeniable aura due to its archaic ritual value, as explained by Walter Benjamin
(1935). The originality of the artwork also plays a major part in determining its market
value, which in modern, capitalist society is a factor of price. Nevertheless, this aspect
becomes problematic in the digital age, as Benjamin forewarned with the medium of
cinema. Museums of all types exhibit artifacts of culture and history and are themselves a
living institution of society; however, this thesis argues that above all other museums, art
museums best reflect the history, values, and norms of society. The five museums were
not chosen based on their particular type of art museum. All are private museums, but
one focuses on contemporary art, two on modern art, and two are encyclopedic art
58
museums that incorporate a variety of time periods, world cultures, and media such as
design, jewelry, and textiles.
In order to study society and culture as a context in which museums are
integrating digital technology, we need to look to the arts as one of the most potent
expressions of that context. In The Internet Galaxy, Manuel Castells (2001) eloquently
describes the importance of art as an important means of understanding the culture in
which it is created and experienced.
In a world of broken mirrors, made of non-communicable texts, art could
be without any deliberative agenda, just by being, a protocol of
communication and a tool of social reconstruction…Art, increasingly a
hybrid expression of virtual and physical materials, may be a fundamental
cultural bridge between the net and the self. (p. 205)
John Dewey (1934) confirms the social aspect of art that orders and unifies collective life
in Art as Experience; “Art also renders men aware of their union with one another in
origin and destiny” (p. 271). Referring to artists as “the social conscience,” Marshall
McLuhan (1964/2003) writes that, “Art as a radar acts as an early alarm system, as it
were, enabling us to discover social and psychic targets in lots of time to prepare to cope
with them” (p. 16). Art (high and low, non-utilitarian and utilitarian) is representative of a
culture because it is produced by members of a society that reflect (or reflect upon) its
shared cultural values, memories, meanings, aspirations, and art museums are devoted to
interpreting and exhibiting these socio-cultural expressions for public benefit.
59
Digital Ethnography
The methodology used for this research was a combination of quantitative and qualitative
methods. The quantitative approach was necessary because museums have traditionally
measured success by counting the number of tickets sold, school children that come to
the museum, total visitor attendance, seats filled in the auditorium, and even the number
of clicks on a website, downloads of a video or podcast, or uploads of comments and
photos. Numbers remain important to museum administrators, trustees, funders, and
public officials, and are shared and even compared within the larger museum community
(as with the Association of Art Museum Directors’ annual State of North America’s Art
Museums Survey), or with the public as in the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s online
Dashboard. Numbers are an essential starting point; however, a qualitative approach was
also necessary in order to conduct a deeper, ethnographic study of museums in the digital
age that would reveal the full context in which they are using technology.
History, natural history, and encyclopedic museums have traditionally been sites
of cultural anthropological study by scholars and students trained in collections-based
research. Certainly art museums have been the focus of art historical study, but not as
much ethnographic focus because art is generally not considered to be objects used by
individuals and societies reflecting local cultures, histories, and practices, but rather
primarily for their aesthetic and formalist values. Today most museums have archived
their collections online with digital images and archival data, and so collections-based
research rarely entails working directly with the objects anymore. Ethnographic research
60
in museums experienced a resurgence in the late twentieth-century with the popularity of
visitor studies. These studies applied traditional ethnographic methods including
observations, interviews, focus groups, and data gathering, resulting in the categorization
of visitors by interests, motivations, prior knowledge, and background, among many
others.
Traditionally housed within the disciplines of anthropology and sociology, the use
of ethnography for purposes of social research entered the field of communication in the
1960s. Well-known ethnographers targeted indigenous, isolated societies such as in Bali
(Clifford Geertz), Brazil (Claude Levi-Strauss), New Guinea and Samoa (Margaret
Mead), or the Native American Indians (Franz Boas). Ethnographic research is an
immersed experience in a culture involving direct observation of its practices and people,
and also participation within its community. Studying art museums in the digital age
might not be considered a “primitive” culture, but modern museums still remain to a
point isolated and inaccessible, despite their increased attentiveness to being more
socially relevant and responsive and making great efforts towards this goal. Therefore,
this research treats art museums as a cultural community unto themselves. Numbers can
illuminate one aspect of the subject, but to reach Geertz’s “thick description” it was
necessary to engage much more deeply. As Geertz (1973) describes his method in The
Interpretation of Cultures,
Doing ethnography is like trying to read (in the sense of “construct a reading
of”) a manuscript–foreign, faded, full of ellipses, incoherencies, suspicious
emendations, and tendentious commentaries, but written not in
conventionalized graphs of sound but in transient examples of shaped
behavior. (p. 10)
61
Ethnographers conduct fieldwork, where they physically live within the communities
they are studying for an extended time period. For this digital ethnographic research,
fieldwork took place within both the online and physical environments of each museum
for a total period of one year (July 2010–July 2011).
10
The focus of ethnographic research
is to observe and record social discourse, which when applied to the topic of art museums
in the digital age, means blogs and social media, the main digital platforms for
contemporary social discourse between museums and their public (and also between that
public). Geertz (1973) comments on this focus;
The ethnographer “inscribes” social discourse; he writes it down. In so
doing, he turns it from a passing event, which exists only in its own
moment of occurrence, into an account, which exists in its inscriptions and
can be reconsulted. (p. 19)
The practice of digital ethnography is a recent addition to the empirical fields of
anthropology and ethnography that emerged well into the digital age. In the early 1980s,
cyberspace was considered by scholars as a separate space from physical reality, and
technology was merely a tool used to facilitate our everyday tasks, completely separate
from and irrelevant to culture. Today, however, there can be found a wealth of scholarly
digital ethnographic studies around the world due to increased understanding that the
online is integrally related to the physical, as is technology integral to culture and
behavior (individual and collective), with the implications of identity, linguistics,
10
My online fieldwork continued through the writing stage of the thesis, which culminated in April 2012.
During this period I continued receiving e-newsletters from the five museums studied, I continued reading
their blogs on a less frequent basis, and regularly reviewed their websites and social media. Because of the
constantly changing nature of digital technology and the immediacy of computer-mediated communication,
there continued to emerge important notices that were subsequently incorporated into this thesis.
62
communication, and new cultural practices. Samuel M. Wilson and Leighton C. Peterson
(2002) from the department of anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin discuss
anthropology’s contribution to studying online practices:
Such an approach involves bringing research back from cyberspace and
virtual reality into geographical, social spaces, to address a variety of
issues such as the ways in which new participants are socialized into
online practices; how gendered and racialized identities are negotiated,
reproduced, and indexed in online interactions; and how Internet and
computing practices are becoming normalized or institutionalized in a
variety of contexts. (pp. 453–454)
Other leading scholars in the field include danah boyd, now a senior researcher at
Microsoft Research who also holds three academic positions at New York University,
Harvard Law School, and the University of New South Wales. She received her Ph.D.
from the University of California at Berkeley School of Information, and conducted early
digital ethnographies of Friendster, Blogger, MySpace, and Twitter, studying teens and
youth in great detail and working with Mizuko Ito and her Digital Youth Project. Michael
Wesch is assistant professor of cultural anthropology and digital ethnography at Kansas
State University who leads a working group and blog titled Mediated Cultures and a wiki
titled Mediated Cultures: Digital Ethnography at Kansas State University
(http://www.netvibes.com/wesch#Digital_Ethnography).
Certainly the digital age differs from primitive societies in that social discourse
can now be archived on the Internet and disseminated to a global audience, nevertheless,
institutional (and human) decisions remain the determining factor for the extent to which
the public is able to access the archived information. While scholars are able to search
and analyze past Tweets or Facebook posts, such as through the Library of Congress that
63
added Twitter’s public tweets to its national archive in 2010, for most users they still
exist as a mere passing event. The following section describes specific components of the
digital ethnography that I conducted on each of the five selected museums, including both
online and physical field work (observation and participation) and collection of data for
both the online and physical museum spaces.
Museum Blogs
I read each museum’s blog two to three times a week for a total period of nine months.
Detailed notes were taken on how each blog was organized (aesthetically as well as
functionally), from where the blog could be accessed on the museum’s website, who
were the individuals posting the blogs, from which departments, what information was
provided on the authors, what was the content of the posts, what were the comments and
where were they made (e.g., Twitter, Google like, StumbleUpon, and Facebook), and
how many posts were related to technology (and from which museum departments did
these come from). At the end of the observation period, quantitative data was collected on
the total number of posts and comments for each blog. The total number of postings
related to technology is a measurement of the importance of technology to the museum,
and a diversity of departments demonstrates how a culture of technology is integrated
throughout the museum. The total number of blog comments (including outside users and
museum staff) and the total number of outside bloggers is a measurement of community
engagement; and the total number of blog posts is a measurement of the museum’s
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importance of the blog as a forum for discourse (as instigated by museum staff or invited
guests).
Social Media Use in Museums
Because social media (in particular Twitter) is a much more frequent means of
communication than a blog, the observation of museums’ social media occurred over a
two-week period, analyzing all of the social media utilized by each museum at the end of
each day. While all of the five museums use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr,
there was a great variety as to the additional social media used, including iTunesU,
Foursquare, Tumblr, MySpace, SCVNGR, LinkedIn, blip.TV, Instagram, Historypin, and
Meetup. A list of the social media used by the five museums with brief descriptions can
be accessed in Appendix A. Detailed notes were taken on where the social media was
positioned within the museums’ websites and blogs, noting both their functional and
aesthetic characteristics. Notes were also taken on how each social media account
appeared to the user, who were the individuals posting the information and from what
departments, what was the content posted (including links, photos, videos), and what was
the nature of the public comments. At the end of the observation period, quantitative data
was collected on the total number of tweets, followers and listed (Twitter), check-ins, like
this and posts (Facebook), photos uploaded and members (Flickr), channel views, upload
views and videos (YouTube), and similar data for the other social media.
65
Museum Websites
At the beginning of this research, my intention was to conduct a content analysis of each
museum website and its publicly visible communication content in order to measure how
the websites contribute to a sense of online community by providing institutional
information, services, and opportunities for public participation and sharing. The analysis
would categorize variables of elements of the websites into a contextual framework that
provides for peer-to-peer connection, online interaction, and dialogue that allow for
public contributions, and promotes shared activities, goals, and interests. Fortunately, this
part of the research was left to the end, after conducting the blog analysis, social media
analysis, fieldwork and museum staff interviews, and reviewing analytical web statistics.
What was gleaned from all this preliminary research was a greater understanding of how
museums regard their websites, and particularly in relation to their use of blogs and social
media. Web analytics demonstrate that the primary objective for viewing most museum
websites is to find museum hours, directions, calendar of events, and the online store.
There are certainly many specialized uses for the websites such as teachers downloading
lesson plans, parents looking for activities for their children, or scholars researching
certain works of art, however these are not the most common. Furthermore, museums
have found that most online users are not accessing their blogs and social media sites
through the museum website but through other sources, many of which are a result of
online peer connections. What is important is that their blogs and social media sites all
link back to the museum websites, which ultimately serve as the centralized, aggregated
66
hub of information online. Therefore, I took a different approach to analyzing the
museum websites.
Because museums redesign their websites frequently (every five years or so) in
concurrence with changing digital technologies and institutional objectives, it was more
important to consider the websites as a snapshot of this particular time and to understand
better the distinct strategies that distinguish each museum website. The five websites
were analyzed by conducting digital field work: entering into each section and subsite,
opening each link, online activity and pdf, noting the online services and activities
offered to the user, the information presented about exhibitions, digital archives, as well
as about the museum history, staff, and policies, and the aesthetic and functional
organization of all this information, including the placement of social media links.
Data Compilation
Data was compiled on each museum and on each of their geographic communities. The
categories in which museum data were collected are listed in Appendix B. The
information was compiled from the museums’ latest annual reports or audited financial
statements, their latest 990 forms reported to the federal Internal Revenue Service, from
their websites, archived documents, press releases, and directly from staff whenever
possible. Museums vary to a great degree in the amount of internal information that they
publicly offer online. As will be discussed later, the Indianapolis Museum of Art is well
known for its commitment to transparency with the Dashboard, and is an exception to the
generally private art museum. Some museums, such as the Brooklyn Museum, no longer
67
produce annual reports and refuse to divulge internal information even for educational
research purposes. For some categories, the data simply affirmed whether the museum
offered a particular service, for others it noted the most recent numbers, and for others the
data was more descriptive in nature.
Data on the museums’ geographic communities was compiled from the following
public online reports: Civic Life in America 2010, Mapping the Measure of America’s
2010–2011 American Human Development Project (the Civic Engagement
Supplements), FBI Uniform Crime Report 2010, and the U.S. Census 2010 (also the
Internet and Computer Use Supplement 2009). The local regions studied were
municipalities, counties, boroughs, congressional districts (for the American Human
Development Project), and states (for measures of state arts appropriation and households
with Internet access). While the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum are
both located in New York City, additional data was collected on their respective
boroughs (Manhattan and Brooklyn) and congressional districts (14 and 11 respectively)
because they are such distinct and populous parts of the city. Data was also obtained on
the municipal arts funding for each museum. Finally, all the data from each museum and
their geographic communities were compared in an Excel spreadsheet. Because of the
diversity of each physical museum community and the range in each museum’s number
of visitors, revenue, endowment, number of members, use of technology and web
statistics, some interesting patterns emerged that revealed correlations between the nature
of the museums and their physical communities.
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Site Visits
The physical fieldwork consisted of a research trip to each museum for approximately
five or six days (except for the trip to New York City that covered two museums and
lasted eight days). Each museum was visited at least twice at different days and times in
order to gain a good understanding of the variety of museum visitors and programs, such
as on a weekend, a free evening, or during a weekday. At the museum, research included
observation of visitors, participation in tours (digital and analog) and special events,
interaction with digital devices, visits to all public spaces including the gardens, cafes,
restaurants, educational rooms, and also to any satellite spaces or programs within the
community. In addition to the museum visits, fieldwork also involved researching the
cultural context within which each museum operates. This required visiting any
partnering institutions of the museum, other noteworthy museums in the area, community
and alternative arts spaces, commercial galleries, cultural/arts districts, as well as tourist
offices and other tourist destinations such as shopping areas, natural parks or lakes,
monuments, and sports attractions. Detailed observation notes and photographs were
taken at all places visited.
Focused Interviews
Following this long phase of observation, analysis, and compilation of data came the
critical phase of talking with key individuals within the museums and their cultural
communities. Both parts of the research are necessary in order to corroborate what is said
in the interviews with concrete data, and to provide balance and objectivity to the
69
researcher’s personal observations with alternative perspectives. The interviewees were
selected based on identifying the key individuals working directly with digital technology
at the museums, and then to gain a wider perspective on the matter from other
departments such as administrative, curatorial, education, and public relations. Outside of
the museum, interviews were arranged with individuals working within the arts and
cultural sector, as well as with the tourism bureau, in order to gain a better understanding
of the local community and how the museum fits into that community. A list of all of the
interviews can be found in Appendix C.
Most interviews were conducted in person; however some interviews were
conducted over the telephone or by e-mail due to scheduling conflicts. All of the
interviews were audio recorded except for one interviewee that did not permit recording,
and so hand notes were taken instead. All of the recordings were transcribed, reviewed,
and annotated to highlight the more pertinent passages. It must be noted here, that as an
outsider researching art museums, it required a tremendous amount of effort and patience
to identify the appropriate museum staff, acquire their e-mails, and confirm interviews far
in advance. Despite being the hub of their information online, most museum websites do
not list individual names but just departments, and most do not even list individual e-
mails but again general department e-mails or telephone numbers. All museum websites
have a contact function, which lists a general e-mail and telephone number with no
specific name and often no department. Numerous e-mails and telephone calls were
required just for the first step, often needing to convince other museum departments that
their perspectives on technology was indeed pertinent to the research. During the actual
70
interviews, all staff members were extremely generous with their time and information,
and most followed up by sending information requested during the interview. When it
was not possible to secure interviews with museum directors because of time constraints,
I found interviews with the directors from outside sources available on the Internet such
as blogs and newspapers or magazines, often linked on the museums’ own websites
including videos.
The methodology used for this research was guided by a strong understanding of
not only museums and the arts, but how the digital age has profoundly affected learning,
social interaction, entertainment, communication, creation, and public participation.
Embarking on a new discipline of academic study within the communication field was
not easy for a traditionally trained art historian, but the challenges were indeed rewarding
as they resulted in an understanding and appreciation of quantitative statistical methods,
of new communication technologies, and of communication theories that are not often
applied to museums but are undoubtedly relevant and useful in the digital age. Art
historians and museologists are accustomed to studying relatively stable subjects, but on
the other hand, communication scholars study a world that is being changed on a daily
basis as innovations in digital communication technologies influence nearly every aspect
of society.
11
While the study of art museums in the digital age is not a common one for
the field of communication, it is my strong belief that this multidisciplinary research will
11
This breadth of the communication field is evidenced by the diversity of subgenres: health
communication, organizational communication, media studies, journalism, public relations, visual
communication, political communication, cultural studies, gender and feminist studies, interpersonal
communication, rhetoric, mass communication, and computer-mediated communication.
71
provide valuable insight into an essential socio-cultural phenomenon of the digital age,
contributing in turn to the fields of both museum studies and communication.
72
Chapter Four: The Indianapolis Museum of Art
Figure 1: LOVE, Robert Indiana, 1970 in front of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, 2011
Place + Localized Culture
Indianapolis is known as the Crossroads of America for the number of Interstate
highways that cross through it, connecting the city to the rest of the country. Today,
Indianapolis advertises that it is within a one-day’s drive of more than 50% of the
nation’s population. One third of visitors to Indianapolis are in-state travelers that opt for
“staycations,” followed by the neighboring states of Ohio and Illinois, with eight out of
ten visitors traveling by automobile. Indianapolis is on Eastern Standard Time for
economic development reasons, despite the fact that the geographic dividing line for
Central Standard Time is on Indiana’s eastern border with Ohio. As the capital of the
state of Indiana, it is the twelfth largest city in the United States and one of the top
73
twenty-five most visited cities in the nation with 18 million tourists a year (2009).
Indianapolis is located in Marion County, but counts its metropolitan statistical area
(MSA) as including around 1.2 million people; what is commonly referred to by locals as
the “doughnut counties” or the “nine-county region.”
Indianapolis’ national and international reputations are largely built upon sports.
The names Indianapolis and Indiana are synonymous with the Indy 500, the largest
single-day sporting event in the world that draws 400,000 people; what the city tourism
board’s marketing director Chris Gahl (personal communication, August 2, 2011) refers
to as “Our Disneyworld, our Mona Lisa, our Eiffel tower, our Golden Gate Bridge.” The
Indianapolis Motor Speedway was built in 1909 and the first Indy 500 race took place in
1911. The Speedway’s museum houses most of the original winning cars along with
original trophies, photos, and related memorabilia; it is the fourth most visited museum in
the city with 250,000 visitors in 2010. In the 1970s when Indianapolis was called
Naptown (either because of its name IndiaNAPolis or because of the lack of activities), a
group of city leaders decided to become the amateur sports capital of the world. They
began wooing some national sports organizations to the city, and in 1987 Indianapolis
hosted the Pan American games and the World Indoor Track and Field Championships.
The city houses the oldest sports commission in the nation that was formed in 1972, its
National Football League (NFL) team the Colts is led by quarterback Payton Manning
who is tied for the highest paid NFL athlete and the fourth most paid athlete in the world,
and five amateur sports organizations are headquartered in the city (USA Football, USA
Track and Football, USA Gymnastics, the National Collegiate Athletics Association, and
74
the National Federation of State High School Associations). There is a National
Basketball Association (NBA) team the Indiana Pacers, a U.S. Hockey League team the
Indiana Ice, and a minor league baseball team the Indianapolis Indians that was formed in
1902. Indianapolis also hosted the Superbowl XLVI game in 2012.
Traditionally the city has relied on sports tourism to foster the majority of its
visitors. Generating an estimated $336.8 million dollars in economic impact just from the
Indy 500 and its ancillary events, the city admits that it is hard to turn its back on sports.
But it also admits the need to market itself as more than sports, since research shows that
tourists are coming for more than sports; 52% come for business (conventions and
corporate meetings), and 48% for leisure (including visiting friends or relatives and
special events including sports). Overnight visitors report they are most interested in
dining (30%), entertainment (21%), shopping (21%), sightseeing (13%), watching sports
(10%), and visiting museums and art exhibits (9%).
12
In 2009 the Tourism Board
changed its tag line to Raising the Game, which honors its sports heritage but also allows
it to profile arts and cultural institutions that are also raising their game. The city has been
working at integrating arts into sports, what they call “infusion activities.” Dave
Lawrence, president and CEO of the Indianapolis Arts Council sat on the 2012
SuperBowl host committee, chairing the subcommittee responsible for infusing art
activities into the event such as a mural initiative. Former Indianapolis Museum of Art
(IMA) director Brett Waller comments on the change, “When I first came, those that
were involved in the arts had a tendency to whine that ‘it’s all sports and nobody pays
12
Indianapolis Convention & Visitors Association. (2010). 2009 visitor profile. McLean, VA: D.K.
Shifflet & Associates, Ltd.
75
attention to us.’ The city has matured so now sports and arts aren’t thought of as
antithetical but in fact both are pan [sic] of what it takes to make a community rewarding
to live in” (AllBusiness.com, 2006). It is common for artists and organizations to work
with the Indy 500, including the Indianapolis Museum of Art. The National Art Museum
of Sport, founded in 1959, is located at Indiana University, and the former 1911 Stutz
motor car factory has been transformed into the Stutz Artists Association and Space that
houses more than 85 visual artists.
For a city known primarily for its sports, Indianapolis has a surprisingly large
number of cultural institutions and attractions. The city has the most war memorials in
the United States, second only to Washington, D.C., housing the national headquarters of
the American Legion. The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis (founded in 1925) is the
largest in the world with over 470,000 square feet, and also the most visited museum in
the city with 1.3 million visitors a year. The Indianapolis Museum of Art comes in third
place for visitors after the zoo, and is the tenth largest encyclopedic art museum in the
nation. The Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art is the most
prominent collection of the kind east of the Mississippi, the Indiana State Museum is one
of the country’s largest state museums just behind Texas, and the Indiana Historical
Society incorporates the latest technologies in its interactive exhibitions with
touchscreens, immersive technology, and computer kiosks. A recent addition to the city’s
cultural landscape is the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library that opened in early 2011 as a
museum, library, and memorial to the Indianapolis-born author.
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The state of Indiana appropriated $2,721,197 for the arts in 2011 (almost three
times as the state of California), with the city of Indianapolis allocating an additional $1.3
million. The Arts Council of Indianapolis was started in 1987 as a private non-profit
organization (501c3) to reallocate city funds to arts organizations and artists through a
grants process, to manage the city’s public art, and to act as a resource connecting the
public with the arts community. It has its own downtown gallery space to present
temporary exhibitions of local artists. In 1999, the Sculpture in the Park program was
created in the White River State Park to showcase artists from the Midwest, exhibiting
large-scale sculptures outdoors for two-year periods. A public art program was initiated
in 2005 as part of the planning for the new Indianapolis International Airport that opened
in November 2008. There are currently 36 permanent pieces throughout the airport, a
program of rotating temporary exhibitions, and a public art guide brochure downloadable
from the airport website or available at the airport. The city has also created six cultural
districts that offer jazz clubs, murals, museums, musical concerts, art galleries, public art,
live theater, artist studios, restaurants and cafes.
Figure 2: White River State Park, 2011 (Sculpture in the Park in the center, NCAA headquarters on right)
77
Figure 3: Connections by Electroland (2008) at the Indianapolis International Airport, 2011
One of the reasons for such a wealth of arts and culture in Indianapolis is the
support of affluent and civic-minded, local citizens, primarily the Lilly family. Colonel
Eli Lilly first moved to Indianapolis with his family as a young boy in the 1850s. After
serving in the American Civil War he founded a pharmaceutical company in 1876 which
would become the tenth largest pharmaceutical company in the world today. Eli Lilly and
Company has its own corporate foundation that focuses on improving global health. The
separate Lilly Endowment, Inc. was created in 1937 by the colonel’s son, Josiah K. Lilly
Sr., and two of his sons, J.K. Jr. and Eli, through gifts of stock in the company. The
grandfather supported community projects such as paving streets, fixing sewers, and
elevating railroad crossings; while the grandson expanded this civic-mindedness to
include arts and cultural organizations. Today the Lilly Endowment, Inc. is one of the
world’s largest private philanthropic foundations, whose support of local organizations in
Indianapolis and the state of Indiana encourages other corporations and foundations to
support through challenge grants. In particular, the Endowment focuses on long-term
78
planned giving that strengthens endowments. The Children’s Museum has a surprisingly
large endowment of $252 million (2009), the Indianapolis Symphony’s endowment is
$30 million (2010), and the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s endowment is an astounding
$308 million (2010). Indianapolis has also witnessed a recent surge in corporate giving
from local corporations such as MS Communications, WellPoint, Rosche Diagnostics,
Simon Malls (the country’s top shopping mall developer), LDI Ltd., and Heartland Truly
Moving Pictures.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Indianapolis experienced great
prosperity with ensuing economic, social, and cultural progress. In 1886, an enormous
natural gas deposit was discovered in east-central Indiana, followed by the discovery of
oil in an area that became known as Trenton Field. There was a boom in industries such
as glass and automobile manufacturing, as the state offered a free supply of natural gas to
factories that were built in the region. In the early 1900s, Indianapolis was known for its
car manufacturers, such as Marmon, National, Premier, Marion, Stutz, and Empire. The
Indianapolis Motor Speedway was built to test these new cars, with a Marmon car
winning the first race. Unfortunately, with the depletion of the natural gas deposits by
1920, the Great Depression, and the significant decrease of oil production in the early
1930s, the golden age of Indianapolis soon came to an end.
Today, the Indianapolis area
13
has the highest poverty rate (below the federal
poverty threshold) of all four regions studied at 20.1%, rising well above the national
average of 13.2%, the highest rate of uninsured at 18%, above the national average of
13
For these statistics, Mapping the Measure of America 2010-2010 analyzes congressional districts only.
The Indianapolis Museum of Art is located in the Indiana Congressional District 7.
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17.4%, the highest infant mortality rate of 9.28 (per 1,000) above the national average of
6.8, and a vacancy rate of total housing of 12.5% that is the highest of all four areas
studied. Compared to the other three cities (San Francisco, Minneapolis, New York), only
Indianapolis rates below the national average for the following factors: Human
Development Index (4.22, national is 5.17), Life Expectancy at Birth (76.6 years, national
is 78.6 years), at least a Bachelors Degree (23.8%, national is 27.7%), School Enrollment
ages 3–24 (82.1%, national is 87.3%), Median Personal Earnings ($25,579, national is
$29,755), Health Index (4.43, national is 5.25), Education Index (4.19, national is 5.15),
and Income Index (4.04, national is 5.09). Indianapolis is a city that is predominantly
young, with 25% of the population under 18, and 20% between 35 and 49 years of age.
Only 10.5% of the population is over 65 years of age. Compared to the other three states
(California, Minnesota, New York), Indiana has the lowest rate of households with
Internet access at 69.5% (2009), below the national rate of 73.5%.
Indianapolis also ranks fairly low with regards to civic involvement as measured
by service, giving, political action, social connectedness, and belonging to a group.
14
The
city ranks lower than the national levels for most of the measures, however compared to
the other three cities studied, New York rates much worse for civic engagement (except
for social connectedness). Measuring service, 28% of adults volunteer with an
organization and 9% work with their neighbors. Measuring giving, 48% of adults give
14
Data is taken from the 2010 federal report on Civic Life in America: Key Findings on the Civic Health of
the Nation, collected through civic, volunteering, and voting supplements to the Current Population
Survey, a monthly survey of about 60,000 households conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau for the Bureau
of Labor Statistics. The data is distributed through a partnership between the Corporation for National and
Community Service, an independent federal agency, and the National Conference on Citizenship, chartered
by Congress in 1953.
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charitable contributions over $25. Measuring political action, 58% of adults are registered
voters, and 61% voted in the 2008 presidential election. Measuring social connectedness,
83% have dinner with household members frequently, 60% talk to family and friends on
the Internet frequently, and 40% talk with neighbors frequently. Measuring belonging to
a group, 41% of adults participate in any organization. Nevertheless, Dave Lawrence
reports a huge sense of volunteerism in the city, mostly surrounding sporting events, and
the Indianapolis Museum of Art reports having an impressive 510 volunteers.
A large part of the local culture is epitomized by the name hoosier; Indiana is
known as “the hoosier state.” Since the 1800s, the name has been used to refer to those
from the countryside, southerners, farmers, and workers. There are different theories on
how the name originated, some citing the Native Americans and others the European
settlers. Today the Oxford Dictionaries Online describes hoosier simply as, “a native or
inhabitant of the state of Indiana.” Another more vernacular description is offered by the
Urban Dictionary. One contributor, Woody Thomas (2008), summarizes most of the
descriptions of a hoosier on this site:
Usually overweight, trailor inhabiting, junk food eating, quasi-inbred folks
whose idea of luxury is shopping at Wal-Mart and when in the mood for
gourmet dining, go to Ponderosa. For the ultimate in entertainment, it’s the
Jerry Springer Show or pro wrestling. Of course, NASCAR is big also.
But the mecca of the true hoosier is Six Flags Over Mid-America in
Eureka, MO. A disproportinate [sic] number of hoosiers can be found at
hospitals, as both patients and visitors, a result of a lifetime of artery
clogging, blood pressure raising diet and smoking cigarettes.
On the same site, a more reasonable definition was contributed by Krock1dk (2007):
The culture of Hoosiers is conservative, laid-back and may seem like hicks
by persons from either coast, but not anymore backwards than anywhere
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else. They are an average folk in America’s heartland who live in small
towns, sizeable communities and their suburbs.
Figure 4: 2011 advertisement for popular Midwestern fast food chain, White Castle
The demographic constitution of Indianapolis is overwhelmingly white (62%),
with African Americans representing the largest minority group at 27.5%, then
Hispanics/ Latinos at 9.4%, and only 0.3% are Native Americans despite the heritage of
the names Indiana and Indianapolis originating from what was designated as Indian
Territory in the early 1800s (U.S. Census 2010). Indianapolis is situated in the middle of
the state, but has historically aligned itself more with the south than the north, both
culturally and politically; Kentucky is on its southern border. During the American Civil
War period, the city was one of the major stops on the Underground Railroad that led
escaped slaves to freedom in the north, contributing to a large African American
population. Black history and culture have been an important part of Indianapolis,
resulting in a rich, jazz culture along Indiana Avenue with famous local musicians such
as Cole Porter. Yet Indianapolis was also a center of racism and segregation with the
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famous Crispus Attucks High School that became the first all-black high school in the
United States to win an integrated state basketball championship. The Ku Klux Klan was
headquartered in Indianapolis in the 1920s, and became the most powerful political and
social organization in the city that controlled the Indiana Republican Party, General
Assembly, City Council, and other public boards. The Klan eventually fell when its
leader was convicted of a brutal crime, uncovered by the Indianapolis Times that won a
Pulitzer Prize in 1928 for revealing the scandal. Today, Indianapolis is home to the
Indiana Black Expo, the largest black cultural event in the country first organized in
1970.
The Museum and its Community
Mission Statement:
The Indianapolis Museum of Art serves the creative interests of its
communities by fostering exploration of art, design, and the natural
environment. The IMA promotes these interests through the collection,
presentation, interpretation and conservation of its artistic, historic, and
environmental assets. (emphasis mine)
A discussion of each museum must begin with analyzing the mission statement. While it
is significant that this statement begins with the mission of the museum as to “serve[s]
the creative interests of its communities,” it must be noted that the museum’s previous
mission statement began; “An education institution in the heart of the Midwest...” This
recent change profoundly reflects the new course of the museum under the leadership of
Maxwell Anderson, who became the Melvin & Brent Simon Director and Chief
83
Executive Officer in May 2006.
15
While the museum is undeniably located in the “heart
of the Midwest,” clearly it is also a global institution, reflecting the same complexities of
Indianapolis.
The Indianapolis Museum of Art began as a grassroots community initiative. The
Art Association of Indianapolis was formed in 1883 by May Wright Sewell, principal of
the Girls’ Classical School of Indianapolis and a well-known suffragette, her husband,
and a small group of citizens. Just a few months later, they organized their first exhibition
of 453 works by 137 local artists at the downtown English Hotel, which attracted a large
number of visitors and public attention. The Association continued organizing exhibitions
and lectures around town until 1895, when they received a donation of $225,000 from the
estate of Indianapolis real estate investor John Herron to build a permanent art gallery
and school, becoming The John Herron Art Institute and later The Herron School of Art.
In 1967, the school became part of Indiana University, and two years later the Art
Association of Indianapolis formally changed its name to the Indianapolis Museum of Art
and moved into its own building. Over the years, the museum developed a significant
collection through gifts from prominent local citizens. Responding to the need for a
larger, permanent site, Ruth and J.K. Lilly III offered the Oldfields estate with a 22-room
mansion. The Lilly family had owned the property for more than thirty years, and so in
1970, the Indianapolis Museum of Art opened to the public at its new location.
15
At the time of writing this thesis, Maxwell Anderson announced that he will leave the Indianapolis
Museum of Art on December 31, 2011 to become the Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum
of Art in Texas. Anderson is quoted as saying that he is “going to a city that has put culture at the center of
its identity” (as cited in Kightlinger, 2011, October 21).
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Figure 5: The Lilly House and Gardens, Indianapolis Museum of Art, 2011
A National Historic Landmark, the Oldfields estate was first built by Indianapolis
businessman Hugh McKennan Landon as part of a 52-acre real estate development with a
partner that came to be called the Town of Woodstock. On his 26-acres, Landon began
constructing his new residence in the early 1910s while he was an executive at the
Indianapolis Water Company. The gardens and grounds were designed in the 1920s by
Percival Gallagher of the famous landscape architecture firm Olmsted Brothers. J. K.
Lilly Jr. and his wife Ruth Brinkmeyer Lilly purchased Oldfields from Landon in 1932
and remodeled the house. They expanded the estate significantly by building a house for
their son J. K. Lilly III and his new wife in 1939, and then a recreation building next to it
called The Playhouse with indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a tennis court, and a four
seasons’ garden. The town of Woodstock ended in the early 1960s when J.K. Lilly Jr.
started buying out his neighbors and then tore down the houses to expand his estate to the
original 52 acres.
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Today, the museum campus consists of the 26-acre Oldfields-Lilly House and
Gardens: the Lilly House that opened to the public in 2002, its surrounding gardens,
greenhouse, The Playhouse, and Newfield residence. The campus also includes a new
$220 million, 26-acre main complex that opened in 2005, and the latest addition is the
100-acre Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park that opened in 2010. Many of these
institutional changes have occurred under the tenure of Maxwell Anderson, such as 100
Acres, but were begun under the former IMA director Bret Waller who instigated much
of the strategic planning for the museum’s current course. Waller served the IMA from
1990 to 2001, and is now director emeritus.
The museum reports that in 2010, 428,213 people came through its physical
museum buildings. However, due to its free admission and parking, there are thousands
more that explore the other 126 acres of gardens and park space, especially given the
amount of public programming that occurs in this large, outdoor space. The museum’s
iconic outdoor sculpture by local artist Robert Indiana (LOVE, 1970) was listed by USA
Today newspaper as one of the world’s ten best places to propose (Bly, 2001). Meditation
peace hikes take place around the museum grounds every week, facilitated by Global
Peace Initiatives, and on weekends, visitors can take art and nature-focused tours of 100
Acres and free guided garden walks. The annual Penrod Arts Fair is one of the largest
outdoor fairs that occur at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. First organized by the local,
independent Penrod Society in 1967, the fair promotes Indianapolis-area artists, students,
and arts organizations by providing spaces for the display of artwork and different stages
for live music, performing arts, and local cuisine. 100 Acres is accessed from the main
86
campus by crossing an authentic, red Pony Truss bridge across the canal. The park offers
the public free admission to 100 acres of beautiful woods and wetlands, views of a 35-
acre lake, and a contemporary sculpture garden of internationally renowned artists:
Marlon Blackwell, Ed Blake, Kendall Buster, Los Carpinteros, Jeppe Hein, Alfredo Jaar,
Tea Mäkipää, Type A, Atelier Van Lieshout, Andrea Zittel. The park opened with eight
site-specific, temporary commissions, and the museum will continue to add new
commissions.
Figure 6: 100 Acres, 2011, with Bench Around the Lake by Jeppe Hein in the foreground, and Indianapolis
Island by Andrea Zittel in the lake.
In March 2011, the IMA opened a 2,000 square-foot conservation science
laboratory in partnership with Indiana University and BioCrossroads, a state-wide
initiative to promote the growing life sciences industry. The Lilly Endowment, Inc.
provided an initial $2.6 million grant, followed by an additional $3.5 million that was
raised to endow the position of senior conservation scientist. To fill that position, the
87
museum hired Dr. Greg Smith (as cited in Inside Indiana Business, 2010), who is quoted
as saying that,
The strong scientific community in Indiana is what’s going to make this
lab successful. With places like Dow AgroSciences and Eli Lilly,
powerhouse academic institutions in Indianapolis and also nearby Indiana
University and Purdue University–we’re going to hopefully take
advantage of the strong scientific community here in Indiana.
The museum admits that such a professional conservation lab is rare in the Midwest, with
the Art Institute of Chicago being the exception. “We’ll have one of the best outfitted
labs in the country,” states Smith, with the goal of putting the IMA and Indianapolis on
par with Chicago in this respect.
Maxwell Anderson considers one of his greatest achievements to be the 2008
acquisition of the Miller House and Garden from the Irwin-Sweeney-Miller Foundation,
together with a $5 million endowment gift. Described by Travel + Leisure magazine
(Barreneche, 2011) as “America’s Most Significant Modernist House” and a National
Historic Landmark, the 1957 house showcases three of the leading twentieth-century
modernist architects and designers: Eero Saarinen, Alexander Girard, and Dan Kiley.
Although located in Columbus, Indiana, 50 miles south of Indianapolis, the museum
maintains a small exhibition space on the first floor across from its museum shop and
restaurant with photographs, video, and design pieces from the house. The house is open
to the public for scheduled tours through a partnership with the Columbus Area Visitors
Center.
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Figure 7: Exhibition on the Miller House at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, 2011
The IMA is situated outside the growing downtown area, which is heavily
promoted by the city as being “compact, connected, and convenient.” In 2011, Forbes
magazine listed Indianapolis as having one of America’s ten best downtowns. Downtown
Indianapolis has over 200 restaurants, 12 hotels, 50 museums, a convention center, the
Circle Centre Mall and Artsgarden, and the new Lucas Oil Stadium that are all connected
by a three-block pathway of covered skywalks to protect pedestrians from extreme winter
temperatures. While the museum is only eight miles away from downtown, a $1.50 bus
ride, $10 cab fare or a 10-minute car ride, the distance is symbolic. The fact that most of
the city’s museums (except for the Children’s Museum) are in close proximity only
heightens the isolation of the IMA. The IMA recently partnered with a real estate
development company (Buckingham Companies) that is building a new hotel in
downtown Indianapolis called The Alexander. The museum is advising the hotel on
selecting contemporary artists for site-specific commissioned works and acquiring more
than 40 works. Lisa Freiman, the museum’s senior curator and chair of its department of
89
contemporary art is quoted as saying that, “This collaboration has allowed the IMA to
participate in a dynamic and unique partnership that extends beyond the museum’s
campus and into the heart of downtown Indianapolis” (Inside Indiana Business, March 9,
2012).
Katie Zarich (personal communication, August 3, 2011), the museum’s director of
public affairs, reports that when targeting physical visitors to the museum, the museum
spends its advertising dollars on Marion County and the doughnut counties surrounding
Indianapolis, “thinking of everything from school groups to the stay at home moms to
empty nesters to hipsters to college students to young professionals.” Anderson (personal
communication, September 17, 2009) states that,
I don’t care how many people come. I do, but that’s not what drives me.
What drives me is that the attendance at the museum, to the degree
possible, mirrors the makeup of people who might visit us. If my focus is
on getting a lot of people in the door, I’d be doing what most museums do,
which is looking at rich, white people, middle-aged, female that go to
museums. And they come serially, six times a year, so that’s not a real
number.
In 2009, the IMA was awarded the National Medal for Museum and Library Service by
the federal IMLS for its community outreach, listing the museum’s community partners
as:
Indianapolis Public Schools, Metropolitan School District of Washington
Township, Indiana Black Expo, Latino Youth Collective/Campecine
Program, Indiana Department of Education, Ball State University, Butler
University, Herron School of Art & Design, IUPUI, Marian University,
Indiana University, Visual Thinking Strategies, Spirit & Place Festival,
Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Indiana School for the
Deaf, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, Big Car and The 48 Hour Film
Project, Indianapolis International Film Festival, LGBT Film Festival,
Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library, American Institute of
Architecture, Indianapolis Chapter, VSAI (formerly Very Special Arts),
90
Indiana Humanities Council, Confucius Institute, Pecha Kucha Indy,
Eiteljorg Museum, Indiana Historical Society.
After Anderson reinstituted free general admission in early 2009 (it was free before the
museum’s reconstruction in 2005), visitor attendance has increased. The museum reports
that strong support from corporations and individuals enable them to not charge
admission, although there are still admission fees for special exhibitions. In 2009, the
museum’s contributions and grants added up to approximately 42% of its total expenses,
however, in 2010 its contributions and grants were reduced nearly in half, adding up to
only 24% of the total expenses.
16
Perhaps this explains the museum’s decision to begin
charging for parking in 2011.
17
The museum grounds are utilized for numerous community programs and its free
admission policy is a welcoming gesture for the community, but the museum’s reach
extends solidly outwards as a key player in the international art world. Its encyclopedic
collection of art spans from Africa, Asia, the South Pacific, the Americas and Europe,
and it hosts international programs such as the annual Indianapolis International Film
Festival and the 2009 International Design Symposium. In the museum’s Strategic Plan
for 2011–2015, the focus on Collection and Program Vitality lists nine objectives, one of
which is to utilize its exhibition program to strengthen the museum’s national and
international reputation.
In 2011, the IMA launched its Mellon Curators-at-Large program, funded with a
$1.025 million grant by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The pilot program allows
16
Data taken from the museum’s 2010 IRS 990 Form, as downloaded from the IMA website.
17
Museum members receive free parking privileges, and visitors who purchase more than $50 worth of
merchandise in the Museum Store, Gallery Shop, or Greenhouse Shop will receive parking validation.
91
the museum to hire leading scholars around the world to conduct research based on its
collections in the following areas: art of India and South Asia, Chinese art, art of the
Americas, African art, design arts, and Islamic art. The Curators-at-Large will regularly
visit the museum, but will mainly work from their home base or from another city, aided
by the museum’s acquisition of new high-definition teleconferencing technology that will
facilitate ongoing visual communications with its collections and curatorial staff.
Figure 8: Gallery space devoted to the IMA’s participation in the Venice Biennale, 2011
Another major international outreach was the U.S. State Department’s selection of
the IMA to host the U.S. Pavilion of the 54
th
Biennale di Venezia in Italy. The museum
presented the work of the Puerto Rico-based collaborative Jennifer Allora and Guillermo
Calzadilla with six new commissioned works, under the exhibition title Gloria. Senior
Curator Lisa Freiman served as the pavilion commissioner. Freiman states in a video on
the museum’s website that the choice of Allora and Calzadilla “problematizes the notion
of nationality” and raises the “complexities of identity and representation.” This was also
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the first time in the history of the U.S. Pavilion that performance art was on exhibition,
involving gymnasts from the Indianapolis-based USA Gymnastics. Even the museum’s
teen program (Museum Apprentice Program) was given a global twist to coincide with
the Biennale, transforming into the Teen Global Exchange Program. The IMA partnered
with the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection
in Venice, Italy to create an educational program for teenagers from the United States,
Puerto Rico, and Italy. The students all met in Venice during the summer and
documented their experiences on Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, and the blog Our Voices/Le
Nostre Voci/Nuestras Voces, which was linked from the museum’s website. The museum
reports that over 73,000 people viewed the exhibition on the museum’s website for the
duration of the Biennale.
The Role of Technology
Maxwell Anderson (personal communication, September 17, 2009) summarizes the
museum’s philosophy towards technology as directly related to place:
Technology–it starts with the fact that we’re not Chicago we’re
Indianapolis. So the more remote you are from the centers of the art
establishment, the noisier you have to be to be noticed….Technology is a
vehicle for making the museum relevant to the world, which then makes
the local audience pay attention. You can’t get people locally to care about
something if it hasn’t been acknowledged elsewhere. They might have
loyalty, but they won’t have energy.
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This same philosophy is confirmed by Robert Stein (personal communication, August 3,
2011), the museum’s deputy director for research, technology, and engagement,
18
during
a later interview in 2011:
For us, technology is a way to extend audiences past a geographic border.
I think that as you study the geographic communities and in particular,
demographics about technology use and opinion in the Midwest, you’ll
find that they’re very, very different than Manhattan, San Francisco, and
even Minneapolis. My anecdotal experience is that most of Indianapolis
has a more conservative use of technology for the sake of community…
The technology provides a reach for us that we wouldn’t ordinarily have
from tourism, and Indianapolis is not known as a destination for art, yet.
So technology allows us to step outside the geographic definitions of
where art is found and address that in a different way.
The museum utilizes digital technology to reach out more to its global than local
community, which is evident by the largely traditional museum experience in the
physical galleries (more will be discussed on this later). The museum’s global community
consists of the international art world, museums, and museum professionals, as well as
that enormous group of anonymous online visitors. In 2011, Stein conducted a study of
the IMA’s website (http://www.imamuseum.org) to count the number of online-only
visitors to the museum. During 2010, the website received a total of 942,000 unique visits
with 3.75 million hits. Stein removed those visitors who viewed any pages specifically
connected with visiting the physical museum. The remaining online-only visitors
comprised 480,000 unique visits or approximately 51% of the total online visits. Also,
Stein tracked 498,000 (53%) online visitors that originated from outside the state of
Indiana. These numbers are significant when compared to the museum’s physical
18
On March 3, 2012, the Dallas Museum of Art issued a press release stating that Robert Stein will become
the museum’s new deputy director, effective April 19, 2012.
94
attendance in 2010 of 428,213. Stein reports that the museum is committed to “treating
that online audience as a legitimate audience in the same way as those that come through
the door.” In the museum’s Strategic Plan for 2011–2015, one objective for Collection
and Program Vitality is, to “reach new online audiences by expanding content that
highlights the IMA’s permanent collections, exhibitions, and programs.” The goals to
achieve this objective include increasing online engagement with local audiences, and
enhancing the museum’s international reputation as one of the world’s best encyclopedic
art museums by increasing engagement with its online-only audience.
The museum website is the hub of its online activity that reaches out to its
different communities, providing dynamic experiences for those almost-one million
visitors from around the world. The Internet is the main medium by which the museum
gets noticed at a global level and consequently at the national and local levels. There are
two main sections (out of seven sections on the top navigation bar) on the museum
website for an engaged online experience; the first is through the Art section with the
museum’s digitized collection listed by theme (e.g., African Art, Design Arts, Oceanic
Art) and a tag cloud. There is a Collections Search function and a Collection Tags page.
The museum integrated tags into its collection search based on lay words (tags) that
online visitors use to describe the images. The page also has a tag cloud, where the more
popular descriptive words (the more times the tag has been used to describe a work) are
larger and bolder than the other words. Clicking on a tag takes the visitor to Collections
Search, where a search can be performed for all works with that tag. When viewing
works on the website, there is a heading on the right of each page called Tell Us What
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You See, where visitors can Login to add their own tags to the work. At the bottom of the
page, visitors can Login or register to post comments as well. Collection Tags provides a
list of Tag Tours developed by the museum staff for visitors to discover new works of art
grouped together in a fun, different way, such as: In the Nude, I’m in the Mood for Love,
Indulge, Plugged In, Super Bowls, WTF?, Animals in Art, Happy Hour, The Blues, Indy
is a Sports Town, All Hallow’s Eve, Mid Century Mod, LOL Catz, and Impress My
Boss/Grandma/Hot Date. In 2006, the IMA was one of the first museums to become
involved in the Steve Project (www.steve.museum/), a collaboration of museum
professionals, digital media specialists, and academics funded by the U.S. Institute of
Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The IMA was one of the primary developers of
the Steve Tagger software and has managed the technology aspects of the project since
2006. There are currently 21 institutional partners that conduct research on social tagging,
create open source tagging tools, and disseminate findings through scholarly journals and
conferences.
Figure 9: IMA website, Collection Tags (1/13/12 screen capture)
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The other main section on the museum’s website for engaging visitors is Interact.
Interact includes the IMA Blog, Find us on…(list of social media and blog), IMA
Magazine, IMA on ArtBabble, IMA on YouTube, Museum Dashboard, TAP, Tag Tours,
The Davis LAB, First Impressions, and Join the IMA eNews List. While many of these
elements are integrated into other sections of the website (Dashboard is in About section,
Tag Tours in Art section, Join the IMA eNews List is on the bottom navigation bar, as is
Share this Page that links to social media), Interact groups them all together for those
visitors that want to “interact” with the museum in a variety of ways online. Interact also
demonstrates the value that the museum places on providing their online visitors with an
active, participatory experience. The landing page for Interact includes a short listing of
Recent Comments (on the artwork in the museum’s online collection), recent videos with
hyperlinked thumbnail images, excerpts and links from Facebook and Twitter, and the
latest user tags.
First Impressions is a new social tagging experiment by the IMA that asks visitors
to click on the first thing that catches their eye as they view a series of artworks (such as
Winter Solstice). All the clicks are collected, and at the end of the series the visitor can
review where he/she clicked, and also where everyone else clicked as well (with the most
popular clicks appearing in dark red contrasted to the visitor’s click in green). Some of
the more traditional pedagogical questions that are asked of the visitors on this last page
are: “What can you notice? Did you select an area that others also tagged as their first
impression, or did you see the work differently? Were there areas of the image that others
noticed that you missed the first time through? Are there any areas of the image that
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everyone missed altogether”? The museum changes the series of artworks depending on
what is happening at the museum or in the art world, and will announce new series on its
blog that each last for about a week.
The social media that the IMA utilizes are Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube,
iTunesU and ArtBabble (an internal medium that will be discussed in more detail later).
Katie Zarich (personal communication, August 3, 2011) comments on the museum’s
targeted use of social media:
I think since 2005 when we expanded the building, it just happened to
coincide with the popularity of social media. From day one we’ve used
those channels to help us get to the general public, and we’ve done that in
some targeted ways where we’ve reached out to mommy bloggers in
Indianapolis that are very well read. And when we opened 100 Acres last
year, we made a concerted effort to invite the mommy bloggers to our
media tour and to do things where we could get in touch with them
because that’s a niche audience, stay-at-home moms. Our advertising
budget has taken a hit, so we’ve done things to target specific groups that
may have affinity or interest in certain programs.
Jennifer Anderson (personal communication, August 3, 2011), senior communication
officer, is responsible for tweeting on behalf of the museum, and explains how the
museum is conscious of how it uses Twitter as separately from Facebook. Twitter is used
for a more international audience, mostly the art world, where the museum tweets about
news or art news of more international impact. Maxwell Anderson also has his own
Twitter account (@maxandersonusa) that lists 916 Tweets, 45 following, 2,220 followers,
148 lists followers (as of November 3, 2011). On the other hand, the museum uses
Facebook to target a more local audience, Indianapolis- or Indiana-based, where it posts
more photos of artwork, the gardens, or events. For example, during the ten-month period
of analysis, one IMA blog post (October 28, 2010) stands out as having received 222
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Facebook likes. The post by IMA Associate Conservator Richard McCoy described an
upcoming lecture and workshop at the museum, “Wikipedia & the Cultural Sector.” The
event was an extension of an Indiana-Purdue University course taught together with
McCoy and Jennifer Geigel Mikulay, an assistant professor of visual culture at the
university who started the project Wikipedia Saves Public Art to document public art in
Indianapolis and beyond.
Of all five museum blogs studied, the IMA blog has the highest ratio of comments
to post (3.2:1); with a total number of 498 comments and 158 posts (not the highest
number of comments or posts, but the highest ratio).
19
The IMA blog also has the lowest
number of reported visits in 2010 (137,423),
20
which generates a ratio of one comment
per 275 visits, the lowest of all four museums. So while the IMA blog does not have the
highest number of comments, posts, or visits, what is evident from this analysis of blog
comments is that its viewers are highly active and committed followers. The blog
facilitates participation and peer-to-peer sharing by including at the bottom of each post:
Facebook like, Google publicly like, StumbleUpon submit, and Tweet. However,
StumbleUpon has a hyperlink to submit, Facebook & Google don’t link, and Twitter only
links if there is a number attached for Tweets. Rachel Craft, director of publishing and
media at the IMA, is responsible for the museum blog. She notes (personal
communication, August 3, 2011) that there are a multitude of communities that the blog
allows the museum to target. For example, she cites the museum’s horticulture
19
Note that blog comments do not include Facebook likes, Tweets, Google Likes, or StumbleUpon
submits.
20
Only the Brooklyn Museum did not provide any data on its blog visits.
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department; whose blogs are the most commented on and have really built a community
around them. Most of the posts are from Irvin Etienne, horticulture display coordinator,
who has an especially strong following with blog readers that know what and when to
expect news from him, as he regularly posts every other Friday. This personalization is
aided by the blog including a profile on the posting authors. A hyperlink on the name
brings up all postings from that individual, as well as a profile that includes a photograph,
job title, interests, favorite movies, music, food, pets, and “Something you should know
about me.” The museum blog also occasionally invites posts by outside individuals
related to current museum events, adding up to fourteen posts in the ten-month period
(excluding museum interns and temporary staff), or 8% of total posts.
Another way in which the museum “gets noticed” is by embracing collaboration
in the international art and museum world that comprises a pivotal part of their
community. The museum contributes 123 works from its permanent collection to the
ARTstor Digital Library (http://www.artstor.org/what-is-artstor/w-html/col-indianap-
museum.shtml), which provides greater public access for research and educational
purposes to more than a million digital images from participating museums around the
world. In 2011, the museum entered into ARTstor’s Images for Academic Publishing
(IAP) program
21
by providing TIFF image files of its works free for scholarly
publications. The three main initiatives in which the IMA engages in professional,
international collaboration are the IMA Lab, ArtBabble, and the Dashboard.
21
The IAP program was initiated by the Metropolitan Museum in 2007.
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The IMA Lab is the media and technology consulting arm of the museum based
on its efforts to create open source software for museums as an alternative to commercial
software tools. The museum website states that,
In addition to serving the IMA’s mission by leveraging these skills, the
IMA Lab seeks to help other cultural organizations do the same by
offering solutions and consulting services which contribute back to the
community of museums and which help other organizations succeed.
The IMA dedicates substantial resources to technical expertise, having many software
developers on staff that can create in-house projects for the museum. The IMA’s
Strategic Plan for 2011–2015 includes a category for Research Leadership with five
objectives. The first objective is, to “Establish the IMA as a research leader among its
peers in the areas of art history, conservation science, information science, and visitor
studies.” The second objective is that, “The IMA will become a leader among museums
promoting the production and sharing of open-content and scholarship,” with the goal of
promoting the use of IMA assets by the community of scholars. Another objective is to,
“Develop collaborative relationships with researchers and institutions that enhance
IMA’s research capacity internationally” with the goal of building relationships with
regional academic leaders. Through a strong commitment to collaboration, digital
research at the IMA serves equally the local and the global, scholarly community, as well
as the global community of museums and arts institutions.
Rob Stein has been a strong promoter of open software since he arrived at the
museum in 2006, believing that open source provides a unique opportunity for the non-
profit cultural sector to work together in ways that would not be possible for the for-profit
sector. The IMA has taken a leadership role in promoting institutional collaboration for
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the purposes of software development based on its own collaboration with arts and
cultural institutions around the world that would ask advice from the museum on website
design, collections management technology, and more. The Lab is a way for the museum
to offer a service to its professional community that would impact the entire community
of museums; “a way to pool resources for common needs.” In 2008, the Getty
Foundation, in conjunction with the J. Paul Getty Museum, launched the Getty Online
Scholarly Catalogue Initiative (OSCI), a major grant initiative to address the challenges
of transitioning from traditional print format to online delivery of exhibition catalogs.
The Getty invited nine world-renowned art museums (the Art Institute of Chicago; the
Arthur M. Sackler and Freer Gallery of Art; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art;
the Seattle Art Museum; Tate Gallery; and the Walker Art Center) to work
collaboratively on their own cataloging projects. The Getty contracted with the IMA Lab
in 2011 to develop open-source software tools that would facilitate the online publishing
of catalogs for the participating museums, and eventually for the larger museum
community. The Getty credited the IMA Lab’s work with the Art Institute of Chicago as
being the successful prototype for its collaborative, open-source software project. The
initiative aims to transform the way in which museums publish scholarly catalogs to
enable broader access by digitally sharing their research and collections with the public.
The idea of an online catalog also allows museums to update information in an easier,
more economical, and faster manner than with print catalogs, to provide multi-media,
secondary research materials, and hyperlinks with relevant websites.
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Stein (2009, September 15) comments on the success of the Lab; “The absence of
licensing fees and the ultimate flexibility for integration and enhancement mean that a
museum’s dollars of investment can more directly impact feature enhancements and
underlying requirements.” Most museums today are not only using open source software,
but also adding to it and releasing their own versions. Stein (personal communication,
August 3, 2011) says that, “Museums are used to doing things together as a community
through loan and exchange of objects, shared exhibitions, visitor studies, educational
efforts and initiatives, those have already been shared. They’re starting to say now we can
do the same with software.” The Lab is not promoted very heavily on the museum
website, probably due to the fact that its clients originate more from the
art/museum/digital technology community of which the museum is an active participant.
A hyperlinked IMA Lab is included on the bottom navigation bar next to more
institutional functions such as, Press/News, Contact Us, Image Rights & Reproductions,
and Privacy Policy. Online collaboration for open source technology projects is a viable
solution because most museums have neither the time, financial resources, nor technical
experience to develop their own software tools, and because museums have strong,
established peer-based networks of institutional relationships due to shared exhibitions,
loans, and other collaborative projects among professionals.
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Figure 10: IMA website, ArtBabble (11/4/11 screen capture)
ArtBabble is listed on the IMA’s website in the section Interact as part of its
listings of social media (Join us on) and under the heading “Find us on…” ArtBabble is
described on the museum’s website in the About section as:
Art-Bab-ble [ahrt-bab-uhl]
noun; verb (used without object) -bled, -bling (ArtBabble.org)
1. free flowing conversation, about art, for anyone.
2. a place where everyone is invited to join an open, ongoing discussion–
no art degree required.
Although ArtBabble is essentially an art video sharing website for the museum, it is
much more, evidenced by the fact that the museum also has an active channel to share its
233 videos on YouTube with a notable 550,281 total video views, and 1,204 subscribers
(as of March 20, 2012). ArtBabble, on the other hand, is about partnership and
collaboration that is once again facilitated by the museum. This is first noticeable because
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the URL does not mention the museum (http://www.artbabble.org/) and the contact
information is not an IMA email, but contact@artbabble.org. The IMA’s name and link
are only apparent in ArtBabble in the About Us section and eNews Signup (both on the
bottom navigation bar), but only after one has registered. However, a link from the IMA
website lands on the museum’s institutional partner page of ArtBabble
(http://www.artbabble.org/partner/indianapolis-museum-art). Since it launched in January
2009, ArtBabble now has 35 international partners that have contributed their videos for a
total of 1,411 (as of December 19, 2011), including a public radio station (KQED The
Gallery Crawl), the New York Public Library, a foundation (Chipstone), a nonprofit
organization (Art 21), a multimedia web book on art history (Smarthistory.org), and art
museums from all over the United States as well as Madrid, Mexico City, Amsterdam,
and Rotterdam. The IMA has contributed 278 of its videos to ArtBabble, which can be
searched by artist name, channels (artistic genre with a tag cloud, series based on
thematic groupings including For Kids), and by the partners linking to a separate
subsection for each one. ArtBabble also has its own Flickr group (Play Art Loud), Twitter
feed @artbabble, and Facebook page. By registering and creating an account, visitors can
store favorite videos, leave comments, and receive e-newsletters. There are few public
comments on the videos, but the YouTube channel also doesn’t have many comments
(about one a month as they are listed by date). ArtBabble won the Gold MUSE award in
the Online Presence category from the American Association of Museums in 2009.
The Dashboard (http://dashboard.imamuseum.org/) is a recent initiative of
Anderson that came online in 2010, due to his particular interest in transparency and open
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sharing of critical information amongst the museum community. The website states the
goal as to, “seek to quantify and report out on areas of activity of general interest to
museum observers and to particular interest to museum studies specialists, colleagues,
and patrons.” These areas are searchable by museum departments, topics, and by year
(2007 to 2010). They include internal metrics on membership, endowment, attendance,
energy consumption, number of Facebook fans, number of plants, average time spent on
website, the number of works with gaps in WWII-era provenance, and an interactive map
of museum admissions by zip code in real time. The museum regards the Dashboard as
serving a variety of purposes; one aimed externally at visitors to better understand the
complete picture of the museum as well as at funders to evaluate the success of their
grants and the impact on the museum, and one aimed internally at the museum staff to
better gauge their own performance against hard metrics that become publicly available.
The museum is currently developing a second version of the Dashboard that will be
released at the end of 2011, which will integrate staff satisfaction and performance
surveys, and also make it easier for the public to remove data from the website.
Upon receiving an award for Dashboard at the University of Southern California’s
National Summit on Arts Journalism on October 30, 2009, Anderson stated in a video,
It’s very easy, relatively speaking, with the ingenuity of Rob Stein and his
team to produce these extraordinary experiences. It’s much harder, to take
one of the ten largest art museum buildings in the United States, and make
the experience in there as lively and compelling and fluid as we can do
electronically.
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Museum consultant and administrator Nina Simon (2009) also noted the great
discrepancy that she discovered upon entering the physical grounds of the IMA. She
writes in her blog Museum 2.0,
I showed up at the IMA expecting innovation. Instead, I found a standard
art museum. Nice art. Impersonal guards. Lovely grounds. Obtuse labels.
Interesting architecture. There was nothing that connected me to the
visceral, exciting institution Max had sold in his talk, the institution that
exists on the web… Is this a problem? I think so. I felt like I had met
someone online, someone sexy and open and intriguing, and then on our
first date that mystery museum turned out to be just like all the others.
It was only after Simon’s blog post reappeared in the form of an article renamed “Bait
and Switch” in the American Association of Museum’s Museum magazine (2009,
July/August), that Stein felt the urge to respond. He responded firmly that the two
experiences (online and onsite) are, and should be “DISTINCTLY different.” Because
there are two distinct audiences, Stein sees no problem in “tailoring experiences
differently based on where they are encountered.” And the where is not merely a physical
art museum versus online; it is the where of the physicality that matters here and in this
thesis. Stein is referring specifically to his largely Indianapolis- and Indiana-based
physical audience. Stein (personal communication, August 3, 2011) confirmed that, “We
have shied away from including a lot of technology in the gallery spaces, on purpose. As
we understood our audiences, we were hearing that numerous people were coming to the
IMA for that retreat-like experience, for serenity, to escape.”
It is true that the physical spaces of the IMA are more traditional in character, but
there are a few notable exceptions. Digital comment screens are placed at the end of
special exhibitions in the museum. And there is TAP, the museum’s mobile application
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platform that was designed for the iPod Touch in 2009. Both Stein and Anderson
comment on how mobile technologies are a good solution for providing digital
opportunities within a physical gallery environment that does not impose on more
traditionally-minded visitors. The museum has used TAP for four special exhibition
mobile tours as well as for its 100 Acres, which is an enhanced mobile web tour that plots
the latitude and longitude of tour stops on OpenStreetMap. While visitors can access the
100 Acres tour on their own smartphones (Internet-enabled mobile phones), the museum
also owns 60 iPod Touches for visitors to rent at $5 a tour (or free for museum members).
Because TAP was released as open-source, other museums have adopted it to create their
own tours, including the Balboa Park Online Collaborative, Gemeentemuseum Den
Haag, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and Winona State University. The tours provide
audio, video, text, still images, and polls.
Figure 11: The Davis Lab, Indianapolis Museum of Art, 2011
The Davis LAB opened together with ArtBabble in January 2009 as a separate
space on the first floor of the museum that connects to its online presence and introduces
new media projects. The IMA does not consider the Davis LAB as an educational space
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or even a new media space, but rather a new gallery space mixed with cyberspace. The
front of the LAB consists of tables with computers outfitted with kiosk software where
visitors can access the museum website, blog, ArtBabble, Flickr, and Facebook pages.
Visitors can also leave comments and rate videos online. The back part of the LAB is a
mini theater with modern seating from the museum’s Design Center and a large screen to
showcase its high definition videos. The museum website describes the LAB as, “This
space is meant to be fun, innovative and experimental. It is about risk-taking,
brainstorming and interactivity.”
Lessons Learned
The IMA continues to be innovative in the field of digital media due to its substantial
endowment, supported by experienced local funders (corporate, foundation, individuals)
that understand the importance of long-term institutional stability. However, having this
financial cushion to rely on is not enough; it was the foresight of its directors (primarily
Bret Waller and Maxwell Anderson) that established a vision, took risks, and directed
resources to hiring technologically proficient staff that are able to create programs and
tools in-house, resulting in greater flexibility, creativity, and efficiency. These innovative
results have succeeded in reinforcing the museum’s authority and legitimacy not only to
its local community, but more importantly for the museum, to the global arts community
where it has demonstrated strong leadership in creating ArtBabble as a collaborative art
video sharing website, in showing the importance of transparency with the creation of
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Dashboard, in offering open source software to other museums with the IMA Lab, and in
its continued management of the Steve Project for tagging. While these initiatives may
not be place-based, they are culturally conscious not so much of a local culture, but rather
of the global arts world, an important community for the museum to belong to that
includes arts institutions, museums, scholars, professionals, and policy leaders.
The IMA is conscious of its place at the crossroads of America, geographically
isolated from the global arts world but filling an important cultural need for the local arts
world. A place-conscious approach allows the museum to serve its local community with
more traditional exhibitions, historic gardens, public programming, and the contemporary
art and nature park of 100 Acres, while at the same time carefully infusing digital
technology onsite with the wired Davis Lab, mobile tours, and digital comment screens
only at the end of exhibitions. The local and the global work together integrally at the
IMA. Sometimes global attention will trigger local attention (Venice Biennale), and some
local programs will incorporate global players (Curators at Large, 100 Acres), benefitting
both audiences equally. Technology facilitates this symbiotic relationship through the
Internet (the museum’s website, blog, and social media), the physically situated IMA Lab
with museum staff that create open source software for the global museum community,
and with digital teleconferencing technology that connects people worldwide to the
museum.
Technology is a means to extend audiences past a geographic border; particularly
useful if one’s immediate geography is not that representative or supportive of one’s
identity and ambitions. The IMA uses technology and its human resources to not only
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better serve its previously identified communities (local and global), but also to expand
those communities into global cyberspace through new partnerships and initiatives.
Anderson (2009) stated that,
If you look to be the best and the fastest and the brightest without sharing
with everybody else, you end up being alone. And as an institution we
don’t want to be alone, we want to be in partnership with a lot of others.
Partnership means institutional initiatives, both local and global as described, but
partnership also means opening up the museum to a public partnership for dialog and
participation. Dialog occurs in the museum’s blog, which has the highest ratio of
comments to posts of all five museums studied, and through social media, with the
museum astutely distinguishing between a local audience for Facebook and a global
audience for Twitter (including Anderson’s own Twitter feed). Dialog is a form of
participation, but other forms include the digital comment screens in the museum, as well
as the social tagging and Tag Tours which occur on the museum’s website for its online
collection. At the IMA, however, a partnership with the public and with institutions does
not imply democratization or a collective-type relationship, as the museum clearly
maintains authority and leadership within its community of peers and its local
community.
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Chapter Five: The Walker Art Center
Figure 12: The Walker Art Center, front view along Hennepin Avenue (Barnes building on right, Herzog &
de Meuron building on left), 2011
Figure 13: The Walker Art Center, back view (Barnes building on left, Herzog & de Meuron building on
right, open field in the foreground), 2011
Place + Localized Culture
Minnesota is called the “Land of 10,000 Lakes”–it is on their license plates–and the state
capitol Minneapolis is therefore the “City of Lakes.” The name comes from Mni, the
native Dakota word for water, and polis as the Greek word for city. Minneapolis is
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situated on both banks of the Mississippi river and has over twenty lakes and wetlands
regions. The Chain of Lakes district consists of 13.3 miles of biking/walking/jogging
paths with rose gardens, a bird sanctuary, and a bandshell for live music, surrounding a
chain of connecting lakes. Minneapolis heavily promotes its natural physical beauty, as
well as the diverse sports that take place seasonally such as fishing, boating, and skiing.
Permanent sports attractions based in Minneapolis include a National Football League
team the Minnesota Vikings, a National Basketball Association team the Minnesota
Timberwolves, a National Hockey League the Minnesota Wild, and a Major League
Baseball team the Minnesota Twins.
Figure 14: Lake Calhoun, with downtown Minneapolis in the background, 2011
Minneapolis was also called “the mini apple” during the 1970s because of its
strong theater tradition; second only to New York (“the big apple”) in the amount of
theaters (production, attendance, and number of venues). Sir Tyrone Guthrie first started
the idea of a non-profit resident theater as an artistic alternative to the large, commercial
productions on Broadway. He choose Minneapolis for his experiment in 1959 primarily
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because of its great enthusiasm for the idea of live theater, and also for what Guthrie
noted was a central location in the Midwest, a vital cultural community, and the presence
of a large state university and many small colleges. T.B. Walker (founder of the Walker
Art Center) immediately offered to donate land for the theater behind his museum, as
well as $400,000 towards construction costs. Since 1963, the Guthrie Theater was
physically and often programmatically linked to the Walker Art Center (the Walker), but
in 2006, the Guthrie opened its new, autonomous building along the riverfront in the
historic (but now redeveloped and trendy) Mill district, designed by Pritzker Prize
winning French architect Jean Nouvel and called a “21
st
century dream factory” by Time
magazine.
While the state of Minnesota supports the arts with a substantial annual allocation
of $8.49 million (2011), the city of Minneapolis has no formal arts department,
commission, or budgetary allocation, except for its public art program that has an annual
budget of $330,000. Nonetheless, city government supports the arts through its different
departments on a per-case basis when approached by institutions, such as when the city
funded the underground parking garage ramp during the Walker’s recent renovation. The
city recently hired a staff person to act as liaison between city government and the local
arts community. Aside from a large number of independent theaters inspired by the
success of the Guthrie, Minneapolis is also home to dance companies, a symphony, and
other prominent museums including the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the
University of Minnesota (designed by architect Frank Gehry), the Minneapolis Institute
of Arts, and the Minnesota Historical Society, as well as community arts centers and
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ethnic museums reflecting the state’s immigrant history such as the Museum of Russian
Art and the American Swedish Institute.
Minnesota is home to twenty Fortune 500 companies, the most per capita of any
U.S. state except one. Most of these companies were started by families long ago and
have now gone public, but maintain family-owned foundations that are very philanthropic
towards the local community. A few of the prominent family foundations located in
Minneapolis are the Edward Dayton Family Fund (originally Dayton’s Department Store
that owned Target, Mervyns, Marshall Fields), the McKnight Foundation (William L.
McKnight was an early leader of 3M), and the Curtis L. Carlson Family Foundation
(Carlson Companies). Many of the corporations also heavily support the community
through their own corporate foundations or marketing/outreach departments. Some of the
most philanthropic corporations in Minneapolis include Target, Best Buy, General Mills,
3M, and the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Following the Walker’s recent expansion in 2005,
The New York Times (as cited in Blauvelt, 2005, p. 240) noted that the museum “has
evolved in a city known for its outsize arts patronage.”
The city of Minneapolis has a population of 382,578 people (the smallest by far of
the five museums studied). Demographics show that the city skews younger, with 20% of
the population under 18 and only 8% older than 65, with the majority age group (21%)
ranging from 25 to 34 years of age (U.S. Census, 2010). The city is also predominantly
Caucasian non-Latino (63.8%) due to the majority being of Scandinavian and German
ancestors that settled the region from the late 1800s. The largest minority group is
African Americans at 18.6%, followed by a growing population of Hispanic/Latinos at
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10.5%, and 2% Native American Indian as the original inhabitants of the region (Dakota
Sioux and Ojibwe tribes). There are eleven federally recognized Indian tribes in
Minnesota today, each actively managing their own reservations and casinos.
Most impressive, however, is how highly Minneapolis ranks with regards to civic
involvement.
22
Measuring service, 37% of adults volunteer with an organization and
12% work with their neighbors. Measuring giving, 62% of adults give charitable
contributions over $25. Measuring political action, 69% of adults are registered voters,
and 76% voted in the 2008 election (above the national average of 57%). Measuring
social connectedness, 91% have dinner with household members frequently, 65% talk to
family and friends on the Internet frequently, and 51% talk with neighbors frequently.
Measuring belonging to a group, 49% of adults participate in any organization. Although
the region ranks slightly above the national poverty rate at 16.5% (by 3.3%), it also rises
above the national rates for adults having at least a bachelor’s degree (41%), for 92%
school enrollment above 87.3%, median personal earnings are $31,442, and it is slightly
higher than the national income index at 5.47.
22
For these statistics, Mapping the Measure of America 2010–2010 analyzes congressional districts only.
The Walker Art Center is located in the Minnesota Congressional District 3.
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Figure 15: The Mall of America, Bloomington, MN, 2011
The most recent visitor statistics (2008) profile the average Minneapolis metro
region visitor as being from 30 to 59 years of age, overwhelmingly Caucasian (90%), and
coming in groups of two to three people without children. When traveling for personal
reasons, the number one reason to visit is shopping, below which falls dining, outdoor
activities, and seeing city sites, with only 20% stating their reason as to visit museums.
The Mall of America is the largest enclosed mall in the United States, located in nearby
Bloomington, and there is no sales tax on clothes in the state of Minnesota.
In discussing the most recent museum expansion, architect Jacques Herzog (of
Herzog & de Meuron) describes how they considered the place-based context of the
Walker Art Center. Minneapolis, he states, “is a special kind of city. There’s no public
space apart from these skywalks. Since the beginning, the intention was that the museum
should be an alternative public space...like a concentrated town” (as cited in Blauvelt,
2005, pp. 12–13). Minnesota is the northernmost state in the continental United States,
and in response to the extreme winter temperatures, Minneapolis created its skyway
system that is more than five miles long, with elevated, covered walkways to connect
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buildings within the downtown area. Because the museum is located outside the
downtown area, it does not connect to this transit system.
The Museum and its Community
Figure 16: Spoonbridge and Cherry (1985–1988) by Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen, Walker
Sculpture Garden.
Mission Statement:
The Walker Art Center is a catalyst for the creative expression of artists
and the active engagement of audiences. Focusing on the visual,
performing, and media arts of our time, the Walker takes a global,
multidisciplinary, and diverse approach to the creation, presentation,
interpretation, collection, and preservation of art. Walker programs
examine the questions that shape and inspire us as individuals, cultures,
and communities. (emphasis mine)
While there are many noteworthy museums and cultural attractions in the city, the
Walker’s Spoonbridge and Cherry in its Sculpture Garden remains one of the most
popular icons when promoting the city, particularly with the official visitor’s guide and
other marketing materials. A detail of the iconic sculpture also covers the front of the
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museum’s own brochure. The Sculpture Garden played an important early role that
connected the emerging museum to the Minneapolis community. The grounds had
previously been used for military drills and exercises since the late nineteenth century,
then as an Armory to house volunteers from the Spanish War that later became the
Armory Gardens hosting a number of civic events, then baseball, softball and football
games on the grounds, an air strip during the 1920s, and occasional temporary sculptural
installations used by the adjacent Walker Art Center in the early 1970s. It was during
Martin Friedman’s long tenure as third director of the museum (1960–1991), that the
Walker formally established a relationship with the Minneapolis Park and Recreation
Board to develop a large-scale sculpture garden. The Sculpture Garden officially opened
on September 10, 1988, with its glass-covered Conservatory, an impressive collection of
sculptures placed throughout the formal gardens, and the monumental Spoonbridge and
Cherry sculpture commissioned by Frederick R. Weisman for the opening. The Sculpture
Garden has been used by the museum as an outdoor exhibition space to explore
contemporary sculpture with new commissions, and also for performances, readings,
musical concerts and educational workshops, but it has also been used by the local
community as a place to gather, to contemplate, and to celebrate special occasions. Most
significantly, the Irene Hixon Whitney pedestrian bridge, built in 1986 by Siah Armajani,
connects the Garden with Loring Park and the northern and eastern parts of the city.
The Walker Art Center was borne out of a commitment to community and public
education. In 1879, Minneapolis civic leader and lumber magnate Thomas Barlow
Walker established a gallery in his downtown home consisting of his private collection of
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modern European paintings, Chinese jades, miniatures, porcelain, armory, and Indian
portraits, which was touted as the first museum west of the Mississippi River. Walker,
who also founded the Minneapolis Public Library, was dedicated to improving his local
community and opened the gallery free of charge to the public. Walker later moved his
private collection to a new building on the museum’s current site in 1927, and changed
the name to the Walker Art Galleries. In 1938, he transferred administration to the newly
established Minnesota Arts Council, that in turn decided to approach the federal Works
Progress Administration (WPA) for support in creating a new public art center. The first
director of the Walker Art Center was a WPA administrator, Daniel Defenbacher, who
served from 1940 to 1951. Not only was Defenbacher in charge of the WPA program to
create 70 such community art centers around the country, but he was passionate about,
“creating a museum of the present for the people of today.” In his visionary words from
1944,
An Art Center is a “town meeting” in a field of human endeavor as old as
man himself. By definition, it is a meeting place for all the arts. It provides
space in which the public can both participate and be a spectator.
23
Figure 17: Walker Art Center flyer, 1940 (©Walker Art Center)
23
The quotation is taken from the Walker Art Center website, as cited in former director Kathy Halbreich’s
statement about the 2005 museum expansion. Retrieved October 5, 2011, from
http://expansion.walkerart.org/dir_statement.html
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In 1969, the original museum building was demolished in preparation for a new
facility designed by the architect Edward Larrabee Barnes. During the two years of
construction, the museum conducted its “Museum without Walls” exhibitions and
activities off-site around the region, collaborating with local organizations and
institutions. This period is reflective of the highly collaborative nature of the Walker still
today with the local arts community. When the museum closed for its most recent
expansion from 2004 to 2005, it launched a citywide program called “Walker without
Walls.”
The fourth director of the Walker, Kathy Halbreich, served for 16 years (1991–
2007) and was largely responsible for revitalizing Walker and Defenbacher’s early ideas
about a community art space, but now situated in the twenty-first century. In 2004,
Halbreich stated, “The metaphor for the museum is no longer a church or temple, but a
lively forum or town square.” A number of the museum’s visitor-centric initiatives that
began in the late 1990s were based on the ideas of constructivist learning and personal
meaning making. However, what made these ideas unique to the Walker was the
museum’s multidisciplinary approach to collecting, exhibiting, and programming the
visual, performing, and media arts. Halbreich’s More than a Museum initiative began in
1999, based on her quest to determine the nature of a multidisciplinary art center in the
twenty-first century. While the Walker functioned as an art museum from the beginning,
and has long been accredited by the American Association of Museums, it is perhaps
because the word museum was never formally attached to the Walker (art gallery, art
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center) that it felt more freedom from traditional institutional boundaries as well as the
impetus to more clearly define its own particular institution. In seeking this identity, the
Walker was challenged to “imagine ‘a town square that is a destination in itself, where
distinct zones of quiet and conviviality introduce the visitor to a unique spectrum of
programs and to the ideas animating them” (as cited in Blauvelt, 2005, p. 6). More than a
Museum was also the name used for the 2000 capital campaign to raise funds for the
Barnes building renovation, the new Herzog & de Meuron building, and increasing the
operating endowment ($94 million was raised as of September 2005, exceeding the goal
by $2 million). Today the Walker is dedicated to contemporary art and to embracing the
multidisciplinary nature of contemporary art as well as the multiple ways in which
contemporary art can be experienced and understood by visitors, which leads it to offer
multiple paths into both the museum and its art. This chapter will later discuss the
technological tools with which the Walker incorporated to facilitate individualized
learning experiences for visitors, and for which it aptly calls itself “one of the first ‘smart’
cultural facilities.”
In 2003, the Walker’s Education and Community Programs Department initiated
Art and Civic Engagement: Mapping the Connections. This project was funded by the
Minneapolis-based Bush Foundation (started in 1953 by 3M executive Archibald Bush
and his wife). The questions that inspired this initiative were; how can a contemporary art
center become a forum for civic engagement, and how can the contemporary issues that
contemporary artists deal with become a part of public life? The museum defines civic
engagement as, “the exercising of personal or collective agency in the public domain for
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the betterment of one’s community” (as cited in Prim, Peters & Schultz, 2005, p. 2). Its
goal with this program was to encourage “genuine” civic involvement from visitors, and
for museum curators and staff to consider a more “socially conscious” approach to
planning events, exhibitions, and hands-on learning experiences. The museum started
with a belief in the social potential of art to address issues in the community or between
groups of people. The program was based on the 4C Model that the museum developed to
recognize the roles of art and artists in the town square. These four roles are: container,
connector, convener, and catalyst. The spectrum of civic engagement activities
considered by the model includes; commentary, dialogue, action, and leadership. Andrew
Blauvelt (2005), design director and curator at the museum, describes this new model as,
“not so much a reshuffling of the hierarchy as it was an expansion of thinking around the
network of relationships involved in the entire museum experience, whether objects and
ideas, artists and audiences, or programs and places” (p. 16).
Figure 18: 4C Model, 2003 (©Walker Art Center)
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The Walker conducted an extensive visitor study in 2006 in order to further
understand its visitors and the visitor experience, and in particular, “to further engage and
inspire museum members and an ever broader audience.” The study consisted of visitor
ethnography, engagement study, tracking study, and member focus groups implemented
by the Institute for Learning Innovation and General Mills Consumer Insights group. The
research revealed that the majority of museum visitors are enthusiasts and not experts,
that visitors want a sense of familiarity, safety, and comfort (although 65% said that a
major motivation for visiting the museum is a desire to learn something new), and that
visitors who gained personal insights had the most meaningful interactions with the art
and the museum. The Walker has formulated a New Audience Engagement Plan based on
this study, to be implemented in 2011. The plan is to increase staff and visitor
interactions, focus on gallery comfort to encourage extended viewing experiences, further
refine public spaces to actively promote socialization, and emphasize emotional and
personal connections in all museum communications. The study specifically proposed
three opportunities to building a stronger Walker community: being “in the know,”
directed learning, and special interest learning.
The Walker’s latest expansion was completed in 2005 by the Pritzker Prize
winning Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron. The expansion consisted of renovating
the existing Barnes building, creating a new building, and connecting both buildings.
Two of the main goals included creating new kinds of “social and civic gathering spaces”
and reorienting the museum to the city. Many of the new spaces contributed to the notion
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of museum as town square, such as the large lounge areas between galleries and by the
lobbies, shared spaces for experiencing audio and video works of art (media bays) as well
as the Info Lounge for shared digital experiences around the Dialog Table, and an
expanded grassy area outside the back of the museum. These media-based spaces and
interactive lounges were distributed around the museum to support learning that the
museum believes occurs “independent of a single time and place.” The museum affirmed
that no space was designed specifically for one audience (e.g., children, families,
students), but for what they called “citizen visitors” of the museum to come together and
interact, talk, learn, and enjoy (Blauvelt, 2005).
Figure 19: Best Buy Film/Video Bay, Walker Art Center, 2011
When asked to describe a town square, museum visitors used the words,
“unstructured and flexible, commonly owned, safe for all opinions, family-friendly…a
universally used public space where all worlds of people collide” (Blauvelt, 2005, p. 29).
While the museum strove to become a town square in and of itself, it also needed to
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strengthen its connection to the larger community of Minneapolis and the Twin Cities,
and in particular, to the downtown that it had long felt disconnected from. The architects
responded by placing large windows facing the street and downtown, a new street-level
entrance and entry plaza that incorporate the wide sidewalk along Hennepin Avenue, and
a long glass curtainwall along Hennepin Avenue connecting visitors inside the museum
to the outside street life with a video projection and LED display for digital signage.
In 2010, the Walker launched what it called an “innovative community initiative”
called Open Field during the summer months from June to September, which was
repeated in 2011. Talking about the program, Director of Education and Community
Programs Sarah Schultz
24
(personal communication, October 19, 2010) said,
It was a massive public experiment in what I had come to understand over
several years, is that one of the resources an institution has is space, and
offering up space or platforms to people to insert themselves into is very,
very important, and I actually believe part of our civic responsibility as a
public institution. Open Field showed me that there are so many different
kinds of self-identifying and self-formed communities that can find a place
and a home within the institution that the institution doesn’t necessarily
need to be the one to identify the community but needs to be a platform to
find a way into the institution… This idea of slowing down and being
social together is a profound need that people have.
Open Field turned the Walker’s outdoor grassy spaces (including the Sculpture Garden)
into what it calls a “cultural commons,” based on the belief that certain cultural resources
can and should be commonly owned, such as images, languages, ideas, computer code,
and other information. Open Field depends on public participation; for individuals or
groups to share their talents and interests with others by scheduling activities, although
24
In February 2012, Sarah Schultz gained a new title at the museum, director of education and curator of
public practice.
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spontaneity is also welcome. In addition to these publicly organized programs (such as tai
chi, tango, yoga, poetry reading, book club, badminton tournament), the museum also
offers workshops, art-making activities, and an outdoor bar and grill in its newly created
Open Lounge. The Open Field Tool Shed was also built outside to store materials for
visitors to check out, such as picnic blankets, books, games, sports equipments, and art
materials. Open Field succeeded not only in creating the environment of museum as town
square, but also in making the museum more an integral part of its local community; a
town square firmly placed within a town. With Open Field’s reliance on participatory
culture, the museum acknowledges and celebrates the incredible “cultural assets, creative
spirit, and collective knowledge” within its local community.
So while we see how the Walker is conscious of strengthening its own community
and is committed to participating in and serving its greater community, the notion of
community is still discussed in the abstract. How does the museum categorize its own
community and the larger community in which it participates? When asked this question,
current museum Director Olga Viso (personal correspondence, December 24, 2010)
responded that the principal Walker communities are: 1) local/regional, 2) global
contemporary art world, and 3) online. She continued,
These communities, of course, break down within each category. From the
standpoint of emphases or priorities, I would say that we have been
putting decided focus since my arrival on attracting the broader
local/regional community as well as developing our online audiences.
Schultz emphasizes the museum’s many communities of interest as a way of breaking
down its own community. She declares that, “We have various target audiences, but over
the years I think, like many institutions, it’s moved away from a demographic way of
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thinking about your audience to more of a psychographic way of thinking about your
audience.” Just as the museum is about multiple disciplines of art, so they have multiple
communities. For example, special membership groups at the Walker include a Design
Council, Film Society, Collector’s Council, and Producer’s Council.
Two of the most significant and long-standing sub-communities within the
Walker community are artists and teens. In 1994, the Walker was one of the first art
museums to develop teen programming that is still active today. Programming includes
teen exhibitions, film showcases, poetry slams, hip-hop battles, internships, and
workshops. The Teen Art Council (WACTAC) is central to this community, a group of
12 local teens that meet weekly to design, organize, and market events to other teens and
young adults at the museum. WACTAC’s website (http://teens.walkerart.org/) is
remarkable for the sense of community that it generates for teens based on digital features
such as a blog, links, calendar, and gallery of uploaded artwork. Even the teen alumni
remain part of that community through the WACTAC Alumni Google Group and
WACTAC Alumni Facebook group. The Walker’s teen programming incorporates its
diverse, local community of teens, and is significant because of the particular
demographics of the museum: 22% of its visitors are teens and youth (recall that
Minneapolis also has a younger demographic); 20% of its visitors are low-income; and
13% of its visitors are people of color. The Walker is also highly cognizant of the key
role that artists (local and international) play in the town square from its 4C model,
evidenced by a number of museum programs that interact with the local community, such
as artist residencies, commissions, and the Art Lab (a multipurpose studio classroom for
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the last 20 years). Especially worth mentioning is mnartists.org, a virtual community in
the form of a website and database of Minnesota artists and organizations from all
disciplines with programming also at the physical museum. Mnartists.org is run by the
museum and funded by the local McKnight Foundation. The Walker is the only museum
of the five studied that documents the number of works by local artists in its permanent
collection (173 works or 11% of the collection by Minnesota artists as of October 2010).
The Role of Digital Technology
New Media Initiatives Mission Statement:
The department of New Media Initiatives explores the use of digital
technologies to communicate contemporary artistic expression and the
views of its interpreters to diverse individuals, communities, and cultures.
Its mission is to make the rich resources of the Walker Art Center broadly
accessible, and to investigate various technologies as a means to educate
and inform. The department facilitates the communication of information
to the museum’s public through the innovative use of new media. The
department maintains a highly visible presence in the field and assumes a
leadership role in the investigation of the informational and educational
possibilities that new digital technologies offer. (emphasis mine)
New Media Initiatives Blog Mission Statement:
The New Media Initiatives blog chronicles research and development of
new media projects and technology at the Walker, connects with a larger
technical community, and shares information on relevant new media work
from beyond our walls. Authors are current and former NMI staff.
(emphasis mine)
The Walker Art Center has long been committed to digital technology. During the 1990s,
technology was directed mostly to artist commissions and acquisitions with the
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establishment of a New Media Initiatives (NMI) department that built a significant
collection (the Study Collection) of new media/digital/net art under the leadership of
museum Curator Steve Deitz. Two signature works were commissioned during this
period; The Dolphin Oracle II (by Minneapolis-based artist/designer Piotr Szyhalski) and
Dialog Table (by Kinecity Llc). Both are still centrally placed in the museum, but will
soon be phased out due to outdated technology and the need to bring in new interactive
works.
Figure 20: The Dolphin Oracle II, Walker Art Center, 2011
Gallery 9 was an online exhibition space for digital art that appeared on the
museum’s website from 1997 to 2003 and is currently available for viewing in its
archived form. As Deitz originally wrote about the gallery on the website;
Gallery 9 is a site for project-driven exploration, through digitally-based
media, of all things “cyber.” This includes artist commissions, interface
experiments, exhibitions, community discussion, a study collection, hyper-
essays, filtered links, lectures and other guerilla raids into real space, and
collaborations with other entities (both internal and external).
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Because of the post 9–11 economic downturn, the New Media department terminated
both Deitz and the curatorial initiative in 2003, redirecting its focus to educational
resources, as can be seen in the current NMI Mission Statement phrase, “to investigate
various technologies as a means to educate and inform.” In Halbreich’s (2003) letter
explaining this redirection, she discusses future plans; “We will be focusing on enhancing
the Walker Web site’s educational components and on realizing some of the interactive
projects for our expansion.”
Two of the most significant of these educational components that were
subsequently developed are mnartists.org and ArtsConnectEd. Olga Viso believes in
technology’s potential for building and expanding community. She comments (personal
communication, December 24, 2010),
I think technology plays a large role not only in creating and maintaining
community, but also in expanding and potentially redefining it. There are
entire communities of interest we can connect with and tap into online
beyond those already engaged…Our mnartists program and site is a great
example of the successes in building an engaged artistic community online
that is now actively translating into on-site programming and participation.
ArtsConnectED, our joint site with the Minneapolis Institute of Arts,
which is an online educational resource for teachers, that is also actively
used by students too.
Mnartists.org has already been discussed within the context of a community–a local
artistic community–but this subchapter will highlight the role of digital technology in
creating and maintaining this community for the museum. Mnartists.org grew out of a
study of Minnesota artists funded by The McKnight Foundation, which revealed the need
for artists to have greater access to resources, support, and other artists. Currently the
website (http://www.mnartists.org/#) has 519 members (membership is free) and offers a
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Blog, Calendar, social media (Facebook with 8,659 fans and Twitter with 704 followers),
Forums, News & Opportunities, videos, a separate e-mail listserve (11,514 subscribers),
and a bi-monthly electronic arts journal entitled access+ENGAGE (as of January 6,
2012). The website states that, “It offers to Minnesota-based artists a central gathering
place on the Web, and will grow to become a marketplace and community hub.”
Mnartists.org blurs the line between online and onsite with a very strong social network
(several Facebook pages for separate events, several Twitter feeds, and sub-sites), online
promotion of individual artists, and an active array of programming that takes place
principally at the Walker and also around the state. This website and the programs and
connections that it produces is critical to the mission of the Walker as being a “catalyst
for the creative expression of artists.”
ArtsConnectEd is a partnership between the Walker Arts Center and the
Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) to create “tools for teaching the arts” for K-12
educators and their students, higher education scholars, and international audiences. In
1997, both museums received joint funding from the state of Minnesota to digitize and
integrate their collections and educational resources. In 2006, a National Leadership
Grant to both institutions from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) was
directed to redesigning the ArtsConnectEd website by adding new online tools to
empower teachers to create and manage the web content themselves. Access to the
website and all its content is free and invites new members by announcing, “To take full
advantage of all the site’s features, become part of the ArtsConnectEd community by
registering today.” New online functions include Art Collector where members can save,
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customize, present, and share items (only the member’s user name is displayed in sets),
and Ask an Educator where members can submit questions electronically, and both the
questions and answers appear on the website for public view categorized by latest,
popular, and category tags (the person that asked the question is listed by first name and
title). Images in the database have a zoom function, comments, tags, and ratings.
ArtsConnectEd is also on Facebook (259 fans) and Twitter (989 followers) with links
from the home page (as of January 6, 2012), and RSS feeds.
Figure 21: Walker website, WACTAC (11/8/11 screen capture)
The Walker Art Center Teen Art Council (WACTAC) was mentioned earlier
regarding the teen community at the museum, but it is important to discuss the role of
technology in strengthening bonds between the members, and also in reaching out to
other teenagers. WACTAC began in 1996, and is a closed group of twelve teenagers
selected each year by the museum that meet weekly during the school year and receive a
small stipend. The main objective of the council is to create events for other teenagers
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and young adults that will better connect all of them to contemporary art. Therefore, the
use of social media and the Internet is critical to these peer-to-peer marketing efforts.
WACTAC has its own account on Facebook (Walker Teens, 116 fans), Twitter (243
followers), MySpace (45 friends), Flickr group pool (8 members and 687 items), and a
RSS feed (as of January 6, 2012). Technology also helps bond the teenagers in the
council through their own sub-community. It is important to note, however, that these
two objectives are separate, with the WACTAC website serving principally the teen art
council, and social media serving principally the global, anonymous public of supposedly
teenagers. Social media is not promoted or linked from the WACTAC website, and
postings of the blog, artwork, and events on the website are limited to council members,
although the site is open for public viewing.
The Walker Channel is another technological innovation of the Walker Art
Center. It was started in 2003 as the Translocal Channel in conjunction with the
exhibition How Latitudes Become Forms: Art in a Global Age (February 9–May 4, 2003)
and provides live webcasts of museum programming, lectures, and readings with artists,
scholars, and critics of contemporary art and culture. The Walker Channel also includes
an archive of past webcasts, remarks by hundreds of artists, panel discussions, single-
artist lectures, and musical and literary performances. Museum Curator Andrew Blauvelt
(2005) describes its ability to transform information; “Regardless of format, the Walker
Channel was our interpretation of ubiquitous computing, the integration of distributed
digital content throughout the physical environment” (p. 26). The Walker Channel was
renovated in 2010 with support from the Bush Foundation under a grant entitled
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“Expanding the Rules of Engagement with Artists and Audiences and Fostering Creative
Capital in our Community.” Improvements included the use of closed captions and
transcripts (enabling search functions and greater accessibility), streaming video, the
addition of public comments, and high-definition video capturing.
The Walker developed its cell phone tour called Art on Call in 2004 with an
IMLS National Leadership Grant, and launched it in April 2005 to coincide with the
opening of the newly expanded museum. A cell phone tour was important to provide
visitors information on works in the Sculpture Garden, but Art on Call provided much
more than the normal audio tour. The museum uses interactive voice response (IVR)
technology integrated with its Web server and content management system that allows
calendar content to be included through a text-to-speech engine that converts text to
audio which is searchable, and for staff to easily update that content. Commentary on
artwork (including visual descriptions and comments from curators, artists, and the
tourguide), is simultaneously available on three platforms: telephone (by dialing a phone
number), Web browser (http://newmedia.walkerart.org/aoc/index.wac) with a digital
image preview of the artwork, and a podcast for MP3 players (also available in the
iTunes Store). Other features include Breadcrumbing that automatically keeps track of
the artworks that are accessed, expanding the playlist each time the phone is used to listen
to a segment; and TalkBack that records personal audio comments on the phone, where
the user enters a phone number in the search box to retrieve the playlist and comments.
Art on Call also allows users the option of transferring calls directly to museum staff and
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services such as to the box office to purchase tickets, information on hours, directions,
ticketing, museum shopping and dining, and for visitors to leave comments.
In 2010, the Walker embarked on an experiment in crowdsourced curating, one of
the first art museums to do so. Led by Chief Curator Darcie Alexander, 50/50: Audience
and Experts Curate the Paper Collection (December 16, 2010–July 17, 2011) consisted
of works chosen by Alexander on one gallery wall, facing works chosen by the public on
the opposite wall. Alexander selected 183 images from the Walker’s permanent
collection of works on paper, and for six weeks the public was able to vote on them from
the museum’s website and a kiosk inside one of the galleries. There was also a link from
the MoMA website that brought many people to the exhibition subsite. The images were
not identified by artist or caption; people only had the image to vote on. Commenting on
the exhibition, Alexander (as cited in Hart, 2010) stated, “People always have opinions.
This exhibition gives those opinions a little bit of agency so that people feel they actually
have a voice.” This exhibition played an important role in how the museum is
accommodating its audience that has become more participatory in nature.
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Figure 22: 50/50: Audience and Experts Curate the Paper Collection, Courtesy Walker Art
Center. Photograph by Cameron Wittig.
The Walker was invited by the Getty Foundation to participate in its Online
Scholarly Cataloguing Initiative (OSCI) in 2008. The project which it identified was the
online cataloging of works acquired since 2005, when the Walker published its seminal
catalog, Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance of a Whole. The catalog,
published in conjunction with its 2005 re-opening, is both an archival history of the
Walker and a primer on modern and contemporary art with contributions from museum
staff and prominent independent writers. For the project, the Walker received $200,000 in
planning support in 2009, and then $375,000 implementation support in 2011 from the
foundation. Brooke Kellaway (2009), the Walker’s Getty fellow for the OSCI project,
reports on some of the project’s initial findings in the museum’s blog:
It is a restaurant, not a grocery store; contributions to scholarship will
supersede attempts at fullness, and likewise forego redundancies; the
audience is firstly assumed as those studied in contemporary art; content
will be commissioned from in and out of the institution; the move towards
online publications is not foreseen as a total replacement for print
catalogues.
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Nate Solas (as cited in Chan, 2011, December 3), senior new media developer at the
museum, reveals that the exciting part of the OSCI project for him is opening up the
Walker’s data and connecting it to other online collections and resources.” The
challenging part for the Walker, however, is archiving its multidisciplinary collection,
including its 50-year history of performance art commissions, contemporary art by living
artists, and new media work.
Regarding the use of social media, the Walker promotes the four most common
on its website (listed in the About section which includes social media) with four separate
groups on Flickr, seven Twitter accounts, thirteen domains on Facebook, and YouTube.
Facebook is listed separately under the heading Social Networking. The museum also
participates on Foursquare, LinkedIn, MySpace, SCVNGR, and iTunesU, however these
are not listed on its website. Walker director of marketing and public relations Ryan
French (personal communication, July 12, 2011) explains,
I don’t think an institution’s website has to connect out to all of the social
networking platforms provided the platforms themselves tie to the Walker.
I don’t think a lot of people start at walkerart.org and seek social
networking opportunities. Rather, it’s the reverse. They stumble upon the
Walker while they’re engaging with a friend online and then bounce to the
Walker’s site.
French acknowledges the goal of social media as to increase visitor engagement as a
factor of a two-way community, which he calls “relational marketing” or “user-
empowered promotion.” Virtual visitors are also part of the museum community and the
museum takes particular note of its active followers on social media. Out of 47,771 fans
on its main Facebook page, the museum notes 18,000 active users (as of July 2011).
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Robin Dowden (personal communication, December 3, 2010), director of New
Media Initiatives, emphasizes the importance of the calendar of events that is integrated
into their social media; “Taking advantage of the social networks is trying to connect
people back to the Walker site in a meaningful way.” Just as social media can be used to
bring people to the central node of the Walker website, so can they be directed to visit the
physical museum, a principal objective of every museum. Certainly, this is more realistic
with the local community, such as with the Walker’s Open Field initiative. Sarah Shultz
noted her surprise that despite creating a Flickr account and group pool for Open Field,
the notion of an online community was not very successful, partly she believes, because
visitors were not interested in coming to the event to document the experience and
participate in the online community. Rather, Schultz states, “they wanted to be in the
present, they actually talked repeatedly about the importance of just being together in the
present.” On the other hand, the museum has made a concerted effort to incorporate
technology in its physical spaces with the aforementioned examples (Dialog Table,
Dolphin Oracle, Media Bays, and computer kiosks). The Walker also recently installed
digital signage in the Bazinet Lobby as a wayfinding device to navigate programming
inside the old and new buildings, and will install signage in two additional locations
inside the museum. The museum plans to use the screens for live-updating Twitter
streams during parties and special events, to display severe weather and fire alerts, to
show cinema trailers, and also to present decorative blasts of light and pattern (Price,
2011). There is also digital signage inside the elevators and outside the museum.
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Walker visitors are predominantly young, as are the Twin Cities region
demographics, nevertheless the museum reports that its visitors have a low level of
awareness or use of social media; Facebook has 38%, Twitter 28%, and the Walker blog
has 38% (French, personal communication, July 12, 2011). While we can consider the
Walker blog, Walker Channel, and the Art on Call tour as internal social media because
they enable public discourse through comments, there is not really peer-to-peer
communication or networking. These media are located in the Resources section of the
museum website (together with iTunesU), and while postings are subsequently placed in
Facebook and Twitter, the blog itself does not connect to other social media.
Furthermore, blog comments are not visible on the homepage until the reader clicks onto
the extended text page. Despite reporting a significant number of user sessions in 2010
(341,031), the Walker blog had the least amount of public comments from all five
museums surveyed and the lowest ratio (0.4:1) of comments to posts. Justin Heideman
(2008), new media designer from 2006 to 2010, explains that, “Often the style of posting
we engage in isn’t the most comment inducing.” The blog also had the lowest number of
posts by outside bloggers (2% of the total posts).
25
25
I analyzed the Walker blog for ten months before the museum introduced its new website, on which it
categorizes its blogs into eight different blogs that each have different hyperlinks not connected to the
others internally. Previously there was one central blog and each posting was categorized by one of the
same eight titles: Performing Arts, Visual Arts, Film/Video, Design, New Media, Education, Off Center,
and MNARTISTS.org. The Garden blog is now only accessible in the museum website’s section for the
Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. The new comprehensive blog can be viewed under the website heading
Media by clicking on the title Walker Blogs (http://blogs.walkerart.org/).
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Figure 23: Walker website home page (12/6/11 screen capture)
As I was writing this chapter, the Walker introduced its newly redesigned website
(http://www.walkerart.org/) on December 1, 2011, described by director Olga Viso on the
website as “an online hub for ideas about contemporary art and culture, both inside the
Walker and beyond.” The previous website was from 2005 and did not integrate social
media as well or promote peer-to-peer computing with Share buttons. This new content-
rich website demonstrates that the Walker continues to be a pioneer in the international
field of museums, the arts, and digital technology. The website was immediately hailed
by prominent museum writers. The anonymous blogger Museum Nerd (2011) states that
it “represents the most forward-thinking best practices in the museum field today.” He
describes the website as a “game-changer” because it yields power;
The secret weapon here is that this move to include content from
unaffiliated sources on the Walker’s website will actually give the Walker
more–and more lasting–power, as the “Idea Hub” Olga Viso describes
positions the Walker as the locus of the smartest discourse about the
content areas that are central to its mission.
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Nina Simon (2011) writes in her blog Museum 2.0 that, “What the Walker has done is
commit to a unique online approach–not just for one program or microsite, but for their
homepage. They took their vision of the institution as an idea hub, looked at comparable
sites online that achieve that vision, and adopted and adapted the journalistic approach to
their goals.” In his blog Fresh + New(er), Sebastian Chan (2011, December 3) interviews
two members of the Walker editorial team, calling the website “a potential paradigm shift
for institutional websites.” The website is tightly aligned with the mission and identity of
the museum as a contemporary art center, dedicated to supporting artists, and grounded in
the local culture while serving an international audience. Nate Solas talks about how the
website was inspired by essentially three spaces the museum serves: local, onsite, and the
world. Solas describes the idea that, “We’re a physical museum in the frozen north, but
online we’re floating content. We wanted to ground people who care (local love) but not
require that you know where/who we are” (as cited in Chan, 2011, December 3). Because
of this global perspective that overshadows physical activities and events at the museum,
Solas reveals that he expects an increase in non-local online users. The Walker’s new
Web Editor Paul Schmelzer (as cited in Chan, 2011, December 3) refers to details like the
weather, the date that changes daily, updated events, as well as current top stories and Art
News from Elsewhere that are all “subtle reminders we’re a contemporary art center, that
is, in the now.” At the bottom of the website, visitors can find more traditional
information under the three headings About, Programs, and Network, the latter of which
is more related to the museum’s community and social media. Under Network is listed
ArtsConnectEd, Minnesota Sculpture Garden, mnartists.org, Walker E-Mail Newsletter,
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and five hyperlinked icons (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, RSS feed). The voices
of artists are featured in a new section Artspeaks, mostly in videos, and another new
section Minnesota Art News highlights mnartists.org. Viso reveals on the museum’s
website that,
The intent of the new site is to make visible our role as a generative
producer and purveyor of content and broadcast our voice in the landscape
of contemporary culture…understanding that we exist as part of a diverse
media ecosystem.
Museum Nerd (2011) boldly proclaims that the Walker is, “the first major museum to see
the future.”
Lessons Learned
The Walker Art Center was able to be an early forerunner in the area of digital innovation
because of two main factors that are still relevant today: strong local public and private
support of the arts (state funding and private foundations, corporations, and individuals);
and visionary, dedicated leadership with long tenures that support risk taking and
innovative thinking. In reflecting on their early successes, Robin Dowden pointed to the
museum’s strong commitment to design that involved developers and designers as part of
internal teams working on digital projects. By not outsourcing as much work they gained
flexibility, control, and creativity with their digital projects. However, this independence
requires a great amount of human resources; today the museum has an editorial team of
four members, and five additional members in its New Media Initiatives group. The
museum focuses its collections and programming on contemporary art, and in particular,
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new media art, which also necessitates greater staff resources with technological
knowledge and abilities given the complex requirements for exhibiting and conserving
new media art. By shifting its focus from collection to education, however, the New
Media Initiatives now interact with a wider portion of the museum staff, resulting in a
greater understanding and appreciation of digital media throughout the museum.
Place matters greatly to the Walker. Commenting on the importance of
technology, Darsie Alexander admitted that, “We’re in the Midwest, so a lot [of people]
don’t actually see our programs firsthand, they see our publications or they go to the
website.” While the museum has long been committed to its local community, it succeeds
in serving that community largely because it focuses on core special interest groups:
artists, educators, teens. The Walker promotes the acquisition of social capital by
providing opportunities for these groups to interact both online and onsite, for local
residents with Open Space, for Minnesota artists with the forums on mnartists.com, for
teens with WACTAC, and for educators with ArtsConnectEd. Apart from the special
interest groups, the museum also considers its regular physical visitors–what it calls
“citizen visitors”–that have many opportunities to relax, observe others, and intermingle
in the lounge areas inside the museum and the “cultural commons” areas outside.
Communities are created and maintained in museums not merely when the public
interacts with the museum staff, but when members of the public interact with each other,
establishing strong bonds often based on shared interests, activities, and goals. The same
is true whether interaction occurs online or onsite. Online interaction with the general
public occurs on the museum’s blogs, social media, Art on Call audio program, and the
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Walker Channel. In this sense, the museum also becomes a social experience through
both analog and digital means. Minnesota is a friendly place, with residents that
demonstrate a high degree of civic involvement as data have shown, and the museum
reflects those cultural values in the pluralist and relativist sense that allows for difference
and dialog.
A combination of institutional commitment, external funding, and digital
technology has made the museum’s special interest groups communities within
themselves, but has also served to expand the museum community by inviting members
from the larger, global communities of artists, educators, teens, and much more. Ryan
French explains that because the online visitor (the “end user”) now has so much power,
it is hard for the museum to understand the nature of its online community. Despite these
difficulties, the Walker is aware that it is simultaneously both a local and a global
institution, and that both factors are interrelated. Former director Kathy Halbreich (2003)
stated,
To be a more locally engaged institution, we need to become more
sensitive to the increasingly interconnected world reflected in the
demographics of our own community: a world in which social, political,
economic, and cultural boundaries are recalculated daily by both ancient
and new definitions of home, history, and hierarchy. One of our main
challenges as an institution is to identify and pose the questions arising
from such a shift in our community (and in our profession) in order to
better understand the global issues that unite and divide cultures.
On the homepage, Art News from Elsewhere offers images and links to online media
sources from around the world which not only places the museum within the global arts
world, but reaffirms its leadership within this community. The Walker’s newly designed
website is an important acknowledgement of its global community, grounded in its local
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place. The website offers virtual visitors a myriad of experiences, from the Walker
Channel, Art on Call, its online collection, and its eight blogs. But the website also places
its Today’s Events prominently on the homepage and displays the local weather just as
prominently, firmly placing the website in Minneapolis. Paul Schmelzer spoke of the
website as being “in the now,” which echoes Sarah Schultz’s comment of Open Space
visitors as “being in the present.” The Walker’s notion of museum as town square is
achieved holistically by providing both online and physical visitors with a sense of
locality rather than physicality, which was a concept offered by Gordon and de Souza e
Silva (2011). Both the museum and the website are hybrid spaces comprising the digital
and the physical (local), creating a 21
st
century town square that supports interaction,
dialog, social capital, and entertainment.
The crowd-curated exhibition 50/50 promoted audience participation in the
selection process for the artworks, but the manner in which the museum exhibited the
works reaffirmed its authority and legitimacy over the mass public. This was first
accomplished by simply separating the two bodies (expert curator and anonymous public)
that ultimately confronted each other inside the museum gallery. The publicly selected
works were displayed salon style from floor to ceiling, what the curator referred to as
“scatter shot”–placed closely together on the entire wall organized from most to least
votes, left to right–and the curator’s selected works were sparsely displayed in a formal,
traditional style that museum visitors are more familiar with. Previous to 50/50, the
museum had presented an exhibition entitled Benches and Binoculars (November 21,
2009–August 15, 2010) in the same gallery, with works from the permanent collection
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hung in a similar salon style. However, the difference was that this exhibition was
professionally curated by Alexander, who made public her intention to emulate the style
in which museum founder T.B. Walker first installed his personal galleries in the 1920s.
Alexander spoke of 50/50 as offering an experiment in curatorial authority being
dispersed with only partial control in the process. This experiment serves to remind us
that while the Walker does an exceptional job at creating a town square atmosphere for
its visitors with its 17-acre campus and its online spaces, there is still a well-entrenched
hierarchy and authority within art museums that only temporarily become dislodged
through digital projects and opportunities for discourse. Public participation strengthens
personal connections to the museum and its exhibitions, which museum educators and
administrators all strive for, but a town square requires sustained interaction within the
public as well, which the museum can facilitate best through its long-established position
of authority and legitimacy.
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Chapter Six: The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Figure 24: SFMOMA in the foreground, 2010
Place + Localized Culture
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is situated in the heart of the
city; a city that is urban, affluent, artistic, cosmopolitan, and a tourist destination. San
Francisco is not a large city (technically it’s a consolidated city-county); it has 805,235
residents (2010 census) within an area of only 47 square miles that is bordered to the
north and east by the San Francisco Bay and to the west by the Pacific Ocean with a total
of 29.5 miles of shoreline. San Francisco is the second most densely populated city in the
United States after New York City. It is part of the larger Bay Area that extends down the
peninsula towards the South Bay Area or Silicon Valley, northwards across the Golden
Gate Bridge towards Napa Valley and the wine country, and eastwards across the Bay
Bridge towards Oakland and Berkeley. This particular geographic situation played an
important part in the founding of the city, as the ports facilitated travel by ships that first
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brought Europeans in the eighteenth century and then Chinese immigrants in the
nineteenth century. In 1776, Spain established a military post on the northern tip of the
peninsula, now known as the Marina district next to the Golden Gate Bridge and a
designated National Historical Landmark. Today San Francisco has 39 piers and eight
bridges.
With the start of the California Gold Rush in 1849 came a significant increase in
the population from the rest of the country including foreign immigrants that lasted
throughout the 1850s with the 1859 Comstock Lode silver discovery. San Francisco soon
became America’s largest city west of the Mississippi River, until Los Angeles took over
that title in 1920. In an effort to contain the rising flood of Chinese immigration and the
growth of the city’s Chinatown district, both San Francisco and the federal government
passed a number of discriminatory immigration acts (Chinese Exclusion Act) that were
not repealed until the 1940s. Nevertheless, San Francisco’s Chinatown became one of the
largest in the country still today. Many businesses were founded to serve this growing
population, including Levi Strauss & Co. clothing (1873), Ghirardelli chocolate (1852),
and Wells Fargo bank in New York (1852) that offered “ocean to ocean” service. Early
tycoons in railroad, banking and mining–Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins, Collis P.
Huntington, William Chapman Ralston, Henry Brune, William Haas, and Leland
Stanford–settled in the city in its Nob Hill neighborhood. Today some of their former
mansions have been converted to expensive, landmark San Francisco hotels (Mark
Hopkins Hotel and the Huntington Hotel).
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San Francisco experienced a devastating earthquake in 1906 that killed an
estimated 3,000 people mostly in the city and throughout the Bay Area, destroying over
80% of the city by the earthquake and ensuing fire. At the time, San Francisco was the
largest city on the West Coast and its financial and cultural center, with the busiest port
for trade to Asia and still a military stronghold. While the city was rebuilding, much of
the trade, industry, and population moved south to Los Angeles that soon eclipsed San
Francisco as the largest and most important city on the West Coast. Perhaps because San
Francisco was relieved of the burden of sustaining such a high level of global trade,
military strength, and financial industry, the city was able to embrace other interests such
as the arts (visual, literary, architecture, etc.). As early as 1872, the Bohemian Club was
formed by local journalists with an affinity for the arts who wanted to socialize with
artists and musicians. During the 1950s, San Francisco became the center of the Beat
Generation when its writers moved from New York City to the Bay Area. In the 1960s,
San Francisco became known for its hippie culture, mostly surrounding the Haight-
Ashbury district during the Summer of Love in 1967. This sanctioning of alternative
culture and lifestyles contributed to the city’s reputation as being gay-friendly during the
1970s and 1980s, a reputation that the city has not only sustained in its Castro District but
actively promotes in its tourism and marketing campaigns. The city’s GLBT (Gay,
Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender) Museum is the first of its kind in the nation.
The city is also known for its cutting-edge, alternative art spaces such as Capp
Street Project that was the first visual arts residency in the United States to create and
present installation art in 1983, later becoming part of the California College of the Arts
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Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco. The avant-garde ArtSpace 4500
is a private, non-profit space in the Castro district, Refusalon is a conceptual art gallery
for local artists in a converted garage near SFMOMA, the Lab is an experimental,
multidisciplinary art space in the Mission district, and the Gray Area Foundation for the
Arts promotes creative technologies for social good through educational courses, art
exhibitions, and research initiatives. Headlands Center for the Arts across the bridge in
Sausalito is an innovative program of artistic residencies, lectures and commissions on
former military property that was handed over to the National Park Service in 1972. Even
the city’s science museum, the Exploratorium that opened in 1969, is innovative in
blurring the boundaries between art and science.
Today, San Francisco is the nation’s largest municipal arts funder per capita, with
$30.783 million allocated in 2008 to the San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC). The
SFAC gave out $4,320,587 in grants during the 2009–2010 fiscal year and estimates that
there are 450 arts groups in the city. The SFAC’s total revenue for 2008 was
$614,794,215, including earned revenue and contributions from individuals, corporations,
foundations, state and federal agencies. It has 2,635 full-time employees, 1,408 part-time
employees, and 1,337 independent contractors. The SFAC also has its own cable
television program Culture Wire, a website (http://www.sfartscommission.org/), and
accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube. The SFAC Gallery in the civic
center area has been active since 1970, originally called the Capricorn Asunder Gallery.
The most recent program of the SFAC is ArtCare that supports the city’s vast collection
of 3,000 works of public art worth more than $90 million. Launched in 2010 in
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partnership with the San Francisco Art Dealers Association, the fund augments the
$15,000 received from the city to maintain and repair public artwork. San Francisco was
also the first city to have an arts and culture director, setting the trend for most major
cities in the country.
San Francisco was the first city to levy a hotel tax to support arts grants in 1961
that has generated more than $300 million for local arts groups. Previously called the
Hotel Tax Fund, the city’s Grants for the Arts program is managed by the SFAC, funding
an additional $8.8 million in 2010 to support major institutions (the opera, symphony,
ballet, international film festival and SFMOMA) as well as smaller, less traditional ones
such as the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band, the Samoan Flag Day
Celebration, and the Garage Space for the Arts. All grantees receive free publicity on the
Grants for the Arts website and an iPhone app. Over time, the hotel tax has increased to
14 percent, and now more than half of it (almost $1 billion), goes into the city’s general
fund with 5.3% allocated for Grants for the Arts. Kary Schulman has been director of
Grants for the Arts for the last thirty years, and describes the program, “This was never
intended to be an arts entitlement fund–it’s an investment in the arts to attract more
tourism to the city” (as cited in May, 2011).
Today, the city’s arts district is located around Yerba Buena Gardens
26
in an area
called SoMa or South of Market Street. Yerba Buena Gardens began as a 19-block
Redevelopment Area in 1953 but did not fully develop until the early 1990s. It now
26
Yerba Buena is the original name of the city of San Francisco, named after the herb mint that was found
in abundance in the area. The name was changed to San Francisco after the area was claimed by the United
States in 1846 during the U.S. Mexican War of 1846–1848.
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comprises a 5.5 acre park with the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Zeum a children’s
media and technology museum, an ice skating rink, bowling alley, a restored 1905
carousel, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial and Waterfall, Ohlone Indian Memorial,
public art, restaurants, Metreon a 350,000 square-foot Sony entertainment center with an
IMAX theater, and the Moscone Convention Center. A number of museums and
commercial art galleries are also located in the vicinity of the Gardens, most prominently
the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) that came to the area in 1995.
New York-based art critic for Newsweek, Peter Plagens (1995) heralded Yerba Buena
Gardens as “the most concentrated arts district west of the Hudson River.”
Much of San Francisco’s achievements as a center for arts and culture can be
attributed to its proximity to Silicon Valley that has influenced the arts not only by
providing substantial financial support during the dot-com boom of the 1990s, but more
indirectly through the influence of technological innovation. Housed throughout Silicon
Valley today are the following technology corporations: Google, Apple, Yahoo, Intel,
HP, Oracle, Netflix, LinkedIn, Facebook, EBay, Electronic Arts, Cisco Systems, Adobe
Systems, and Zynga. And headquartered in San Francisco itself are Linden Lab (Second
Life), StumbleUpon, Dropbox, Yelp!, Twitter, Wikimedia Foundation, and the interactive
studio Mediatrope. On top of these well-established companies, many more start-up
companies are constantly emerging within the areas of the Internet, social media, and
digital technology. With all of these companies it’s hard to ignore the power of
technology. Nevertheless, while technology companies support the arts often with in-kind
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services, there has not been a strong history of corporate philanthropy in the region;
rather it has come from successful individuals in the industry, and only sporadically.
San Francisco
27
is an expensive city to live in, with 47.2% of residents spending
30% or more on housing (national average is 36.9% of residents), the most of all five
regions studied, and the median personal earnings is $42,815 well over the national
average of $29,755. The poverty rate is lower than the national average at 11.5% under
13.2%, the number of uninsured is lower than national average at 11.3% under 17.4%,
and the region is higher than the national average for the following factors: human
development index (7.47 over 5.17), life expectancy at birth (82.6 years over 78.6), at
least a bachelor’s degree (50% over 27.7%), school enrollment ages 3 to 24 (104.3% over
87.3%), health index (6.9 over 5.2), education index (7.89 over 5.15), and income index
(7.61 over 5.09).
San Francisco’s population is predominantly white, non-Latino (48.5%), but this
group is much smaller than in Indianapolis, Minneapolis, or even Manhattan. Given its
particular history, San Francisco has the highest concentration of Asians of all five
regions studied (33.3%), followed by 15.1% Hispanic/Latino, and 6.1% African
American (the lowest of all five regions) (U.S. Census, 2010). The demographics are
quickly changing; however, as African American residents are being priced out of their
traditionally black neighborhood of Bayview-Hunters Point and moving to more
affordable cities in the East Bay. The decline in the black population was so remarkable
that in 2007, Mayor Gavin Newsom launched the African American Out-Migration Task
27
For these statistics, Mapping the Measure of America 2010–2010 analyzes congressional districts only.
SFMOMA is located in the California Congressional District 8.
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Force and Advisory Committee to investigate the exodus and reverse the trend. The
traditionally Latino Mission District is slowly becoming gentrified as white, middle class
professionals seek affordable housing in the city and are attracted to ethnically diverse
neighborhoods, which are in danger of losing their ethnic culture with the proliferation of
wine bars and sushi restaurants. San Francisco and Manhattan are tied for having a
significant older population; 13.6% are 65 and older (2010), but San Francisco has the
smallest percentage of residents under 18 years at 13.4%. The city is above the national
average for all measures of civic engagement, but not at any exceptional level, except for
Get News from Internet frequently which is surprisingly 22.1%, below the national
average of 32.5%. In 2010, the number of registered voters was 53.2%, below the
national average of 59.8%, and 57% voted in the 2008 presidential election, the same as
the national average.
San Francisco is a major tourist destination and reports 15.9 million visitors in
2010 that spent $8.3 billion during their stay, with leisure visits representing 75% of all
trips. In 2010, 70% of San Francisco visitors were from the United States, with the top
three areas being Los Angeles, San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose, and Sacramento/
Stockton/ Modesto (Destination Analysts, Inc., 2011, February 26). Visitors cite the top
three reasons to visit the city as atmosphere and ambience, restaurants, and scenic beauty.
The top five leading attractions visited are all tourist destinations, with only 12% of
visitors citing the city’s arts, culture, and museums. In citing the top tourist attractions in
the United States for 2009, Forbes.com magazine (2010) lists the Golden Gate National
Recreation Area as number six with 17 million visitors, and Fisherman’s Wharf as
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number eight with 10 million visitors. The San Francisco Travel Association
28
promotes
the city principally by neighborhoods, each with its distinct character and history. The
residents of San Francisco are committed to community preservation and neighborhood
advocacy, supported by a city that understands the importance it represents to its visitors:
the city has eleven historic districts, 250 buildings designated as historical landmarks, and
notably no Target or Walmart.
San Francisco has two major sports teams that its citizens support with fervent
devotion. The San Francisco Giants, one of the oldest baseball teams in the nation, is a
Major League Baseball team formerly known as the New York Giants. In 2010 the
Giants won their first World Series title since moving to San Francisco in 1957 (they won
five previously). The San Francisco 49ers is a National Football League (NFL) team, the
oldest major professional sports team in California established in 1946 and the first NFL
team to win five Super Bowls.
Figure 25: SFO Museum, The Allure of the Decoy exhibition, June 2011
28
The San Francisco Travel Association is an outgrowth of the San Francisco Convention and Tourist
League founded in 1909 but now operating out of the mayor’s office as a private, nonprofit organization
with its own board of directors. The Association has its own website dedicated to the arts
(www.SFArts.org), an iPhone app, accounts on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and a monthly magazine
that lists arts and cultural events in the city.
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Despite the majority of visitors to San Francisco coming from northern and
southern California, most arrive by air (58%). In 1980, the San Francisco Airport
Commission established the San Francisco Airport Museums Program to foster an
environment that is “both entertaining and educational.” It was the first such program in
the country, and remains the only accredited museum in an airport (accredited by the
American Association of Museums in 1999). Today it has its own website
(http://www.flysfo.com/web/page/sfo_museum), a Twitter account, and sends e-mails to
registered individuals. The San Francisco Arts Commission curates the collection of
permanent art displayed throughout the airport; 73 works by esteemed artists such as
Wayne Thiebaud, Isamu Noguchi, Sam Francis, and Vito Acconci. When the new
International Terminal was built in 2000, it included a meditation center, the first airport-
based Gucci boutique in the U.S., and a SFMOMA Museum Store. A remodeled
Terminal 2 opened in April 2011 with a Children’s Play Area incorporating interactive
artworks by two San Francisco artists that work at the Exploratorium (Walter Kitundu
and Charles Sowers). An audio tour is available for all art at Terminal 2 by dialing a local
number (650-352-4331), and a podcast is on the Arts Commission’s website. Director of
Cultural Affairs for the San Francisco Arts Commission, Luis R. Cancel (as cited in The
San Francisco Arts Commission, 2011, February 10), describes the importance of the
SFO Museum; “World-class art is a part of the fabric of everyday life in San Francisco,
and what better way to set the stage for our visitors than with a museum-quality art
collection at our gateway.”
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Figure 26: SFMOMA Museum Store at SFO, 2011
The Museum and its Community
Mission Statement:
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a dynamic center for modern
and contemporary art. The museum strives to engage and inspire a diverse
range of audiences by pursuing an innovative program of exhibitions,
education, publications, and collections activities. International in scope,
while reflecting the distinctive character of our region, the museum
explores compelling expressions of visual culture. (emphasis mine)
SFMOMA began operating in 1916 at the Palace of Fine Arts at the Marina (currently
home of the Exploratorium), that was built for the Panama-Pacific International
Exhibition the year before. The museum was founded by the San Francisco Art
Association that organized temporary exhibitions and maintained a periodical library, and
in its early days was called The Art Museum of the San Francisco Art Association. At the
time, it was the only museum in the city dedicated exclusively to art, and the first on the
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West Coast. The museum was incorporated in 1921 and moved to a new site in 1935; the
fourth floor of the War Memorial Veterans Building in the civic center. It had no
permanent collection and hardly any money, but remained there on the fourth and later
also third, floors until 1994.
In 1934, the first chairman of the board of the San Francisco Museum of Art–
W.W. Crocker–was appointed by the directors of the San Francisco Art Association.
William (W.W.) Crocker was the grandson of Charles Crocker who one of the original
“Big Four” that formed the Central Pacific Railroad along with Mark Hopkins, Collis
Huntington, and Leland Stanford. He continued growing the company his father W.H.
Crocker started, Crocker National Bank, and his mother, Ethel Willard Sperry, was one
of San Francisco’s first great art collectors. The Mary A. Crocker Trust (wife of Charles
Crocker) was established in 1889 by her four children, making it the oldest family
foundation west of the Mississippi that currently distributes around $500,000 a year
mostly to Bay Area programs.
Shortly after Crocker was appointed in 1934, Grace McCann Morley boldly called
him up to inquire about working at the museum. Morley was originally from Berkeley,
and an expert on modern art who had studied art history at the Sorbonne in Paris, where
she received her Ph.D. in 1926.
29
She became the museum’s founding director and stayed
for the next 23 years. Morely (as cited in Reiss, 1960, pp. 176–177) talks about the early
29
Morely was an incredibly accomplished woman who later chaired the Museum Division of UNESCO
(that became the International Council of Museums), and served as founding editor of ICOM’s professional
journal, Museum. After leaving SFMOMA, Morely briefly headed the Guggenheim museum, and then left
to direct the National Museum in New Delhi, India, where she died at the age of 84.
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days of the museum, and the responsibility they felt to the artistic community in San
Francisco.
We thought that we had two functions in San Francisco. First, to inform
the artists on what was going on in art of their time, for their benefit, and
incidentally to help the public, by informing it, to understand what their
own artists were doing, as well as about living artists in general. And
second, to do our part in bringing to wider attention, locally, nationally,
and internationally, the art of the area, because we were, in a sense, a
regional museum–representing the region.
At that time, San Francisco was already a lively arts community. The California Guild of
Arts and Crafts had been founded in 1907 in Berkeley to provide education for artists and
designers, later becoming the California College of the Arts with both an Oakland and
San Francisco campus. In 1874, the San Francisco Art Association founded The
California School of Design, which was renamed the California School of Fine Arts in
1916 and then the San Francisco Art Institute in 1961. In 1930, Mexican muralist Diego
Rivera arrived in San Francisco to paint a mural, The Making of a Fresco Showing the
Building of a City, at the Art Institute’s new campus. Yet despite the abundance of local
private collectors, there were no art galleries and SFMOMA was the only art museum.
SFMOMA developed its permanent collection largely through the generosity of
local collectors and benefactors. W.W. Crocker lent works from his mother’s collection,
and his sister Charlotte Mack was an important collector that also supported the museum.
An early gift of 36 works from Albert M. Bender, including Diego Rivera’s The Flower
Carrier (1935), established the core of the museum’s permanent collection. Before his
death in 1941, Bender donated more than 1,100 works to the museum and endowed its
first purchase fund. In 1936, Morely was approached by Robert Oppenheimer, the
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legendary “father of the atomic bomb” who was on faculty at the physics department of
the University of California at Berkeley. His family collection of artwork was on loan at
the Museum of Modern Art, and Oppenheimer wanted to offer it to SFMOMA for long-
term loan, as he believed these works were more needed in San Francisco than New York
and that they might help the museum grow. The Oppenheimer collection (donated
anonymously) consisted of a blue period painting by Pablo Picasso, a pastel portrait by
Edouard Vuillard, three works by Vincent van Gogh, and a bronze head by Charles
Despiau), marking the first works of international stature at the museum. Later that year,
the museum exhibited works by Henri Matisse primarily drawn from two local private
collections, many of which were later donated to the museum.
One of the first exhibitions presented by the museum in 1935 was the Carnegie
International- European Section from Pittsburgh that traveled only to San Francisco.
The museum furthered its international holdings after Morely began working with the
U.S. State Department’s Inter-American office as a consultant in Latin America during
the early years of World War II (1941–1943). The State Department wanted to establish
good relations with the region, and one way was to exhibit artwork in U.S. museums. The
museum increased its Latin American collection at that time, adding works by Pedro
Figari and Joaquin Torres-Garcia. Local collector Albert Bender and artist William
Gerstle (then president of the San Francisco Arts Association that commissioned Rivera
to paint his mural) also donated works by Mexican artists.
As the museum collected works by international artists, it did not disregard local
artists but rather continued to focus on both simultaneously. Since early on, the museum
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felt accountable to its local community, confirmed by Morely (as cited in Reiss, 1960, p
48b) who stated that, “By 1936 it was clear that the museum must become a museum of
contemporary and modern art, for that was the field that needed to be served in the Bay
Area community.” There were two principal programs in which the museum served the
local artists. The first was the Rental Gallery (now called the Artists Gallery located at
Fort Mason in the Marina) founded by the museum’s Women’s Board. The Board was
originally intended as a social organization that met monthly, but was dedicated to
supporting both the museum and local artists. Most of the museum’s first purchases of
works by local artists came from a fund established by the Board that also supported
other small projects such as purchasing the museum’s first slide projector, movie
projection equipment, paying subscriptions for art periodicals in the library, and
purchasing books. The Rental Gallery was the first of its kind in the nation, with the aim
of creating a new sales venue for local artists while expanding the collecting base in the
Bay Area. The first president of the Board was Mrs. Henry Potter Russell, sister of W.W.
Crocker. Today, selections of artwork from the Artists Gallery are installed on the walls
of the museum’s restaurant, Caffe Museo.
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Figure 27: SFMOMA Artists Gallery at Fort Mason, 2011
In 1935, the museum established an Artists’ Advisory Committee comprised of
local artists that met regularly with Morely, specifically to help organize the Art
Association Annual which was part of the museum’s first big opening exhibition. The
committee became more of an informal liaison with the director after that exhibition, but
many of the same members served on selection and hanging juries for future annual
exhibitions at the museum that were under the responsibility of the Arts Association. To
ensure opportunities for all local artists to be recognized there were the Painting and
Sculpture Annual, Watercolor Annual, and Drawing and Prints Annual exhibitions. Later
on, arts figures from outside the region were invited to jury these exhibitions, such as the
editor of ArtNews magazine, the director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, and
the director of the Carnegie Art Museum in Pittsburgh. This served to attract wider
attention to the exhibitions and to local artists that might be considered for their
exhibitions. It was important to the museum and the Arts Commission that artists in the
region be recognized on a national level. In 1961, the museum founded an auxiliary
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membership group, the Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art (SECA) to
support contemporary Bay Area artists. This group continues to work closely with
museum curators today in identifying the most promising artists in the region for the
biennial SECA Art Award that provides winning artists with an exhibition at SFMOMA,
a catalogue, and a small cash prize.
Nevertheless, as the museum became increasingly more international in its
collecting, exhibiting, and general outreach, local artists did not always see the benefits.
John (Jack) Lane, who was director of SFMOMA from 1987 to 1997, oversaw the
museum’s second move to its present Mario Botta-designed building in SoMA. In a 2006
interview, Lane (as cited in Rubens, Cándida Smith & Samis, 2008, p. 19) reflects on this
often-conflicting relationship between the museum’s local and global constituencies:
In the community of people who were really dedicated Bay Area art
enthusiasts, there was a lot of discontent with the direction that the
museum took, because it was perceived as being disrespectful to the local
community. I guess I took a more cosmopolitan view, that the biggest
contribution that the SFMOMA could make to the Northern California art
scene, including its artists, was to bring the best art in the world to be
shown here.
Programmatically, the museum has consistently been responsive to its local community,
collecting and exhibiting local Bay Area artists since the early days, including both
emerging and more established artists such as Richard Diebenkorn, Richard Serra, Mark
di Suvero, and Matthew Barney. Suzanne Stein, the museum’s community producer,
refers to the notion of “creative communities” that is used commonly by the museum to
incorporate not just the visual arts, but also music, writing, and literature. More than just
exhibiting local artists, the museum pays tribute to its local region with theme-based
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exhibitions such as the recent How Wine Became Modern: Design + Wine 1976 to Now
(November 20, 2010–April 17, 2011) that explored the history of wine and partnered
with local wineries for its public programs. Also its landmark exhibition The Steins
Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde (May 21–September 6, 2011)
recognized the important contributions of local Bay Area collectors Gertrude Stein, her
brothers Leo and Michael, and Michael’s wife Sarah, that all supported emerging modern
art in Paris in the early 1900s. The Steins not only contributed many significant
modernist works to the museum’s collection, but lent many for exhibitions at the museum
(including Matisse’s first solo museum exhibition on the West Coast in 1936), and
influenced other local collectors and supporters of the museum.
Although originally from Salt Lake City, one of the greatest local supporters of
the museum was Phyllis Wattis (1905–2002), who largely funded its current building,
acquisitions of great masterpieces, and much more over fifty years involvement. Previous
museum director David Ross (as cited in Rubens, Cándida Smith & Sterrett, 2008, pp.
22-23) from 1998 to 2001 describes her,
She was just the great citizen of the Bay Area. If it wasn’t for Phyllis,
none of the things that have happened at SFMOMA would have happened,
in my opinion... Phyllis was a San Francisco person. What she cared about
was all of the institutions of this city. It was an amazing, amazing thing.
The museum grew as the community grew, and the dot-com boom in the 1990s was a
major growth period for the museum with acquisitions of over $140 million worth of
major modern artworks that established the museum as an important player in the
international art scene. Prominent local collectors that contributed to this growth include
Mimi and Peter Haas, Donald and Doris Fisher, Helen and Chuck Schwab, Pat and Bill
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Wilson, Norah and Norman Stone, and Frances and John Bowes. Current museum
director Neal Benezra (as cited in Cándida Smith & Rubens, 2009, p. 46) comments on
the importance of local collectors to SFMOMA,
There are marvelous collections of contemporary art in this community.
History will not judge us well if we do not make a real effort to build this
collection. If we can win for this museum, our share of the great works in
this community, this could truly become one of the great contemporary
museums in the world. But we have got to make that happen. That’s a job
for the board and the staff to do together. We have an opportunity that
most communities don’t have, in that regard.
The most recent acquisition of 1,100 modern and contemporary artworks from the
Donald and Doris Fisher collection was first exhibited at the museum in 2010, Calder to
Warhol: Introducing the Fisher Collection. The Fishers started collecting art after the
San Francisco-based company they founded in 1969, Gap Inc., went public in 1976. The
collection is on loan to the museum for 100 years, and renewable afterwards for another
25 years, and was secured by SFMOMA Trustee Bob Fisher, eldest son of the Fishers.
Previous director David Ross has said that, “people should see their own histories
reflected in this [museum’s] history, as well” (p. 62). While Ross was specifically
referring to the large Hispanic community of San Francisco and California, in 2011 only
4% of SFMOMA’s visitors were Hispanic/Latino (a number which probably increased
after the popular Frida Kahlo exhibition in 2008). A 2011 visitor survey conducted by
the museum revealed that 78% of its visitors are Caucasian, 12% are Asian/Pacific
Islander, and 3% African American. Forty-three percent of its visitors come from the
Bay Area (identified by the museum as the five counties of San Francisco, Alameda,
Santa Clara, San Mateo, and Marin), 12% from Northern California outside of the Bay
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Area, and only 5% from Southern California; 16% of visitors are international, and 80%
have a college degree or higher. Even the museum’s website visitors are similar in
characteristic, with 74% from the United States, female, college educated, no kids, and
ranging from ages 55 to 64 (Alexa Web Statistics, September 2011). While the museum
offers free admission on the first Tuesday of each month, half-price admission on
Thursday evenings until 8:45pm, and Free Family Days, admission prices are high: $18
for adults, $12 for seniors, and $11 for students; less than MoMA New York, but still
more than major art museums in Los Angeles. Former director Jack Lane (as cited in
Rubens, Cándida Smith, & Samis, 2008) stated that, “My wish was to keep the San
Franciscans feeling like this was their museum. They were responsible for it; it was
going to flourish only if they cared enough” (p. 40). The museum has long focused its
attention on local artists, collectors, and philanthropists in order to grow and establish
itself as an international art museum. The museum has benefited from the economic
growth of the region and the growing international sophistication of its community
leaders, but its visitors do not reflect the longtime ethnic, racial, and economic diversity
of San Francisco. Nevertheless, the museum’s community has always encompassed the
larger Bay Area, a region much more diverse given the growing exodus of Latinos and
African Americans from the city.
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Figure 28: The Mission District, San Francisco, 2011
On the occasion of the museum’s new building in 1995, art critic Peter Plagens
(1995) stated,
San Francisco’s mellow art scene almost gives provincialism a good
name. An alternative to New York’s grimy infighting and Los Angeles’s
sunny air-kissing, it’s proud of its beatnik assemblages, psychedelic rock
posters and the slather-it-on painting school of David Park and Wayne
Thiebaud.
San Francisco possesses a unique culture that attracts millions of people to visit and move
there each year; however, it has always been extremely competitive with both New York
and Los Angeles. SFMOMA has been similarly competitive first with MoMA and later
with Los Angeles museums. Although SFMOMA collaborated closely with MoMA on
sharing temporary exhibitions early in its history, there were small victories such as when
it outbid MoMA on acquiring the seminal work by Rene Magritte, Personal Values (with
the help of Phyllis Wattis), when it acquired the painting collections of Robert
Rauschenberg and Ellsworth Kelly, and when its membership surpassed that of MoMA
around 2001 (it does not anymore). In Los Angeles, the Museum of Contemporary Art
and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (established in 1961) were growing rapidly
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in the 1980s. Jack Lane (as cited in Rubens, Cándida Smith, & Samis, 2008) reports
feeling a sense of urgency in building SFMOMA because “Southern California was
simply going to totally eclipse San Francisco if something really electrifying didn’t occur
here soon” (p. 4). When David Ross left New York in 1998 as the director of the Whitney
museum to lead SFMOMA, he felt the need to defend his decision to a surprised Glenn
Lowry, director of MoMA. He said, “The twentieth century was very good to New York.
It could be that the twenty-first century is going to be very good to San Francisco. So
we’ll see, in another hundred years, how these two museums compete” (Ross, as cited in
Rubens, Cándida Smith, & Sterrett, 2008, p. 30). Competition encouraged the museum to
focus more on international artists and programming, despite its history of supporting
Bay Area artists that made the museum appear more regional; nevertheless, the museum
has managed to maintain the challenging role of a regional museum with international
stature.
SFMOMA is currently undergoing another structural transformation, this time an
expansion of its current site designed by the Norwegian architectural firm Snøhetta. The
museum’s collection is quickly outgrowing its space, especially with the most recent
acquisition of the Fisher collection. It began a capital campaign to build the new wing
under the leadership of Board Chairman Charles Schwab (resident of San Francisco and
chairman of The Charles Schwab Corporation, also based in the city). In November 2011,
having raised nearly 80% of the capital campaign goal two years ahead of the
groundbreaking date, the museum decided to increase its goal by $75 million to a total of
$555 million. In 2009, the museum added a 14,400 square foot rooftop sculpture garden
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on top of the 52,000 square-foot, Mario Botta-designed building. When completed in
2016, the expansion will give the museum a total of 125,000 square feet of gallery space
and 40,000 square feet of free, public space, comparable to MoMA’s total exhibition
space of 125,000 square feet. The public space is a significant consideration for the
museum in creating social spaces. Craig Dykers (as cited in Pogrebin, 2011), one of
Snøhetta’s principal architects, comments on these areas:
Is it a building filled with art with some people in it, or a building filled
with people with some art in it? There needs to be enough social space to
make people feel comfortable in what can be an austere environment, the
white box. You shouldn’t feel like you need to be quiet in the public
spaces.
The museum’s website states that the expansion, “will not only create compelling new
spaces, but also enhance the museum’s contributions to the community.” The new
building will add three new entrances to better connect with its SoMA neighborhood;
there will be a midblock outdoor promenade running from one street to another, a
passage connecting the new Transbay Transit Center to Yerba Buena Gardens, and an all-
glass gallery on street level, free to the public. In the words of Dykers (SFMOMA
website), the new wing will “become the tissue that merges building and community,
supports the museum’s role as an educational and civic catalyst, and opens up the
museum to the diverse audiences it serves.” Benezra (2010) affirms the connection
between the new wing and the museum’s local community, “The upcoming expansion
offers the museum an unprecedented opportunity to reinforce our role as creative
catalysts for San Francisco and a global force for contemporary art on the west coast.” In
an attempt to answer Dykers’ question, Benezra (as cited in Pogrebin, 2011) announces
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that they have changed the psychology of the museum. “We want it to be an embracing,
luminous space where you can get good coffee, a place where people come and meet
their friends,” he explains, “We really want the museum to be much more outward-
looking, to open up the doors and bring the public in.”
The Role of Digital Technology
SFMOMA was an early adopter of technology for educational and artistic purposes,
starting in 1937 when it was the first on the West Coast to use the Museum of Modern
Art’s motion picture rental services, which began just a year or two before. The museum
began showing experimental cinema and in 1946 initiated its Art in Cinema program,
directed by cinematographer Frank Stauffacher. In 1951, SFMOMA created a biweekly
television program about art that lasted four years, entitled Art in Your Life (a name
borrowed from MoMA, later renamed Discovery). Founding director Morely (as cited in
Reiss, 1960) commented on this initiative, “We mean to try to make television serve for
art and artists, for that seems the business of our kind of museum.” Allon Schoener,
producer of this program and assistant curator at the museum from 1951 to 1954, also
started a series of short art films called Man and Art. In 2009, SFMOMA launched
Pickpocket Almanack (http://www.pickpocketalmanack.org/), a new free educational
program that is described on its website as an, “experimental school without walls.”
Directed by a local independent curator, Joseph del Pesco, the program assembles a
temporary faculty of artists, designers, writers, and filmmakers from the Bay Area that
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create their own curricula based on public events already taking place in the region, such
as lectures, workshops, panels, and film screenings. Class discussions take place online,
but participants meet with faculty at the end of each session. The website states that the
program represents, “an innovative addition to the cultural vitality that defines San
Francisco.”
The museum’s curatorial program became integrally linked to education when,
under director Jack Lane (1987–1997), the director of education was elevated to a full
curatorial role. John Weber was the museum’s first education curator in 1993 (later
named the Leanne and George Roberts Curator of Education and Public Programs in
1995), and Peter Samis worked as his curatorial assistant.
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The partnership of Weber and
Samis contributed enormously to the museum’s use of new technologies for educational
purposes to enhance visitor understanding of modern and contemporary art. Samis (as
cited in SFMOMA press release, 2007) explains that, “SFMOMA has been using
interactive media to restore context to artworks that conditions of museum presentation
strip away…through our program of video interviews with living artists, as well as
research and media development focused on answering common visitor questions.”
Together, Weber and Samis created groundbreaking programs that earned the museum
national attention and garnered significant financial support. Samis is now associate
curator in the education department’s Interactive Educational Technologies (IET) team,
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Peter Samis’ first interaction with SFMOMA was as a volunteer from 1982–1985 and a docent from
1982–1983, heading the Docent Education & Enrichment Committee from 1984–1985. He worked as
curatorial assistant from 1988–1994 in various departments: Painting & Sculpture, Photography, Media
Arts, and Architecture & Design.
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along with two other curators of education. Samis (as cited in Rigelhaupt, 2008, p. 11)
describes the IET that was born in 1994 as being,
…a very proactive way of reaching out and communicating the messages
of modern and contemporary art to people in ways that the white cube
galleries don’t. So it’s trying to create a supplement or a complement to
the experience, or the primary experience of the artwork in the galleries,
so people can restore some of the context that the white cube galleries
actually strip away.
IET was initially funded by the James Irvine Foundation. It developed three major multi-
media projects in 1995 in conjunction with the opening of the museum’s new Botta
building. Voices and Images of California Art was an interactive web feature that
highlighted eleven California artists through audio and video, reproductions,
photographs, and other documents. It was released in CD-ROM format in 1997, and a
later web version incorporated additional artists. The museum won a Gold Muse Award
for Education/Interpretive Art from the American Association of Museums (AAM) in
2006 for Voices and Images of California Art: Robert Bechtle, as well as first prize in the
CD-Rom category of the AAM publications competition, and a Gold Apple Award from
the National Educational Media Network. A second project was called Bay Area
Artfinder that focused more on the local grassroots art community by creating a map-
driven database of regional nonprofit arts spaces.
The third project was Making Sense of Modern Art, originally an onsite kiosk-
based program that presented an in-depth look at four works of art in the museum’s
permanent collection from different perspectives. David Ross (as cited in Rubens,
Cándida Smith & Sterrett, 2008) refers to this project as, “one of the great
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accomplishments of my time there.” In 2000, the museum collaborated with the local
design firm Method Inc. to expand Making Sense into a web-compatible version that is
more interactive and comprehensive. This expanded version earned SFMOMA its second
Gold Muse Award in the category Database/Reference Resource. The project was funded
principally by The Getty Grant Program in Los Angeles and Compaq Computer
Corporation in Silicon Valley. An interesting aspect of the project is the timeline, called
Comparisons Across Time, which creates circles of related artwork around the ones
chosen on the site from the museum’s collection for the purposes of comparison, what
Samis calls “subliminal conversations.” Today, Making Sense can be accessed on the
museum’s website, on interactive kiosks in galleries or Learning Lounges, and in the
Koret Visitor Education Center. The Making Sense of Modern Art Mobile debuted in
January 2010 as a free handheld multimedia tour to be checked out in the lobby or
accessed by dialing a local number (415-294-3609) and entering the corresponding
numbers next to artwork in the galleries. There are six total hours of the tour with
sublevels that allow visitors to “Go Deeper,” and it is available in English, Spanish,
French, and German. The museum intends to create an iPhone version of the tour.
Making Sense of Modern Art also provides the multimedia content–together with
Voices and Images of California Art–for the museum’s curriculum site ArtThink that was
introduced in September 2006. ArtThink is primarily a standards-based resource for
teachers to use in their classroom to teach about modern and contemporary art, starting
from grade four through college. It provides hands-on and online activities that are
grouped under the headings Explore, Create, and Play, as well as interactive learning
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features such as artBasics and Detail Detective. ArtThink is available on the museum’s
website in its section Explore Modern Art, and then For Educators/Teacher Resources.
SFMOMA has been a leader in the collection, preservation, and exhibition of
media art since the 1970s. David Ross was an early promoter and collector of video and
net/online art. He co-curated the major exhibition Bill Viola: A 25–Year Survey in 1997
when he was director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, and brought the
exhibition with him to SFMOMA in 1999. But Ross’ predecessor Jack Lane was also
instrumental in recognizing the importance of digital art to both the region and the
museum. Under Lane, the museum established its department of Media Arts in 1987, one
of the first in the country, with Bob Riley as its founding curator. Today the museum’s
media arts collection includes time-based works and media installations, including video,
film, slide, sound, computer-based, online projects, and performances. To build the
collection, Lane worked closely with local media art collectors Pamela and Richard
Kramlichs, whose collection is now part of a consortium, the New Art Trust, comprised
of SFMOMA, MoMA, the Tate Museum, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT). At the time, the Bay Area had great collections of video art as well as numerous
artists working in new media, industrial and graphic design. One of the largest digital
projects that Ross was involved in at SFMOMA was the exhibition 010101. Art in
Technological Times (March 3–July 8, 2001) that took place in galleries and online.
Although Ross clarified the exhibition as not being about technology but about art in
technological times, there was a substantial amount of digital artwork involved. For the
exhibition, the museum commissioned five web-based works and included installations,
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video works, sound pieces, and digital projects. The exhibition was sponsored principally
by Silicon Valley-based Intel Corporation that presented the online component still
available on the museum’s website (www.sfmoma.org/010101) and a separate website
(www.artmuseum.net) that served as an online museum gallery, now defunct.
Another major exhibition at the museum that served as a platform and laboratory
for digital technology was Points of Departure: Connecting with Contemporary Art
(March 23–October 28, 2001), where technology was more focused on education and
innovative ways to present the museum’s permanent collection. The exhibition was a
curatorial collaboration between the Painting & Sculpture and Education departments,
and was what Samis (2001) describes as, “an opportunity to prototype the museum of the
future” (p. 625). The exhibition was supported by Ross, who brought in new partners to
design the interactive prototypes including the MIT Media Lab, Idea Integration in San
Francisco, and Compaq Computer Corporation in Silicon Valley. Together they created
“an exciting environment for people to experience contemporary art, to really bring those
meanings home,” according to Samis (2001). This was the first time the museum had
introduced touch tables with flat, interactive computer screens, called SmartTables that
included content on artworks in each gallery of the exhibition, with additional
commentary by other curators and artists. This was also the museum’s first use of
handheld PDA (personal digital assistant) multimedia tours in a gallery that showed
thumbnail images of several works with original video footage or archival videos of
artists talking about their work on exhibit. Another experimental technology that was
introduced was a curatorial game that allowed museum visitors to re-hang works in the
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exhibition in a virtual gallery. This game could be played on interactive Make Your Own
Gallery kiosks at the end of the exhibitions.
David Ross left SFMOMA after a surprisingly short three years, and was replaced
by the more traditional Neal Benezra who holds a Ph.D. in art history from Stanford
University. Benezra (as cited in Guthrie, 2010) reflects on this transition,
My predecessor, David Ross, was one of the smartest people I’ve met. He
had created all sorts of exciting things. But at some point it became
unsustainable. We had to scale some things back. There are positions that
remain unfilled and frozen.
Despite the financial scaling back and the shifting of priorities, SFMOMA has continued
to innovate with digital technology. In 2005, the museum inaugurated Artcasts, a podcast
art-zine that was co-produced with the Sausalito-based Antenna Audio Inc. (now Antenna
International based in London). The first podcast (The Art of Richard Tuttle) was
downloaded more than 250 times in its first weekend. There are now 65 Artcasts archived
on the museum’s website (in Explore Modern Art/ Multimedia/ Podcasts) and available
on iTunes’ iPod Tours with new episodes approximately every two months. What was
innovative about them was the combination of music and poetry that complemented the
audio-visual voices of artists, curators, and even visitors (through its features Vox Pop
and Artcast International). When accessed on the museum’s website, Artcasts also offers
interactive features based on relevant themes, including Making Sense of Modern Art
programs. The episodes can be downloaded on computers and MP3 players with audio
and images, or only audio. The Times of London named the Artcasts “Podcast of the
Week” in January 2006, and they won a Best of the Web award in the “Innovative and
Experimental” category at the 2007 Museums and the Web conference.
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With the ubiquity of personal mobile devices and the popularity of museum
mobile tours, the museum decided to start producing its own content after more than ten
years of working with Antenna Audio. Erica Gangsei (personal communication, June 23,
2011), manager of interpretive media in the museum’s education department, reports that
her department is interested in centralizing its infrastructure to publish content on a
variety of digital platforms to facilitate updating and repurposing. They currently
outsource the audio editing with local sound production companies and also outsource for
digital storytelling and applications development, but ideally would like to bring all video
and audio production in house. This would depend, admits Gangsei, on technology being
prioritized a little more highly than it is today, as far as staffing. One innovative way in
which the museum has repurposed its content is through a partnership with the San
Francisco-based airlines Virgin America. Virgin’s in-flight entertainment network
coming in or leaving San Francisco includes the SFMOMA channel that offers video
programs on different topics with artists. Virgin America is now the official airline of
half-price Thursday evenings at SFMOMA. The museum also partnered with the video-
sharing website ArtBabble (Indianapolis Museum of Art), for which it contributed five
videos on its own channel (http://www.artbabble.org/partner/san-francisco-museum-
modern-art). In the spirit of collaboration, SFMOMA was invited by the Getty
Foundation to participate in its Online Scholarly Catalogue Initiative, and in 2009
received a grant of $240,000 for planning support. The museum’s project is an online
catalog of its extensive collection of works by Robert Rauschenberg, including artist
interviews, critical texts, exhibition histories, and conservation assessments, what the
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museum believes will represent “the most comprehensive and accessible repository of
research” on Rauschenberg.
In 2003, SFMOMA began a partnership with the New Media Consortium (NMC)
on the Pachyderm 2.0 project, funded by an IMLS National Leadership Grant. Based in
Austin, Texas, the NMC is an international consortium of almost 200 colleges,
universities, museums, and research centers dedicated to new media and new
technologies. Pachyderm is the authoring and publishing tool developed by SFMOMA
when it created Making Sense of Modern Art. Pachyderm 2.0 is a new, free, and open-
source version of the web-based multimedia tool that is “interoperable, robust, easily
distributable… and includes a wide range of pedagogically useful templates,” according
to its website (http://pachyderm.nmc.org/). The project brought together software
development teams and digital library experts from six NMC universities and six major
museums to design this new tool that is specifically intended for people with little or no
multimedia authoring experience. Pachyderm 2.0 was released in November 2005, and a
year later, SFMOMA was recognized with a Center of Excellence Award by the NMC
for “its innovation and creativity in expanding the boundaries of informal learning and
how we think about art.”
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Figure 29: SFMOMA website, ArtScope (11/18/11 screen capture)
Another of SFMOMA’s digital innovations is its visual browsing tool ArtScope
from 2008, accessed on its website in the Explore Modern Art section. It offers a fun,
more exploratory alternative to the traditional search-based collection database. ArtScope
currently features 6,050 objects (as of March 20, 2012) from the museum’s permanent
collection, arranged in a contiguous map-like grid based on the Modest Maps tile engine
from San Francisco-based company Stamen. By scrolling the cursor over thumbnail
images there appears a text column on the right with information on the artwork and a list
of keywords that when clicked, bring up related works much like a tag cloud but chosen
instead by museum staff. The images can also be zoomed in on. The objects are
searchable by artist, date, medium, and keyword, or instead, it facilitates a “chance
discovery of artworks you might not have encountered before.” ArtScope was funded by
an IMLS Museums for America grant, and was a collaboration between three museum
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teams: Web, Interactive Educational Technologies, and Collections Information and
Access.
SFMOMA was one of the early art museums to create a website in 1995, with its
latest website redesign in November 2008. The centerpiece of its website is the
interactive section Explore Modern Art, for which it received an IMLS Museums for
America grant to build. This online space combines the museum’s multimedia
interpretive programs (videos, podcasts, audio commentaries, interactive features), Our
Collection, Blog, and For Educators, including information for educators and teens with
programs and events and a link to the Teen Program photostream on Flickr. The idea of
bringing all these features together is to provide visitors with an online learning
environment in which to learn about the contexts in which the artworks were created and
to view high-resolution digital images of the artworks. In addition to ArtScope, Our
Collection includes a more traditional online database of more than 9,000 objects from
the museum’s permanent collection, searchable by artist, title, nationality, date, and
medium, that was launched in 2004 as Collections Access Online. The museum supports
a direct path from on-screen to in-gallery experiences by providing updated information
about museum programs and events that is directly related to pages where information on
artists and artwork is viewed.
The museum’s blog Open Space is another feature on the website’s Explore
Modern Art that debuted about six months earlier. In charge of Open Space is Suzanne
Stein, the museum’s community producer who was originally hired for the exhibition The
Art of Participation 1950 to Now exhibition in 2008 and has stayed on with increased
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responsibilities to engage the museum’s community. Open Space is a blog unlike any
other, in that it is more a community forum for the local arts community and about the
local arts community that is merely moderated by the museum, free of editorial control.
The blog takes its name (and spirit, says the website) from a small Bay Area poetry
magazine in 1965 that included only local writers whose works were published without
censorship, with the strict rule that no copies be circulated outside the region. SFMOMA
selects a small group of bloggers (regular contributors and guest writers) from the Bay
Area arts community, including writers, artists, critics, filmmakers, and staff from
community arts organizations that create a loyal following of readers (30% of visits in
2010 were returning readers, half of which return once a week or more
31
). During the ten-
month period of analysis, 77% of posts (201 out of a total 260, incidentally the same total
number as MoMA) were by bloggers outside the museum (including staff interviews of
outsiders). On the right column of the blog there are lists linking to visual cultural
websites; 135 local organizations and projects under the heading Here, and 32 outside the
local area under the heading Elsewhere. As Stein describes the blog:
Open Space is attended especially to the local community, which one of
my colleagues used to say that it’s totally ridiculous to use the web to
attend to the local community. But that gave it a special niche, something
that the community could attach to and belong to, could have a deeper
sense of ownership and engagement in a way. Open Space does a really
specific thing; it invites individuals who then bring their own communities
with them.
Much like how the museum itself developed, Open Space is now starting to reach out
further than the Bay Area to invite writers from across the country to contribute. For
31
Suzanne Stein, SFMOMA (personal communication, June 23, 2011).
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Stein, success is depth of engagement. So while she admits there is not a plethora of
comments on the blog, the comments are really deep and engaged ones. The blog has a
low ratio of comments to posts (0.8:1 or 350 total comments to 260 total posts), which
when compared to the other four museums, is not great and only better than the Walker
Art Center. Stein states that Open Space was intended as, “an interesting place for people
to talk and think about art, whether it’s at SFMOMA, across the street, in another
building, or across the world.” Another program that Stein organized at the museum was
the Talk and Conversation series that was meant to mirror Open Space in the physical
museum. Stein’s charge was to bring different people together to talk about art in public,
online, and in real space. She admits, however, that very quickly it became less about
participation and more about collaboration. Stein is a strong believer in dialog in all of its
manifestations because it engages people on a much deeper level than just clicking
something. Technology is a tool to support dialog, but is neither the priority nor even the
subject matter for Stein and her contributors, manifest in the fact that only 0.4% of the
blog postings are related to technology (1 out of a total 260).
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Figure 30: SFMOMA website, Open Space (1/13/12 screen capture)
Open Space provides a prominently-placed link to SFMOMA’s main website on
the top, right side of each page, which is more important to the museum than receiving
traffic from the museum’s website to the blog.
32
Social media is located on the right side
of the bottom navigation bar, as well as in the Share box at the bottom of each post, but
the museum’s intention is not to drive traffic from Open Space to social media. Rather,
by including links to posts on Facebook and Twitter, these social media initiate much of
the blog’s traffic. The museum also has accounts on YouTube and Flickr to post its
videos and photos and those uploaded by visitors. Social media is handled by the
museum’s marketing and publications department that heads a cross-departmental Digital
Outreach team. On the website, social media is placed in the Get Involved section that
also includes the more institutional functions such as Membership, Support SFMOMA,
32
Stein reports (personal communication, June 23, 2011) that only 10% of the blog’s traffic is referred
from SFMOMA’s main website.
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My Account, and Participate (“Volunteer, be a docent, join art-interest groups, take
SFMOMA-led trips, and comment on the blog”).
While the social media used by the museum are the four most basic ones
(Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr), the museum’s Twitter account was listed in the
San Francisco Weekly (Swearingen, 2011) as the best arts Twitter in the city. Ian
Padgham was digital engagement associate at SFMOMA at the time from 2010 to 2011
(since 2008 he held different positions at the museum), and was responsible for the
museum’s Twitter account that had amassed a strong following. Padgham began inviting
social media followers to press previews, stating that, “It’s not just what The Chronicle
says. We want [the local audience] to have a voice and spread the voice” (as cited in Fox,
2011). When the San Francisco Giants were in the Major League Baseball playoffs in
2010 (subsequently winning the World Series), Padgham changed the museum’s Twitter
avatar to incorporate the Giants’ logo. Both the Giants and the MLB retweeted the
museum. Padgham began using social media to take SFMOMA out into the community,
and in the process make it appear more accessible. “There’s a freedom to no longer be
this very proper institution,” claimed Padgham (as cited in Fox, 2011). Nevertheless, this
freedom was easier to achieve with social media and the Internet, and much more
difficult within the museum’s physical building.
Figure 31: @SFMOMA (Twitter), 2010. (Courtesy SFMOMA)
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Much like the Indianapolis Museum of Art, SFMOMA’s galleries are more
traditional in design and installation, regardless of the artwork exhibited. As an education
curator, Peter Samis understands the curatorial concerns of technology interfering with
the visitors’ aesthetic experience. At the same time, however, he also understands how
technology used for pedagogical purposes is most effective when placed nearby the
artworks it is providing information on. Samis states (personal communication, June 23,
2011), “The white cube is still being defined as the circumscribed sacrosanct space that
must not be breached by anything other than an art message to the point where in certain
installations there might not even be a wall text.”
Figure 32: SFMOMA signage, 2011
Although the use of cell phones is encouraged for accessing information on the Making
Sense of Modern Art Mobile tours throughout the galleries, cell phones are not allowed
for talking, as seen in this prominently placed sign on the stairway to the second floor
galleries and also inside the elevators, both in English and Spanish. The museum does
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offer free wifi, as do all of the five museums studied, but promotes it mainly in its Koret
Visitor Education Center.
Figures 33–35: Second-floor Learning Lounge, SFMOMA, 2011
One compromise to this quandary was the Learning Lounge, a small space
between galleries that is frequently used for interactive interpretive materials, both analog
and digital. Samis (personal communication, June 23, 2011) admits that,
The Learning Lounge is something that we really have to press for. It’s not
something that curators naturally leave space for. Only when there is an
exhibition that is a little bit short in terms of the content and they have
more square footage, they say, hey here’s an opportunity for a Learning
Lounge.
Currently, there is one lounge situated within the second-floor Design galleries. Attached
to comfortable armchairs are iPads where visitors can relax and view the museum’s video
application Artists Working/Artists Talking that presents over 70 videos of more than 40
artists. While the app is only available onsite, the videos can be accessed on the
museum’s online video archive in Explore Modern Art.
The Learning Lounges are challenging for curators because they are hybrid spaces
that breach the curatorial space with a personal and social space for education and
engagement with the artwork. Permanent educational spaces, on the other hand, don’t
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always produce such difficulties because they are usually located apart from the galleries
and are more indirectly related to specific exhibitions or works. For many years,
SFMOMA’s educational center was located in the museum’s basement. Finally, in 2002,
the museum not only brought it up to a prominent position on the second floor adjacent to
galleries, but introduced its transformation as the 7,000 square foot Koret Visitor
Education Center. The Center is a drop-in space for visitors that is staffed full-time, with
a lounge area to read books and watch video screenings, a library of art books and
exhibition catalogs, a separate area and library for children, and numerous stations with
computer screens to access digital programs such as Making Sense of Modern Art and
interactive features.
Figures 36–38: The Koret Visitor Education Center, SFMOMA, 2011
Lessons Learned
SFMOMA was able to build its collection of international modern and contemporary
artwork, with a pioneering role in digital and new media art, due to the many private
collections in the Bay Area, as well as the strong philanthropic support of local arts
patrons. A sense of loyalty to San Francisco proved a great impetus to create a museum
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of international stature that would compete with New York and Los Angeles, and which
concurrently kept the museum committed to local artists through a number of programs,
both analog (Talk and Conversation, Artists Gallery, Society for the Encouragement of
Contemporary Art) and digital (Bay Area Artfinder, Voices and Images of California Art,
Open Space). Because of the region’s strength in the technology industry, the museum
has been able to find strategic partners in universities and local companies to develop and
evaluate its innovative digital projects.
When discussing the new wing, Benezra declares in broad terms that it will serve
as a civic catalyst for the museum’s continuing concern with visitor engagement; a
visitor-centric museum. The problem is that many museum staff do not yet understand
what this means in practical terms, as many projects are being put on hold during this
transitional period. SFMOMA is an example for how to respond to the local community
by becoming an internationally recognized museum that creates civic pride, yet it counts
its local community as primarily the artistic sector and the more sophisticated arts
patrons. And for these two groups, the museum provides great social capital, which
serves to bond them even more tightly together. San Francisco is also known for great
ethnic and cultural diversity, evident in its eclectic neighborhoods strongly protected by
residents, but this part of the city is not well reflected in the museum’s programs,
priorities, or objectives. The problem is not merely an inability to focus on certain
segments of the community one serves, as the Walker Art Center has done effectively
with local artists, teens and educators, the problem is that SFMOMA is so tightly
identified with the city to outside visitors and tourists (SFMOMA Museum Store at SFO,
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SFMOMA Channel on Virgin American Airlines) that it has an even greater
responsibility to reflect the true, local character of San Francisco.
SFMOMA is an example of Slack and Wise’s (2005) notion of technology as
being culturally determined. The older, conservative nature of San Francisco is reflective
in the museum’s galleries that are still fairly traditionally installed. The museum’s blog
Open Space is also a reflection of the San Francisco local culture that, while not entirely
conventional, is not that interested in discussing technology. Yet there have been some
groundbreaking experiments largely due to the unique synergy at the museum between
educational, curatorial, and technology departments, as well as occasional support of the
technology industry in the Bay Area. Education curators understand curatorial concerns
for the primacy of the artwork, and the museum as a whole has made clear its
commitment to education. Almost all of the museum’s technological developments have
been for educational purposes, starting with its film program in the 1930s to its television
program in the 1950s, to ArtThink, to its award-winning interpretive programs that
accompany temporary exhibitions and support the permanent collection. The two major
physical spaces for education at the museum–the Learning Lounge and the Koret Visitor
Education Center–provide the visitor with a deeper understanding of the art by effectively
bridging the physical and online spaces. The physical museum offers smart tables,
interactive kiosks, computer screens, iPads, and mobile tours (using museum handhelds
and personal cell phones), that connect to the museum’s online programs such as Making
Sense of Modern Art, Artcasts, Artists Working/Artists Talking, and ArtThink. Even with
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the traditional treasure hunt activity for kids at the museum, visitors are encouraged to
upload photos to Flickr and tag them SFMOMA.
David Ross was extremely supportive of digital advances at the museum during
his short tenure as director, as was Jack Lane before him, however, Neal Benezra’s more
conservative (fiscally and museologically) nature has slowed down some of the
momentum, partially due to the museum’s new capital campaign. The future of the
museum as embodied in its new wing focuses on visitor engagement, but not only those
physical visitors. As the museum continues to become more global in its reach, it will
need to rely on digital technologies to engage also its online visitors that are both local
and global. The museum’s release of Pachyderm 2.0 as open source serves the global
museum community, as does its participation in the Getty’s Online Scholarly Catalog
Initiative. But to serve more than special interest groups, or perhaps to widen its selection
of special interest groups, the museum will need to rely more on its use of social media
integrated into its website, which already offers many rich experiences for the online
visitor.
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Chapter Seven: The Museum of Modern Art
Figure 39: The Museum of Modern Art, 54
th
Street Entrance, 2011
Place + Localized Culture
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is located in New York City, the most populous
city in the United States (8,175,133 in the 2010 U.S. Census), which is comprised of five
boroughs: Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, Bronx, and Staten Island. Of the five, only
Manhattan is not considered an “outer borough,” acting essentially as the center of the
city and the home of MoMA. Although Manhattan is not the most populous (1,585,873 in
the 2010 U.S. Census) or the geographically largest borough at only 23 square miles, it is
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the financial, corporate, cultural, and tourist center of the city. Manhattan is also known
as New York County, although it does not have a county government, only the borough
officials. New York City is the county seat of the five boroughs, each being their own
county as well. These last two museums studied–MoMA and the Brooklyn Museum–are
both located in New York City, but in different boroughs linked by the Brooklyn Bridge.
First I will discuss some of the characteristics of New York City, as distinct from the
other cities studied; Indianapolis, Minneapolis, and San Francisco. But because New
York City is such a large and diverse city, it will be necessary to break down the
municipality into boroughs and then discuss specific characteristics of the borough of
Manhattan for MoMA, and of the borough of Brooklyn for the Brooklyn Museum.
While New York City was officially formed in 1898 with the charter that unified
the five boroughs, its history dates back to the sixteenth century preceding colonial times.
The Italian navigator Giovanni da Verrazano was the first European to enter New York’s
harbor in 1524 on a French ship, followed by the English explorer Henry Hudson in
1609, who was employed by the Dutch East India Company. Early Europeans
encountered native Indians on Manna-hata Island (the Delaware/Lenape and the Mohican
tribes) and began the lucrative business of trading fur and raw materials. The Indian
tribes were driven westward with the growing European settlements, which is where most
can be found today in the state of New York. New Amsterdam (what is now lower
Manhattan) was established as a Dutch settlement by 1626, and was subsequently taken
over by the British in 1664 and renamed for the Duke of York, brother of King Charles
II. New York remained one of the original thirteen American colonies until the American
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Revolution in 1775, becoming the eleventh state in 1788. New York City was the state
capital until 1797, when it moved to Albany.
The particular geographic constitution of Manhattan as an island was a valuable
asset to all who controlled it, providing great advantage for trade between Europe and
America, and natural harbors to protect ships and troops. Manhattan began as a
commercial center during the early colonial period. Wall Street in southern Manhattan
was an actual wall that Dutch settlers built to protect themselves from Indians, pirates,
and any other dangers. The area on the southern tip of the island tied the banks of the
East River and the Hudson River on the west, and had become a busy commercial road
together with a new city hall and church (Trinity Church). New York City was the
country’s first center of government when City Hall on Wall Street became the Federal
Hall in 1789, although it lasted only one year. George Washington took the oath of office
here to become the country’s first president.
New York Harbor (also known as Upper New York Bay) is today governed by the
Port Authority for the New York–Newark, New Jersey metropolitan area. The two cities
of New York City and Newark are separated by the Hudson River. New York City has
approximately 600 miles of waterfront, a combination of river estuaries and bays. The
harbor opens into the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast. The opening of the Erie Canal in
1825 connected New York with the Great Lakes, making the port of New York even
more valuable as it connected Europe with the interior of the country. New York was the
world’s busiest port from around 1900 until the 1950s, at which time it shifted to the New
Jersey port due to New York’s rising waterfront costs, outdated piers, and limited space.
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The U.S. Custom House from 1902 still stands at the southern tip of Manhattan, now
housing the National Museum of the American Indian.
Not only commercial goods came through New York Harbor; it was also one of
the most important and historical points of entry for immigrants to the new world. At the
end of the seventeenth century, New Amsterdam was already very diverse ethnically and
religiously. The Dutch West India Company was one of the largest slave traders with
Africa in order to support its investments by building houses, making roads, and clearing
forests. In 1626, it brought its first shipment of slaves from Africa, and then expanded to
the West Indies including the Dutch colony of Curaçao. Slaves defended the Dutch
against Indian attacks, and often won their freedom after many years of hard work. At the
time, free blacks had more rights than Jews; they were allowed to own property and
intermarry with whites. Under British rule, the importation of black slaves increased from
Africa as well as the British colonies of Jamaica and Barbados, but their few rights were
taken away. In the late eighteenth century, anti-slavery sentiment began to grow in New
York, both from liberal whites as well as established communities of freed blacks. Many
churches of various dominations in Manhattan gave refuge to runaway slaves from the
South and were known as important stops along the Underground Railroad. Slavery was
abolished in New York in 1827, years before the Civil War began in 1861.
By the nineteenth century, the Irish and Germans held political and economic
power and fought the multitude of new immigrants: Greeks, Russians, Hungarians, and
Poles. In 1892, a new immigrant reception facility was built on Ellis Island in the harbor,
serving about 12,000 people per day. Between 1800 and 1900, 75% of all immigrants
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came to the United States through New York City (Donnelly, 2012). Most of these new
immigrants settled in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, which became one of the most
densely populated areas in the world by 1900. New York City in the twenty-first century
is just as diverse. Almost 40% of resident New Yorkers were born abroad in over 80
countries, less than 49% of New Yorkers speak only English at home, and there are 99
foreign language and ethnic newspapers in the city. The seven largest countries of origin
are the Dominican Republic, China, Jamaica, Russia, Italy, Poland, and India (Donnelly,
2012), which are reflected in the city’s modern-day ethnic communities such as
Chinatown, Yorkville, Little Italy, and Spanish and Black Harlem. In 2009, 36% of
residents were born outside of the United States, 29% entered in 2000 or later, and 42%
entered before 1990. Today, 52% of new immigrants come from Latin America, 26%
from Asia (the fastest growing group), and only 17% from Europe (U.S. Census 2010,
American Community Survey 2009). Manhattan is 57.4% white non-Latino, 25.4%
Latino/Hispanic, 15.6% African American, 11.3% Asian, and 0.6% Native American
Indian (U.S. Census, 2010). The Jewish population in New York City is the largest in the
world; the North American Jewish Data Bank reports that in 2002, 972,000 Jewish
people lived in the city, with 243,000 in Manhattan and the majority in Brooklyn
(456,000). In 2010, Jewish people comprised 8.3% of New York State.
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Figure 40: Lower East Side Tenement Museum Figure 41: Museum of the City of New York, Fifth Ave.
Poor, struggling immigrants crowded the Lower East Side of Manhattan in
deplorable tenement buildings, today reconstructed for public memory by the Lower East
Side Tenement Museum. Immigrant masses also formed bohemian neighborhoods in
Greenwich Village and populated Harlem just north of the city, but they were not in the
financial districts, in midtown, in the Upper East Side, or along Fifth Avenue and Park
Avenue by Central Park, which were reserved for the wealthy, influential, and industrial
titans. The city is less segregated today than it was in the past. Formerly lower-class,
underprivileged areas such as the Lower East Side, East Village, and Greenwich Village
are now filled with trendy restaurants and cafes, demanding exorbitant rents for the same
cramped apartments. But reminders of the past still exist in the well-preserved
architecture, with mansions housing museums, cultural centers, and luxury hotels.
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Data from Mapping the Measure of America reveal present-day demographics of
Manhattan and New York City.
33
MoMA’s region is well above the national average for
the Human Development Index (8.79 above the national 5.17), the Health Index (6.98–
San Francisco is 6.9–above the national 5.25), the Education Index (9.44 above the
national 5.15), and the Income Index (9.96 above the national 5.09). Life expectancy at
birth is 82.8 years (San Francisco is 82.6) above the national figure of 78.6 years, 65.7%
have at least a bachelors degree above the national rate of 27.7%, there is 100.5% school
enrollment (San Francisco is 104.3%) above the national rate of 87.3%, and the median
personal earnings is $60,099, considerably above the national figure of $29,755.
Manhattan has a substantial population 65 and older at 13.5% (same as San Francisco),
with the largest age group (25–34) comprising 21.5% of the population. The New York-
based Alliance for the Arts (2010) reports income sources for New York City cultural
organizations by borough. While all five boroughs are relatively equal in the amount of
earned income, Manhattan is disproportionately higher in the amount of private
contributions (57%), and substantially lower in the amount of government funding
(13%). This data can be explained by the higher degree of individual and corporate
wealth in the borough, hence the decreased need for government funding.
Wealthy industrialists from the nineteenth century built a network of major
cultural institutions such as Carnegie Hall (Andrew Carnegie), the Whitney Museum of
American Art (Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
33
The project uses congressional districts as a geographic measurement, which does not exactly overlap
borough borders. District 14 encompasses the central and eastern parts of the borough of Manhattan, where
MoMA is located, as well as the western part of Queens (Astoria, Long Island City, and Sunnyside).
Although the data suggest a prosperous, educated population, the district does not include other wealthy
parts of Manhattan such as the Upper West Side and Wall Street.
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and Rockefeller Center (John D. Rockefeller, Jr.), that became internationally renowned
and still enrich cultural life in the city today. The Arts Students League of New York
opened in 1875, helping to forge the careers of many important American artists, and the
Metropolitan Museum of Art opened in 1897, both in Manhattan. In 1889, the Arts
Students League joined with the Society of American Artists, the Society of Painters in
Pastel, the New York Art Guild, and the Architectural League to form the American Fine
Arts Society that contributed greatly to promoting the arts in New York. This individual
wealth and philanthropy–as well as the rich ethnic and racial diversity of immigrants and
residents–contributed to New York City’s displacement of Paris as the center of the arts
by the 1950s.
Starting in the 1920s the Harlem Renaissance represented the flourishing of
African American writers, artists, and jazz musicians into the 1940s. Harlem was the
destination not only for African Americans migrating from the South, but also for African
and Caribbean immigrants. New York City became the center of theater with the advent
of the Broadway musical that appeared in theaters on Broadway and along 42
nd
Street.
Today there are 39 Broadway theaters near what is popularly known as Times Square, as
well as numerous smaller theaters referred to as off Broadway, and even the more avant-
garde off-off Broadway theaters. The New York Philharmonic was formed in 1842, but
because Paris was still the center of the arts world at the time, it presented only European
classical music. Later, American composers emerged to bring international fame to a
new, American genre of music with the New York-born George Gershwin and Aaron
Copland from Brooklyn. Today, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is the largest
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arts institution in the world, housing twelve arts organizations in its 16.3-acre campus in
Manhattan’s Upper West Side. New York City also embraced alternative arts expressions
in the 1970s such as Hip Hop that started in the Bronx, Punk Rock, and Beat Generation
writers and poets that later moved to San Francisco. The city was also the center of
modern dance, with internationally famous dancers and choreographers such as Martha
Graham, Merce Cunningham, George Balanchine, Twyla Tharp, and the African
American Alvin Ailey.
Ironically, it was the influence and influx of European artists in New York that
helped to forge a truly American modernist art movement. The well-known 1913 Armory
Show (International Exhibition of Modern Art) in New York City brought many avant-
garde European artists to New York, including impressionists, fauvists, and cubists that
were exhibited next to American artists. New York collectors supported these new art
forms, except for the most radical, French artist Marcel Duchamp’s cubist masterpiece
Nude Descending a Staircase (1912). The rise of fascism in 1930s Europe brought many
artists to New York, including surrealists such as Arshille Gorky and Wolfgang Paalen
that greatly influenced American artists. The second wave of European surrealists came
in the 1940s during World War II, including André Breton, Yves Tanguy, and Max Ernst.
The Museum of Non-Objective Painting in Manhattan–later changed to the Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum–was highly influential at that time, opening in 1939 with an
important collection of the Russian abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky.
Early American artists included Charles Demuth, Marsden Hartley, and Alfred
Stieglitz, the photographer and owner of the 291 Gallery in Manhattan. When MoMA
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opened in 1929, it promoted these early modernist artists as well as their European
counterparts. The New York School of artists formed after World War II, based upon a
new style of painting called Abstract Expressionism.
34
This was the first American avant-
garde art style, influenced by radical European styles but distinctly American in its
expressiveness, freedom, and monumentality. Notable artists in this group were Jackson
Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko who met regularly at the Cedar Tavern in
Greenwich Village in Manhattan. The New York art scene in the 1950s and ‘60s was
notable for the birth of the American Pop Art movement, less focused on painting and
including more sculpture and mixed media. Important Pop Artists included Jasper Johns,
Andy Warhol, Larry Rivers, and Roy Lichtenstein. Many of these American artists were
marked by their experiences in the federal Works Progress Administration program that
paid artists to paint murals in government buildings between 1935 and 1943. In the late
twentieth century, important alternative artists emerged in New York such as Keith
Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, influenced by Hip Hop, graffiti, and the counterculture
that existed in many parts of the city.
34
Abstract Expressionism is also known as Action Painting, Color Field Painting, and Gestural
Abstraction.
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Figure 42: 42
nd
Street Station, Times Square Mural (1994) by Roy Lichtenstein, 2011
The city and state of New York are today the greatest public supporters of the arts
in the country. In 2011, the state of New York appropriated $39,988,000 for the arts and
the New York City Council gave $35,348,790 to support cultural organizations. New
York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs had a total budget of $141 million in 2010.
NYC & Company, Inc., the official marketing and tourism organization for New York
City, reports that in 2010, 46% of overseas visitors chose to visit art galleries and
museums, following shopping, restaurants, historical places, and sightseeing. For
domestic visitors, 22% visited museums, again following shopping and restaurants.
Forbes magazine (Murray, 2010) lists Times Square as the number one tourist attraction
in the United States, with 37.6 million visitors in 2009 or 80% of all New York City
visitors. Tourism is a major industry for the city, comprising $31.5 billion in total direct
visitor spending in 2010 (international and domestic). New York City received 9.7
million international visitors and 39.1 domestic visitors in 2010, with almost 46 million
people passing through New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport in 2009. In its
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report Creative New York (2005), the Center for an Urban Future writes that, “Creative
activity may be the closest thing to a natural resource in New York.”
With so many different ethnicities, languages, races, religions, and cultures, with
so many different neighborhoods, tourists, and transient residents (Manhattan is 70%
renter occupied, 21% owner occupied), can there be any sense of community? New York
City rates low in civic engagement (Civic Life in America, 2010), lower than the other
three cities. Measuring service, 17.2% volunteer with an organization and 5.3% work
with neighbors, below the national average. Measuring political action, 52% are
registered voters and 50.5% voted in the 2008 presidential election, below the national
average. Measuring social connectedness, 54% talk to friends and family on the Internet
frequently, 44.7% talk with neighbors frequently, and 86% have dinner with household
members frequently (Indianapolis is even lower for the last two), also below the national
average. Measuring belonging to a group, 28.7% participate in any organization, below
the national average of 34.5%.
35
In October 2011, New York City embarked on a one-
year experiment in participatory budgeting (the second city in the United States to try
this, after Chicago), with four city council districts opening up their capital discretionary
funds for community members to allocate: district 8 that includes Manhattan and the
Bronx, district 32 in Queens, and districts 39 and 45 in Brooklyn.
Understanding a sense of the local community in Manhattan is very different from
that of Minneapolis, Indianapolis, or San Francisco. Manhattan began as a center of
international trade between the new world and the old world, and then it became the
35
Certainly, these statistics vary within the different parts of New York City, which is why additional data
for the boroughs and congressional districts paint a more detailed picture of the region.
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financial center of the world, the artistic center, as well as the political center with the
United Nations headquartered by the East River since 1951. The local culture of
Manhattan is one formed through constant exchanges with different individuals and
cultures; it is a culture that offers opportunities and possibilities, and embraces new ideas,
albeit an optimism that is now heavily guarded by reality. The September 11, 2001
terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center towers in lower Manhattan has indelibly
changed the culture of the region, a culture which locals say is now stronger and more
united than ever.
Figure 43: 9–11 Memorial and Museum, Lower Manhattan, 2011
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The Museum and its Community
Mission Statement:
The Museum of Modern Art is a place that fuels creativity, ignites minds,
and provides inspiration. With extraordinary exhibitions and the world’s
finest collection of modern and contemporary art, MoMA is dedicated to
the conversation between the past and the present, the established and the
experimental. Our mission is helping you understand and enjoy the art of
our time. (emphasis mine)
MoMA’s mission statement includes not one reference to its local culture, place, or
community; instead, it affirms that it possesses “the world’s finest collection of modern
and contemporary art.” This is telling indeed, as we begin to explore how the museum
acknowledges its community and goals. MoMA is an international arts institution due to
its world-class collection and its international reach for visitors, exhibitions, institutional
partners, and financial supporters. It has stores in Japan, Korea, and four in New York
City (two inside MoMA, one across the street, and one in SoHo). Yet MoMA’s
international focus is not at the expense of its local community. Rather, the local
community of Manhattan and New York City is a global community of immigrants,
residents, and tourists; one of the most international cities in the world. The museum
affirms that 60% of its physical visitors are foreigners,
36
which explains why its museum
guides are in eight languages, its membership brochure is in six languages (including an
individual category for national/ international), and its website is in seven languages.
MoMA focuses on the local community in very traditional (analog) ways, as will be
36
Peter Reed, senior deputy director of curatorial affairs (personal communication, April 11, 2011).
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described, while its robust, online presence addresses more its national and global
audience, both integrated into the overall museum visitor experience.
Figure 44: MoMA storefront window on 53
rd
Street, 2011
MoMA was founded in 1929 principally by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (wife of
John D. Rockefeller), Lillie P. Bliss, and Mary Quinn Sullivan, known socially as “the
daring ladies.” MoMA’s website describes the mission for this early museum as that of,
“encouraging and developing the study of Modern arts…and furnishing popular
instruction.” At the time, Europe was the center of modern art and these women wanted a
place (“the greatest museum of modern art in the world”) to exhibit this new art when it
came to New York. MoMA was first housed on the twelfth floor of the Heckscher
building in midtown Manhattan, then moved to a rented space on West 53
rd
Street also in
midtown, the same location where the museum stands today. The inaugural exhibition
consisted of the European post-Impressionist artists Vincent van Gogh, George Seurat,
Paul Gauguin, and Paul Cézanne. It lasted one month (November 7–December 7, 1929),
and attracted more than 47,000 visitors.
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MoMA was an international museum from the very beginning. Nelson
Rockefeller (one of six children of Abby and John D. Rockefeller) was arguably the
museum’s most influential supporter. He served as trustee from 1932 to 1979, and
president from 1939 to 1941 and then from 1946 to 1953. While he preferred the style of
European modern artists such as Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, he was also influenced
by his mother’s favorite artist, the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, and by her affinity
towards Latin American art. Abby Rockefeller donated the first works from Latin
America to the museum with a gift of 36 paintings and 105 drawings, including important
works by Rivera and José Clemente Orozco. Nelson was a strong supporter of the arts in
general, and formed the New York State Council on the Arts in 1960 while he was
governor of New York. His interest in Latin American art also developed through his
many political associations with the region. In 1940, President Roosevelt appointed him
Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, responsible for helping Latin American nations,
and in 1944 he was appointed Assistant Secretary of State for American Republic Affairs.
In the 1950s he served President Truman as Chairman of the International Development
Advisory Board and Special Assistant to the President for Foreign Affairs.
Nelson eagerly brought these international connections to the museum for the
benefit of both the museum and his country. He was instrumental in founding the
museum’s International Program in 1952 and its associated membership group, the
International Council. The International Program was intended to organize exhibitions of
American modern art that would be sent all over the world, working closely with, and
funded largely by, the U.S. State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. The
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program continues today with the tradition of organizing traveling exhibitions, but now
includes publications, public programs, and workshops for mid-career museum
professionals from specific regions around the world. In 2011, the International Council
provided $716,000 in exhibition and programming support to the museum (MoMA,
2011). Nelson was also responsible for appointing the museum’s second director, René
d’Harnoncourt. After briefly living in Mexico and organizing exhibitions of Mexican
modernist artists, d’Harnoncourt moved to the United States and worked for Nelson
Rockefeller as acting director of the art division in the Office of Inter-American Affairs.
At Nelson’s instigation, d’Harnoncourt started working at MoMA in 1944 with the very
bureaucratic title of Vice President in charge of Foreign Activities, where he continued to
work with Latin America and then Europe after the end of World War II. D’Harnoncourt
was appointed director of the museum in 1949 and served for the next eighteen years.
MoMA first gained international recognition with its blockbuster exhibition of
van Gogh in 1935, and even more so with its groundbreaking retrospective exhibition
Picasso: Forty Years of his Art in 1939. At the time, MoMA favored modern European
artists over the American abstract artists emerging in the city, which caused come
consternation with the local artists. The museum’s first director, Alfred H. Barr, Jr.
(1929–1943) was extremely influential in bringing modern art to the American public’s
attention and placing it within a global context, but his preference for European modern
art was the main rationale for the museum being embarrassingly late to exhibit and
collect American Abstract Expressionism. It was the Guggenheim museum that presented
the first exhibitions of American artists Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. In 1940, a
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group of New York artists, led by Ad Reinhardt, picketed the museum distributing
leaflets that read, “How modern is the museum of modern art”? It was not until its highly
influential exhibition The New American Painting in 1958, that MoMA fully embraced
the Abstract Expressionist movement in the United States, continuing up until today with
the successful recent exhibition Abstract Expressionist New York (October 3, 2010–April
25, 2011).
Peter Reed, the senior deputy director of curatorial affairs at MoMA as well as the
head of its Digital Strategy Group, reveals that one of the museum’s goals today is to
engage the New York arts community. He states that, “You need to rebuild community,
and our trustees and our director have pushed us to engage artists as a priority” (personal
communication, April 11, 2011). One of the ways in which the museum has physically
engaged with its local community in recent years is by expanding into areas which are
rapidly becoming new artistic centers, namely Queens just across the East River. MoMA
QNS became the museum’s temporary exhibition space while it closed its midtown
building for a major expansion in 2002. MoMA had previously purchased the former
Swingline stapler factory building to store its growing collection of artwork. Long Island
City in Queens has a good number of museums and alternative art spaces (including The
Noguchi Museum, Socrates Sculpture Park, Museum of the Moving Image, and Fisher
Landau Center for Art), making it a burgeoning arts district just a quick subway ride from
Times Square. At MoMA QNS, masterpieces from MoMA’s permanent collection and a
blockbuster Matisse Picasso exhibition drew up to 4,000 people a day into the
historically industrial area that is now an ethnically diverse–and still affordable–
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residential neighborhood. The museum also provided busses to shuttle visitors from its
Manhattan location. Nevertheless, Karen Davidson (as cited in Bohlen, 2002), deputy
director for policy, planning and administration at the museum, declared that, “It is
almost like moving from one country to another.” After the expanded MoMA reopened in
2004, it maintained MoMA QNS for a study center, workshops, and permanent art
storage, but closed to the public.
Figure 45: MoMA PS1, Long Island City, Queens, 2011
Also in Long Island City, Queens is what is now called MoMA PS1. Originally
founded by Alanna Heiss in 1971 as the Institute for Art and Urban Resources Inc., PS1
was not a collecting institution but rather dedicated to organizing temporary exhibitions
in abandoned spaces throughout New York City. It acquired its permanent home in a
vacant public school (Public School 1) in 1976, which was later renovated in 1997 to
serve as a studio, performance, and exhibition space. PS1 became an affiliate of MoMA
in 2000 to “extend the reach of both institutions and combine MoMA PS1’s
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contemporary mission with MoMA’s strength as one of the greatest collecting museums
of modern art,” according to MoMA’s website. The merger was completed just in 2010.
Today MoMA PS1 has the feel of an art school with its gritty, albeit spacious interiors;
even the stairwells and basement are used for installations. MoMA calls its new Queens
space an “artistic laboratory” that presents “diverse and innovative activities” in stark
contrast to what it can achieve in Manhattan. To start with, MoMA PS1 engages with
contemporary New York artists on a much deeper, and looser, level.
MoMA PS1 celebrated its opening in 2000 with the exhibition Greater New York,
now a quinquennial event (in 2005 and 2010) still organized by both MoMA and MoMA
PS1 that showcases artists and artist collectives living and working in the greater New
York area. The exhibition includes performances, public programming, and artists
commissioned to conduct experimental work in-residence in MoMA PS1’s gallery space.
The museum’s website describes the exhibition; “Covering a full range of practices and
media, the artists in Greater New York are inspired by living in one of the most diverse
and provocative centers of cultural activity in the world.” The curatorial team reviewed
750 submissions in 2010, and in addition to the traditional open call for proposals and
studio visits, they introduced a new online submission venue for artists called Studio
Visit. Studio Visit remains a publicly accessible site on the museum’s website
(http://momaps1.org/studio-visit/) that supports artists from the greater New York area
and provides them with an unprecedented means of visibility.
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Just as MoMA QNS revitalized the neighborhood for its short stint, so has MoMA
PS1 brought new artistic life and energy to Long Island City through its active schedule
of cutting-edge public programming and free entrance for all Long Island City residents.
Another MoMA PS1 program is called Free Space, where artists, nonprofit organizations,
independent curators, collectives, and architects-in-residence occupy free physical gallery
space and in turn conduct open spaces that engage the public with “uninhibited artistic
exploration and fresh contemporary art programming.” The Young Architects Program is
in its twelfth year now at MoMA PS1, an annual international competition for emerging
architects to build a site-specific, temporary project for the museum’s outdoor
recreational area during the summer, the site of its popular music concert series Warm
Up. The 2011 competition was the first collaboration between MoMA PS1 and an outside
institution, the National Museum of XXI Century Arts of Rome (MAXXI) in Rome,
Italy, that created the international Young Architects Program network.
While MoMA values its new affiliated space in Queens that offers an opportunity
to more fully embrace contemporary art, the local artistic scene, and a different segment
of New York City, it continues to expand its original site on West 53
rd
Street in
Manhattan. The most recent expansion by Yoshio Taniguchi in 2004 increased the
museum’s square footage from 80,000 (from its previous 1984 expansion), to a total of
630,000 square feet. This amount of space in crowded Manhattan was acquired
fortuitously when the adjacent 19-story Dorset Hotel came on the market in 1996. An
important new addition at this time was The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education
and Research Building, the museum’s first building dedicated solely to these activities
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that increased space for classrooms, auditoriums, teacher-training workshops, and the
museum’s expanded Library and Archives. In early 2011, MoMA purchased another
building (30,000 square feet) adjacent to it on West 53
rd
Street that housed the American
Folk Art Museum. At this time, MoMA has only revealed that it plans to expand in that
direction in the future. MoMA’s midtown space is unlike the imposing architecture of
early encyclopedic museums with their Greek columns and grand staircases, or even
many contemporary art museums that build awe-inspiring architectural works of art
themselves by “starchitects” (star architects). MoMA’s buildings are modernist like its
beginnings, forming a seamless part of the Manhattan skyline with street-level entrances,
high-rise buildings, spacious interiors, and lots of windows. The museum’s Abby Aldrich
Rockefeller Sculpture Garden provides visitors with a bit of urban tranquility, and an
opportunity to look up and acknowledge the museum’s urban surroundings, admiring
artwork within its very dense, physical context.
Figure 46: The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, MoMA, 2011
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Wendy Woon (personal communication, April 11, 2011), MoMA’s deputy
director for education, describes community as affinity; “people coming together with
some sort of affinity.” Affinities change and develop as people grow through life, and the
museum believes in being relevant at all stages of a visitors’ life from infants to senior
citizens. Woon recognizes that the museum has both physical, local visitors, as well as
online, global ones, but strives to reach people within their own communities, wherever
those may be physically or virtually. The museum’s education department manages the
Community Partnership Program that, since 2004, maintains a formal relationship with
29 community-based organizations in New York, including Art in School in Prison,
Housing Works, Passages Academy, Fortune Society, Project Reach Youth, F*E*G*S,
YWCA Fresh Start, Project Luz, and Midtown Community Court’s WISE Program. The
museum’s website allows organizations to custom design their program, visit, or
partnership with MoMA by first choosing the type of program (i.e., group visit, art
studio, MoMA outdoors), then contacting museum staff by email. The website describes
the program as, “Collaborate with MoMA: we tailor our programs to fit the needs,
abilities, and interests of the people your organization serves.” Calder Zwicky (as cited in
museum video, n.d.), the museum’s community outreach coordinator, believes that the
program helps to demystify the arts; “The arts in general are accessible to every resident
of New York City…the arts really are there for everyone.”
After a trustee retreat in 2005, the museum decided to focus on two priorities:
contemporary art, and education specifically for young adults. Six years later, Peter Reed
declares proudly that they have succeeded on both fronts. PopRally responds to both
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concerns, an initiative for young adults that was started in 2008 and organized by
younger staff at the museum. PopRally creates innovative and social events at MoMA
and MoMA PS1 with contemporary artists, musicians, and performers about once a
month for youth between 22 and 38 years that pay a minimal cost to attend. Marketing is
conducted solely online because of a very low budget and the group’s predilection for
social media. The museum does not promote PopRally on its website other than listing its
events in Calendar and its videos in Multimedia, but a search for PopRally on the website
brings up its subsite (http://www.moma.org/poprally/index) where visitors can register
for e-mail invites (over 10,000 have already signed up as of April 2011). Social media is
not listed on PopRally’s subsite, but the program has an active Flickr photostream, a
Facebook page, and a not-so-active Twitter account (@poprally).
Like most museums, MoMA also has a strong Teen Program, centered on its
work with New York City high schools and its own Youth Advisory Council (now called
the Teen Voices Project). Art Underground consists of free teen nights at the museum
every other Friday during the school year with movies, artist workshops, and pizza. In the
Making is a free after-school program at the museum for high school students that
participate in ten-week classes such as CLICK@MoMA: Wearable Technology, What
the #%!$@? Abstraction, Emotions, & Art, and ¡Muralistas! Large Scale Painting from
Around the World. The Teen Program also has a substantial online component, including
the now archived Red Studio website from 2004 until July 2010, and the more recent
website Pop Art from 2008 that is still active, both created and developed by teens in the
Youth Advisory Council.
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MoMA has won numerous awards for its Access Program that serves people with
disabilities, including physical, learning, emotional, behavioral, or developmental
disabilities, people who are partially sighted, blind, hard of hearing, or deaf. In 2000, the
museum won the Access Innovation in the Arts Award, presented by VSA Arts and
MetLife Foundation, in 2007 the Ruth Green Advocacy Award from the League for the
Hard of Hearing, and in 2010 the Innovations in Alzheimer’s Disease Caregiving Legacy
Award from The Family Caregiver Alliance and The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert
Foundation, and the Community Leadership Award from the Alzheimer’s Association
New York City Chapter. MoMA’s website
(http://www.moma.org/learn/disabilities/index) describes this program, “Everyone is
welcome at MoMA. We offer a variety of free programs and services to make MoMA
accessible to you.”
But the museum has perhaps made its greatest mark with Meet Me, the MoMA
Alzheimer’s Project: Making Art Accessible to People with Dementia. The program first
started as Meet Me at MoMA, with specially trained museum educators that engaged
participants in discussions by focusing on works in the museum’s collections and in
special exhibitions, and by providing a forum for dialog and an expressive outlet. The
program later expanded nationwide in order to develop resources that other museums
could use, such as assisted-living facilities and community organizations serving people
with dementia and their caregivers. The Meet Me subsite
(http://www.moma.org/meetme/index) presents interviews with experts in the field of art,
aging and Alzheimer’s disease, guides for creating arts-related programs, multimedia
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content, and the results from an evaluative study of the program conducted by the New
York University Center of Excellence for Brain Aging and Dementia in 2008. In 2010,
the website received the Best of the Web award for Education from Museums and the
Web, and first prize in the American Association of Museums’ Museum Publication
Design Competition for the Meet Me book as well as its Excellence in Published
Resources Award.
Figure 47: MoMA membership sign, Café 2, 2011
Peter Reed speaks of director Glenn Lowry’s dream for the museum to represent a place
for conversation, a think tank for modern and contemporary art and ideas. Today the
museum presents an array of public adult programming (lectures, conversations,
performances) that promote dialog under the umbrellas of the Photography Forum,
Performance Art Forum, Film Forum, Independent Filmmakers Forum, and the
Contemporary Art Forum. In talking about the notion of salons that has become popular
with other curators at the museum, Reed gives credit to Senior Curator Paola Antonelli.
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The museum has become a convener, a conduit for conversations on a physical level with
these public forums, as well as private ones on many of the same themes with leaders
from around the world. Reed acknowledges that the physical interaction with visitors and
associates is extremely helpful in building trust, continuity, and community, but that
those conversations now need to be carried over into the digital realm. And one challenge
that MoMA is struggling with now, according to Reed, is how to address different
audiences in different channels in different ways.
The Role of Digital Technology
The digital age has both complicated and expanded the possibilities for dialog and
convening, and MoMA has embraced new digital technologies that help to engage their
visitors–physical and online–with the museum, and with modern and contemporary art.
MoMA was an early enthusiast of mass media technology, beginning with radio
broadcasts on modern art in the 1930s, and continuing into the 1940s and ‘50s with
television. At the time, New York City was one of the first major centers for television
production with national networks and multiple stations (CBS, NBC, and local
broadcasters). Museums saw the opportunities inherent in the medium to reach a mass
audience, and the networks courted museums to provide them with novel content. MoMA
hosted monthly meetings of the American Television Society during the 1940s, and the
head of CBS, William S. Paley, was a MoMA trustee (CBS was already partnering with
the Metropolitan Museum of Art). In 1939, MoMA presented a live broadcast from the
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NBC studios with director Alfred Barr and trustee Nelson Rockefeller discussing the
museum’s sculpture Bird in Flight by Constantin Brancusi. In her book TV By Design,
media scholar Lynn Spigel (2008) notes that, “MoMA saw television not simply as a
venue for publicity or education, but as central to the maintenance of its own cultural
power” (p. 148). Part of this power was the ability to reach viewers in their own homes,
especially the targeted housewives, more than could ever physically visit the museum. A
three-year grant from the Rockefellers Brothers Fund helped MoMA start its Television
Project that hired the avant-garde filmmaker Sidney Peterson to create in-house
productions. A number of “tele art programs” that developed under this project together
with NBC included Point of View, a series of fifteen-minute programs, Through the
Enchanted Gate, and the animated children’s series They Became Artists. MoMA
developed a Television Archive to complement its prestigious Film Archive, consisting
more of art documentaries than commercial productions. However, the Television Project
was short-lived due to low ratings, difficulties in securing copyrights, and the fact that
production houses began moving to Hollywood. Today, MoMA has similarly embraced
the most recent medium of mass telecommunications, the Internet.
Peter Reed considers MoMA’s website
37
(www.moma.org/) as its third venue,
following firstly its 53
rd
Street building and secondly PS1 in Queens. All three venues are
equally valid and important to the museum, although Reed does acknowledge the need
for many curators to recognize this. The Internet is critical for at least three of MoMA’s
priorities: young adults, education, and a global reach. Alexa statistics (September 2011)
37
The museum’s website was last redesigned in March 2009, and in 2010, it won a Bronze MUSE award
from the American Association of Museum in the category of Online Presence.
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of MoMA’s website reveal that the average online visitor is between 25 and 34 years of
age (the same as for the Brooklyn Museum), which is much younger than SFMOMA and
the Indianapolis Museum of Art (55–64), and the Walker Art Center (45–54). The
museum’s website is also tightly integrated with social media that is utilized by a younger
demographic. It is noteworthy that the website has an Online Communities page under
the Explore section–recognition that this “third venue” has constituted a community–in
which the museum provides links to its social media (Flickr, YouTube, iTunes,
Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare). Also under Online Communities is listed MoMA’s
virtual gallery in the Google Art Project, its page in ArtBabble, and a link to online
registration for MoMA.org. MoMA’s online community is indeed a significant one at
least in the quantitative sense. On Foursquare, the museum has 80,219 followers, on
Twitter (@MuseumModernArt), it has 898,215 followers, and on Facebook it has
975,261 fans (as of February 27, 2012); it has approximately 600,000 e-mail subscribers
(2011), and in 2010 it had 18,000,000 website visitors.
38
Compare these numbers to the
number of physical visitors in 2010 (2,800,000) and we understand the magnitude of this
third venue to the museum. Furthermore, 7.11% of website visitors go directly to the
online store, www.momastore.org/ (Alexa, December 2011) that received five million
visitors in 2010, a substantial source of revenue for the museum. Even more remarkable
is that all these online visitors (through social media or the website) are frequent repeat
visitors, as opposed to the museum’s physical visitors that may only visit once if they are
tourists, or maybe a few times a year if they are locals.
38
Allegra Burnette, MoMA (personal communication, April 11, 2011).
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Nevertheless, the distinction between local, physical visitors and global, online
visitors is not a clean one. Certain social media are used by more of the local community,
such as Foursquare that utilizes geolocation technology to provide users with GPS
(Global Positioning System)-enabled smart phones tips from the museum when they are
in the area, or to allow users to leave tips themselves on what they recommend seeing at
the museum. On the other hand, the museum’s website is only 40% international,
compared to 60% international for its physical visitors (Peter Reed, personal
communication, April 11, 2011). Despite the website being available in seven languages,
the translated portions include only basic information aimed at visiting tourists such as
restaurants, directions, store, annotated floor plan, audio guides, and membership. The
deeper content is not yet translated, perhaps a reason for the low rate of international
online visitors. Allegra Burnette, creative director for digital media at the museum,
admits that the museum does more in its physical spaces to address different languages
than online, partly due to the tremendous expense in translating thousands of pages of
constantly changing content. In the museum, the audio program is available in multiple
languages, as is the printed museum guide, and volunteers and security guards wear
buttons that show which languages they speak.
Regarding the museum’s deeper online content, Reed admits that its ambition and
reach is increasingly international. The museum is starting to look at new models of
online publishing for sharing research,
39
such as with its recent Talk to Me exhibition
(July 24–November 7, 2011) curated by Paola Antonelli. The museum’s department of
39
It must be noted that MoMA decided to not participate in the Getty Online Scholarly Cataloging
Initiative because it was busy pursuing its own related projects.
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Architecture and Design documented the organizing and installation process for the
exhibition with an online journal (wp.moma.org/talk_to_me/) that allows for public
comments and features additional content such as links, readings, projects to research and
projects completed, and feedback from members of the international design community.
The website also has a link to its Twitter feed (@talktome2011 with 1,229 followers as of
March 20, 2012) and the museum’s official exhibition subsite
(www.moma.org/talktome).
MoMA’s website offers multimedia information for all its visitors. For educators
(K-12), the Learn section of the website presents videos of how MoMA educators teach
with art objects, online registration for workshops and courses, and online resources.
Hidden within these resources is its new subsite Modern Teachers Online
(http://www.moma.org/modernteachers/) where educators can download PDFs of
educator guides, powerpoints and worksheets, browse images from the collection, or
search lessons by subject, theme, medium, or text. Both text and images can be printed,
projected, or saved for a classroom presentation. Interactive games for kids include Art
Safari and Destination: Modern Art, An Intergalactic Journey to MoMA and P.S.1 for
ages five to eight. Modern Teachers Online also links to the archived teen website, Red
Studio. The Adobe Flash-based Red Studio is now obsolete because it is incompatible
with mobile devices and has been replaced by the new teen site PopArt (not featured on
the teacher’s subsite). However, Red Studio’s videos and audio podcasts can still be
heard online, and the online activities still function, such as Remix: an interactive collage,
Fauxtogram: objects exposed, and Chance Words (make a Dadaist poem). MoMA
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Channels (under Multimedia in the Explore section of its website) brings together all the
museum’s audio, video, and interactive features under those three headings. Under Audio
is included the museum’s free audio guide (MoMA Audio) and MoMA Talks. Under
Video are videos from PopRally, the ongoing short film series 30 Seconds of museum
members and staff, and under Interactive is Red Studio, Art Safari, Destination: Modern
Art, Modern Teachers Online, as well as current and past exhibition subsites.
Since 2007, the museum has created interactive websites for its physical
exhibitions, offering unique online experiences that seamlessly accompany the onsite
ones. One example is the exhibition Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures (December 19, 2010–
March 21, 2011) that offered visitors the opportunity to create their own screen test
(actually a video portrait), both online and onsite. The online component was part of the
exhibition’s subsite
(http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2010/warhol/#5631286414), where
visitors uploaded their videos (up to 90 seconds) to the museum’s Flickr Group
momascreentests. At the museum, a screen test booth was set up to record minute-long
videos, which MoMA then projected on the walls of its Marron Atrium and later
uploaded to the exhibition subsite. Allegra Burnette describes how museum visitors
became part of a community of screen tests through the event, both at the museum and
online. Another integrated example is the exhibition Marina Abramović: The Artist is
Present (March 14–May 31, 2011), where the exhibition subsite offered a live streaming
webcam of the exhibition (actually a live performance by Abramović for the duration of
the exhibition) that would “transmit the presence of the artist,” as the website declares.
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Visitors to the physical exhibition opted to sit silently across from the artist for as long as
they chose, and the museum took photographs of each sitter that were subsequently
uploaded to the website
(http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2010/marinaabramovic/). The museum
also offered free, live-streaming gallery tours of the exhibition through either the
museum’s website or its Facebook page, where visitors could submit questions through
Facebook and Twitter (@ttmtour). Presence at the physical museum, therefore, was
equated to a virtual presence as mediated by digital technology.
Figure 48: MoMA Guide at MoMA, 2011 Figure 49: MoMA website, E-Cards
(12/5/11 screen capture)
Also at the museum can be found MoMA Guide in the form of computer monitors
placed in various locations such as next to the restrooms on the first floor, in a seating
area outside galleries on the second floor, and in the lobby of Café 2. The monitors have
headphones for listening to audio and video programs, visitors can register for e-news,
send E-cards from the museum’s permanent collection by e-mail, and can search the
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online collections; the same functions that can be accessed by visitors outside the
museum using its website.
MoMA Audio is listed under both Mobile and Multimedia in the Explore section
of its website, and clearly states that the program can be enjoyed by visitors both at the
museum and at home. At the museum, visitors can rent the free audio players at two
locations (floors 1 and 6), and at home they can listen to tracks directly from the website
or as podcasts downloaded to personal MP3 players from iTunesU. MoMA Audio
includes separate guides for kids, teens, visual descriptions for the visually impaired, for
special exhibitions, and the permanent collection is available in eight languages. After
listening to these programs, MoMA encourages visitors to create their own audio
program, either for their next visit to MoMA with their MP3 player, or to send to the
museum (audio@moma.org) to upload in the Multimedia section of its website. In its
detailed instructions, MoMA includes a recent podcast submission as an example: 291
(http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/audios/85) by visitor Jason Sneed, who
created the program inspired by the 2006 museum exhibition Dada.
Figure 50: MoMAudio, MoMA First-floor Lobby, 2011
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Also included under Mobile in the Explore section of MoMA’s website are its
mobile applications (apps). There are free apps for the iPhone, Android, and the iPad (Ab
Ex NY and MoMA Books), and one for purchase on iTunes (Vicente van Gogh, The Starry
Night). The website’s Mobile page also has a QR (quick response) code to scan for the
Android app. At the museum, the apps are advertised with a sign directly above the paper
Floor Plan and Guide brochures: “Save paper, view website and download free apps at
MoMA.org/mobile.” MoMA has a mobile website (as do all five museums studied),
which is not advertised in the Mobile section. The museum’s most recent app MoMA
Books allows visitors to download e-books onto their personal iPads. Visitors can
download free samples, and once the books are purchased and the PDFs downloaded onto
the iPad, they can zoom in on high-resolution images with a bookmarking feature.
Currently the museum has five e-books that are listed in the Publications section of the
website. Curiously, MoMA Books is not featured in the Publications or even Shop
sections of its website. The Ab Ex NY iPad app won a 2011 Gold MUSE award from the
American Association of Museums in the new category of Applications and APIs, and
MoMA Mobile (including the multi-platform app and the mobile website) won a Silver
MUSE award in the category of Mobile Applications.
MoMA/MoMA PS1’s blog Inside/Out is featured under Explore and on the
museum website’s homepage with a link to the most recent post. In June 2011, the
museum changed the appearance of the blog to better integrate it into the museum’s
website and its activities, as well as other social media. Facebook and Twitter are placed
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most prominently in the blog’s right column with links to sign up or login, below which
is placed Follow Us/Links for more social media (Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare,
YouTube, Flickr, iTunesU, and RSS feed), and below that an e-mail link for “Have ideas
or feedback?” The bottom navigation bar promotes activities at the museum with
hyperlinks, such as current exhibitions, membership, MoMAstore.org, and PopRally.
While MoMA’s blog has more comments (535), posts (260, same as SFMOMA), and
visits (921,000 in 2010) than all five museum blogs studied in the ten-month period, it is
not exceptional for the ratio of comments to posts (2.1:1) or even comments to visits
(1:1,721). The Indianapolis Museum of Art surpassed all five museums for those same
ratios; 3.2:1 and 1:275 respectively (the lowest ratios are from the Walker’s blog).
MoMA places the authors prominently on top of each post with a link to their past posts,
but with no biography. Only 3% of MoMA’s posts during the ten-month period were by
outsiders, which does not include artists and others participating in museum events and
exhibitions, but does include postings in the Intern Chronicles by museum interns. This
number, however, is not that unusual when compared to the Brooklyn Museum (4%),
Walker Art Center (2%), and Indianapolis Museum of Art (8%).
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Figure 51: MoMA website, I went to MoMa and… (12/5/11 screen capture)
Listed notably in the central column of Inside/Out under Features are the posts
entitled, “I went to MoMA and…” Starting out as more of a short-term marketing
strategy targeting physical visitors, the museum placed cards and small pencils on top of
tables in its second floor restaurant (Café 2). The accompanying sign reads:
We’d like to share your story. Leave us a message, a drawing, a poem, an
idea. We’re interested in your day here–what you saw, felt, and thought.
We may post it here: moma.org/iwent.
Due to the program’s success, it has been continued and is now highlighted on the
museum’s web homepage with a link to its own subsite (http://www.moma.org/iwent/);
offering a search function by tags, date of visit, or card identification number listed at the
bottom of each card. So far the museum has digitized 18,137 cards (as of March 20,
2012), again providing a connection between the physical museum, its website, and blog.
MoMA PS1’s artist website Studio Visit was mentioned briefly in the previous
section, and is an important component of the museum’s use of technology to better serve
its visitors and community. Emerging artists from the greater New York area are invited
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to upload videos or still images of their studios and artwork, which are featured on the
website for at least one month. The website supports New York-based artists by
providing a highly reputable, global platform, and helps the global arts community to
gain a better understanding of the New York arts community. There are currently 1,768
artists on the site (as of March 20, 2012), searchable by last name, most recent entry, and
location (with an interactive map of New York City). Each entry includes images of the
artist’s studio, exterior and interior, a Google satellite image of the studio location,
images of the artwork, artist’s statement, bio/resume, and e-mail. The site also features
Curators’ Picks from both MoMA and invited curators that select artists of particular
interest to highlight.
Figure 52: MoMA PS1 website home page (12/5/11 screen capture)
Studio Visit can be found under the Connect section of MoMA PS1’s website
(http://momaps1.org/studio-visit/), along with its own social media; Facebook and
Twitter. MoMA PS1 has 161,148 Facebook fans and 44,834 Twitter (@MoMAPS1)
followers (as of March 20, 2012). Visitors can register for the e-mail list in the Connect
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section, where the hyperlink brings up MoMA’s e-news page. Also in Connect is a link to
the shared museum blog Inside/Out. While MoMA PS1 is clearly integrated into the
overall MoMA structure, it still maintains its relative independence. MoMA links
prominently to MoMA PS1 on the bottom left corner of its website homepage, however,
as MoMA PS1’s website is undoubtedly more minimalist–which promotes its distinct
contemporary character–a link to the MoMA website is not found on the homepage or
even under its eight headings.
Education is one of the priorities for MoMA and a priority which is well served
by digital technology. The Internet gives a concrete visibility to the more ephemeral
experiences of education, says Wendy Woon. One of Woon’s chief challenges is that,
“people don’t value [educational experience] because they can’t feel it or touch it or hold
it like an exhibition or an object” (personal communication, April 11, 2011). In addition
to MoMA Teachers Online and the abundance of online resources for teachers and
children, the museum has recently embarked onto online teaching with Online Courses,
which simultaneously serves the goals of both education and international reach. MoMA
started with two pilot classes in fall 2010, and then increased them to three times a year in
2011. The ten-week courses are completely asynchronous, given the international
composition of the classes, so that students can access all information at any time. Course
information includes high quality videos shot inside MoMA’s galleries without the
crowds, narrated power point presentations, text-based materials, and discussion forums
where students and instructors post messages, comments, and questions. The two online
courses currently offered are Modern Art, 1880–1945 and Materials and Techniques of
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Postwar Abstract Painting (studio art class), as either instructor-led or self-guided. The
first class had 20 to 30 students and without advertising sold out, so the museum had to
double the classes. Because not everyone chooses to participate actively, it was easy to
increase the class size to 45 with just one instructor. The class is essentially a digital
version of the classes that MoMA has traditionally offered in its physical spaces. Beth
Harris (personal communication, May 23, 2011), director of digital learning at the
museum, admits that, “what works face-to-face also tends to work online.” Echoing
Reed’s analogy of the Internet being MoMA’s third space, Woon (personal
communication, April 11, 2011) refers to the museum’s Online Courses as the New York
dream,
…when you dream of finding another room in your apartment that you
never had (that small space dream). In this case, the room has no floor, no
crates, no insurance issues; it has this wide sense of possibility and it has
to be an extension of what already exists and complement that in some
way.
The educational experience, she continues, is “equal but different.”
With Online Courses, the museum extends its reach globally (Spain, Australia,
Canada, Venezuela, etc.), serving homebound visitors such as disabled persons or stay-at-
home moms around the country, and connecting with all kinds of new communities. As
diverse as is the local community of New York City, the museum could only achieve
such a diverse, global classroom through the Internet, and the multiplicity of voices is
precisely what makes these courses so meaningful. One important advantage of online
communities is the freedom and anonymity with which one participates. The students
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post their profiles voluntarily, freed from the socio-cultural constraints of MoMA’s often-
imposing physical environment. The students develop a deep social connection with one
another because they share so much of their different perspectives and knowledge. Woon
calls these “passionate affinity groups” that find each other through the museum. One of
the biggest concerns for students was how to continue the relationships after the course
ended, and so Harris created a Facebook page for MoMA Courses Alumni to extend the
conversations between themselves and with museum staff, currently with 920 fans (as of
March 20, 2012). What the museum learned through these courses, declares Woon, is that
“There is a real passion for MoMA as a brand. They really want to be a part of this, they
really believe in it and they really feel strongly about it. It’s what they value about
MoMA.” Moreover, it is a great branding opportunity that furthers the museum’s mission
and generates revenue with student fees at $350 and $300 per course.
MoMA’s most recent technological endeavor was with Google Art Project
(http://www.googleartproject.com/museums/moma), released by Google on February 1,
2011 as “a unique collaboration with some of the world’s most acclaimed art museums.”
Google selected 17 international art museums to participate; four are in the United States,
three of which are in New York City (MoMA, the Frick Collection, and the Metropolitan
Museum of Art) and one in Washington, D.C. Each museum selects its own artwork to be
included; MoMA chose 17 works by van Gogh, Cézanne, Seurat, Redon, and Rousseau,
other museums chose up to 60 works. One work from each museum is shown in super-
high resolution (7 billion pixels). MoMA’s gigapixel image is van Gogh’s The Starry
Night, accompanied by a museum-produced video that features visitors’ perspectives of
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the painting. MoMA director Glenn Lowry (as cited in Zirin, 2011) praises the
collaborative aspect of the project; “You can compare and contrast different museums at
the same moment. That aspect of a community of museums, immediately accessible to a
viewer anywhere in the world is fascinating.” In addition to showcasing each museum’s
artworks, Google uses its Street View technology to show 360-degree views of the
interior galleries. An information panel on the right provides information on each artwork
(Viewing Notes, Artwork History, and Artist Information), tags, a link to the museum’s
website, the museum Floor Plan, its location in Google Map, About the Museum, and
YouTube videos. There is also a Share This Page link for e-mail and social media. With a
Google Account, visitors can “Create an Artwork Collection” to build their personalized
collections with comments on artwork that can be shared publicly.
Wendy Woon observes that early into his tenure as director of MoMA, Lowry
was on record as being very interested in digital technology. “I think it took a while for
the institution to catch up with him,” she admits, “and I think it percolated at a very
grassroots level.” Lowry expresses many of his thoughts on digital technology in a video
that is featured in Online Communities under the Explore section of the museum website.
Lowry (as cited in Zirin, 2011) states,
I think the digital revolution has been a very beneficial revolution for
museums because it allows us to expand the ways in which we can reach
and engage different audiences and at the end of the day it’s driven by
content and we’re content-rich organizations.
Lowry comments further on what he believes to be the intimately linked relationship
between the museum’s “virtual and real space.”
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You can’t really disaggregate them at this point, and if anything they’re
collapsing. Virtual space, from a museum’s perspective, can only exist as
a result of real space. The growth in our audience online is largely the
function of the growth of our audience onsite; the two are not unrelated.
Clearly the online audience has a potential of growing faster and larger
than anything we could do onsite. But we couldn’t do what we’re doing
online if we didn’t have our physical space in New York, where in fact the
works of art do exist, and where we create the kinds of programs that are
so engaging for our public. We can also create other programs online that
are similar to, but can never be the same as those programs that exist in
real space. So from my perspective, there’s a kind of healthy, symbiotic
relationship between our online presence and our presence in real space,
and I suspect that over time we’ll stop worrying about whether something
is online and real space, and recognize that it’s a continuum of experiences
that are accessible and available to people at different points in their life.
Today, Reed, Woon, and Burnette all acknowledge that museum staff members are at
various stages of comfort level and knowledge of technology. Much of the work at
MoMA is increasingly accomplished collaboratively between departments that requires
not only reconfiguring physical spaces but also reassessing training and skills sets. The
interlocking of onsite and online experiences and the repurposing of content and
experiences across media and departments is a daunting task, even for an established,
well-endowed institution such as MoMA. Collaboration is a practical solution to
achieving many of these lofty ambitions as MoMA continues adding to its online
presence, but more importantly, collaboration contributes to greater cross-departmental
understanding of how and why technology is central to museums today.
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Lessons Learned
Allegra Burnette explains how the museum’s use of online content and technology serve
to keep its current 135,000 members interested, engaged, and attached–particularly
members not in the local area–and also to gain additional members. Because of the global
nature of its local community, which is more New York City than just the borough of
Manhattan, MoMA is able to focus concurrently on its local and global communities that
are united symbiotically through its website, social media, and public programming.
Furthermore, because of MoMA’s international reputation as one of the world’s leading
museums of modern art, what happens at the physical museum is of interest to others
around the world in the arts profession, students, and also interested individuals, further
necessitating its integration of physical and virtual experiences. Wendy Woon describes
these experiences as “equal but different,” just as are the museum’s physical and virtual
visitors, and its three venues: midtown, Queens, and the website. The physical space of
the museum is linked to the online space materially through MoMA Guides, MoMA
Audio, and the “I went to MoMA and…” cards. The online space is linked to the physical
space through live streaming of events and tours, the Google Art Project, Online Courses,
and social media that offers photographs, videos, and comments to the public on physical
events. Although MoMA PS1’s Studio Visit does not reference the physical museum, it
asks artists to upload photographs of their studios’ interiors and exteriors, and provides a
Google satellite image of the studio location. Most local, physical programs at the
museum have online components for marketing and knowledge dissemination, including
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PopArt by the Teen Voices Project, PopRally, Modern Teachers Online, and Meet Me.
MoMA offers a distributed museum experience to all its visitors regardless of their
locality. Certainly, Glenn Lowry is correct to state that the success of the museum’s
online and satellite presence is based upon and depends on the strength of its midtown
museum space, representing a central node within the growing network of MoMA’s
distributed spaces and experiences.
Despite having 18 million online visitors a year, MoMA cannot ignore its local
audience that includes wealthy patrons, corporate sponsors, physical visitors, and the 48.8
million tourists each year that are drawn to the city’s physical attractions. MoMA
depends on earned income, particularly for general operating expenses. The 2010
Alliance for the Arts report shows that from 1999 to 2009, large organizations with
budgets over $10 million in New York had a triple-digit income in earnings and an
increase in corporate funding, while foundation support and government funding
decreased. In 2010, MoMA earned $22.4 million in admissions, restaurant, sales, and
fees, and received $63.4 million in contributions. Admissions constituted 19.5% of
MoMA’s total budget of $100.5 million, or $22.7 million (Stoilas & Burns, 2011).
MoMA’s adult admission price increased from $12 to $20 in 2004, and then from $20 to
$25 most recently on September 1, 2011. Smaller communities tend to have free
admission (Indianapolis), while those that attract more tourists can charge high admission
prices (New York and San Francisco).
40
Higher admission prices provide incentives for
local visitors to purchase a museum membership, which in turn solidifies a sense of
40
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a suggested admission, but raised its fee to $25 as well during the
summer of 2011.
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community and loyalty, motivating museums to be more innovative with members-only
programming. For a museum that relies on earned income and that has experienced a
reduced endowment like most museums, MoMA’s website is a motivating factor to
identify new means of revenue generation from the millions of online visitors that it
attracts. This is a challenge that the museum continues to successfully master through its
new app MoMA Books, its Online Courses, and most markedly, MoMAStore.org.
The museum serves its local community admirably with its Access Programs and
other public programming for teens, young adults, educators, artists, and special affinity
groups such as film, contemporary art, etc. It justifies the recent admission increase by
the number of free days and times offered to the public and a reduced price for tickets
ordered online. But the museum serves its online community just as admirably; in fact,
MoMA.org has free admission for all visitors and is open 24 hours a day, seven days a
week. The objects and experiences available online cannot be compared to MoMA’s
physical venues; they are “equal but different.” Glenn Lowry reminds us that museums
are content-rich organizations, a factor which has served as an asset for MoMA from its
early days of collaborating with television studios to the present-day with the Internet
(Google Art Project, MoMA Audio, etc.). MoMA’s exhibitions and programs are
indisputably of a high scholarly nature, contributing to its esteemed position as a leading
authority on modern and contemporary art, which ironically explains its mass
consumptive appeal on a physical and online level, as well as a local and global level.
The museum is not largely interested in this mass audience to generate content, as with
crowdsourced exhibitions, social tagging, or blog comments and posts that other
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museums employ, nevertheless, the museum looks to these masses to enlarge its
community, to enrich it, and to fulfill its mission by “helping you understand and enjoy
the art of our time.”
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Chapter Eight: The Brooklyn Museum
Figure 53: The Brooklyn Museum, 2011
Place + Localized Culture
Brooklyn was first settled by the Dutch in the 1620s, representing the Dutch West India
Company. Many believe that its name comes from the Dutch word Breuckelen, meaning
broken land or marshland. The area had previously been home to the Nyack and Canarsie
Native American Indian tribes that lived off the land by fishing and farming. From the
1630s until the early 1660s, what is now the borough of Brooklyn consisted of six towns;
five settled by the Dutch (Breuckelen, Nieuw Amersfort, Midwout, Nieuw Utretcht, and
Boswyck) and one by the British (Gravesend). Breukelen included today’s Brooklyn
Heights and DUMBO neighborhoods, Nieuw Amersfort is present-day Flatlands,
Midwout is Flatbush, and Boswyck is Bushwick. Coney Island was originally called
Conyne Eylandt, meaning Rabbit Island in Dutch, and Roode Hoek was the Dutch name
for today’s Red Hook neighborhood. The British seized power of the largely agricultural
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region from the Dutch in 1664, consolidating it with Manhattan to create the British
colony of New York, and in 1683, Brooklyn’s original six colonies were established as
Kings County. The borough of Brooklyn is still considered Kings County today.
Brooklyn was the scene of many important battles during the American
Revolution (1775–1783), including the first major confrontation led by George
Washington, the Battle of Brooklyn (or the Battle of Long Island). Unfortunately, the
Americans lost that first battle and the British occupied New York and Brooklyn for the
remainder of the war. In the 1800s, Brooklyn emerged as an alternative residential area to
Manhattan, offering abundant land and waterfront. The Brooklyn Navy Yard opened in
1801 on the East River, and Robert Fulton began steam ship service between Brooklyn
and Manhattan in 1814. Before that time, Brooklyn farmers crossed the river to sell their
goods in Manhattan by horse-powered ferries, sailboats, and rowboats that would take an
hour and a half to cross. Brooklyn incorporated itself as a city in 1834, and subsequently
established its City Hall in 1846 (what is today’s Brooklyn Borough Hall). By 1860,
Brooklyn had become the third largest city in America (after New York City and
Philadelphia) with a population of almost 267,000, an important international industrial
center, and a port (U.S. Census, 1998). Merchants began buying land along the
waterfront, and wealthy businessmen moved to suburban Brooklyn Heights for an easy
commute into Manhattan. To facilitate rising transportation demands, the two cities
decided to build a bridge, and the Brooklyn Bridge was completed in 1883. The new
bridge not only brought more workers from Brooklyn into New York City (almost half of
Brooklyn’s working class), it also brought immigrants from New York City into
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Brooklyn looking for affordable housing. By 1860, 39% of Kings County residents were
foreign born, compared to 47% of New York City (U.S. Census, 1999).
Figure 54: Brooklyn Borough Hall, 2011
The city of Brooklyn continued to grow economically and culturally in the late
nineteenth century. Brooklyn’s largest industry at the time was sugar refining that
produced most of the sugar consumed in the United States. Factories produced
manufactured goods, and there were dockyards, gas refineries, ironworks,
slaughterhouses, book publishers, and sweatshops that all employed thousands of
workers. The renowned Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) opened in 1859 as the
country’s first performing arts center, the Brooklyn Historical Society opened in 1863 in
Brooklyn Heights, and the 585-acre Prospect Park opened in 1867, designed by famous
landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux who also designed
Manhattan’s Central Park just a few years earlier. Churches were built in the Gothic
Revival and Romanesque Revival styles, banks and private clubs in the high Renaissance
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and Greek Revival styles, and brownstone mansions populated new residential areas like
Park Slope and Crown Heights. Schools were created to serve the growing population of
both workers and wealthy. The Polytechnic Institute was founded in 1854 as an
engineering school, now part of New York University, the art school Pratt Institute was
founded in 1887, and Saint Francis College was founded by a group of Franciscan
Brothers in 1884. Transportation increased within Brooklyn itself with the addition of
street grids and electric trolleys in 1890. Yet there was still an ever-increasing need to
connect with Manhattan, and so the Williamsburg Bridge was built in 1903, the first
subway line was built under the East River in 1908, and the Manhattan Bridge was built
in 1909. Nonetheless, in 1898 the city of Brooklyn agreed to become consolidated with
New York City.
Figure 55: Park Slope, 2011 Figure 56: Brooklyn Historical Society, Brooklyn Heights
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Today Brooklyn is the largest borough of New York City, with 71 square miles
and 199 miles of waterfront. Kings County is the seventh largest county in the United
States, the first largest being Los Angeles County. The 2010 census counted 2,504,700
residents in Kings County (New York City has a total of 8,175,133), surpassing the other
three cities studied. All the same, New York City plans on challenging the census count
because it marked a decline from 2009 of 62,398. It previously challenged the 2007
census count for Kings County, which resulted in the estimated population increasing by
11,156 residents. Brooklynites are proud of saying that if Brooklyn were still
independent, it would be the fourth largest city in the United States.
Figure 57: Brooklyn Borough Hall, 2011
Brooklyn has the largest population of African Americans of all five regions
studied at 34.3%, which is its largest minority group. The rest of the population is 42.8%
white non-Latino (the lowest of all five regions), 19.8% Hispanic/Latino, 10.5% Asian,
and 0.5% Native American (U.S. Census, 2010). The ethnic diversity of Brooklyn
surpasses that of Manhattan: it has the nation’s largest population of Caribbean-
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Americans, Pakistanis, Turkish, Polish, Russians, as well as Orthodox, Hasidic, and
Sephardic Jews, the second largest Greek population, and the third largest number of
Chinese Americans. Bensonhurst was long known as Brooklyn’s Little Italy, but has
become home to a growing population of Chinese. Brooklyn also has one of the fastest
growing populations of Latinos and Muslims in the nation. Today, 36.6% of the borough
residents are foreign born, and 45.4% speak a language other than English at home (U.S.
Census, 2010).
By 1930, more than 60% of blacks in Brooklyn were born outside the borough.
That number increased when the A train was extended from Harlem to Brooklyn in 1936,
bringing thousands of African Americans, Caribbean and West African immigrants in
search of affordable housing from an overpopulated Harlem. Blacks first came to
Brooklyn just as they did to Manhattan, as slaves brought by European colonists to serve
as workers, farmers, and domestic servants in the New World. Many slaves landed on
Long Island (Brooklyn) in order for their owners to avoid paying tariff duties to the
authorities in New York harbor. Starting in the early 1800s, Brooklyn was a strong
supporter of the abolitionist movement. Bedford was one of the nation’s first free black
communities, and the Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims in Brooklyn Heights was one the
most important antislavery centers. In 1838, free black slave James Weeks purchased
land from another free black in Crown Heights, creating the community of Weeksville as
a safe haven for free blacks in the North and fugitive slaves from the South. Many
Brooklyn churches (Baptist, Presbyterian, Quaker, Methodist, Episcopal) and private
homes were stops along the Underground Railroad to protect fugitive slaves.
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Several Brooklyn neighborhoods that were historically white, Jewish, and middle-
class, became populated with blacks during the mid-twentieth century, creating major
demographic shifts in the region that led to interracial tensions and clashes starting in the
1960s and lasting until the 1990s. The most prominent example is the Crown Heights
Riot in 1991 that consisted of three days of rioting in August between Hasidic Jews and
blacks, including African Americans, Jamaicans, Guyanese, and West Indians. The
neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant witnessed gang wars in the 1960s, race riots, and
clashes with police, as did Brownsville that has the most public housing developments in
New York City as well as some tenement housing and many abandoned buildings.
During the famous New York City blackout of 1977, many of the poorer Brooklyn
neighborhoods such as Crown Heights and Bushwick experienced rioting, looting, arson,
and clashes with police, followed by the crack epidemic of the 1980s. Today crime has
decreased tremendously in most of these neighborhoods, leading to gentrification and
increased housing prices. Brooklyn’s poverty rate is 19.4% (families are 18.6% and
individuals are 21.8%), higher than the national average of 13.2% but just under
Indianapolis at 20.1% (U.S. Census, 2010). Brooklyn is also above the national average
for all indexes (Human Development Index, Life Expectancy at Birth, At Least Bachelors
Degree, School Enrollment, Median Personal Earnings, Health Index, Education Index,
Income Index), but certainly not the highest of all five regions studied.
41
41
Data taken from Mapping the Measure of America 2010–2011, which measures by congressional district.
The Brooklyn Museum is located in Congressional District 11 that includes central Brooklyn areas
surrounding Prospect Park (Park Slope, Prospect Park South, and Crown Heights) and Downtown
Brooklyn.
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A major factor contributing to the gentrification of Brooklyn is the recent influx
of artists that are generating new, vibrant communities. While Manhattan served as the
global destination for artists in the twentieth century (Greenwich Village and SoHo),
Brooklyn has taken over in the twenty-first century. Ella Weiss, President of the
Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC), declares that Brooklyn has become the “cultural capital”
of New York City. Artists are drawn to its affordable housing and large studio spaces that
are no longer an option in Manhattan, creating artistic communities all over Brooklyn
such as Williamsburg, Red Hook, and DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge
Overpass). These arts districts began in the 1990s and now include commercial galleries,
alternative art spaces, expensive condos, trendy cafés, restaurants, and shops, connected
to Manhattan by only a few subway stops. The BAC maintains an Artist Registry that
maps the location of registered Brooklyn artists. A comparison of the registry maps from
2007 and 2011 reveals that artists are moving into new, outlying areas of the borough on
the southern waterfront and other central neighborhoods. Artists themselves are being
priced out of the now-gentrified artistic neighborhoods and are exploring previously
blighted areas that have become much safer, albeit often located farther away from
Manhattan. Brooklyn-based arts writer Carolina Miranda (2012) describes in ArtNews
magazine the emerging arts scene in Bushwick, a working-class district next to
Williamsburg with ample abandoned warehouses for studios and galleries.
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Figure 58: Red Hook, 2011 Figure 59: DUMBO, 2011
In response to what the BAC refers to as “an extraordinary upsurge in locally-
based artistic activity” at the turn of the millennium, it created a Directory of Brooklyn
Arts Organizations in 2001, both in print and online, to serve the almost 800 arts
organizations in the borough. The BAC’s website (www.brooklynartscouncil.org) offers
an Artist Registry, Directory of Organizations, and BAC forum that it describes as “an
online environment…to network, dialogue, share opportunities and work samples and
discuss arts-related issues.” The BAC has operated since 1966, but only recently moved
into its new space in an arts building in DUMBO. In 1980, it began to distribute grants on
behalf of the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of
Cultural Affairs, now called the Regrant program.
BRIC Arts | Media | Bklyn is a nonprofit organization that also supports Brooklyn
artists since its inception in 1979. It has presented an online registry of contemporary
artists from Brooklyn since 1983 on its website (http://registry.bricartsmedia.org/), and
BRIC Community Media is the main source of television coverage about Brooklyn with
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its community-produced Brooklyn Free Speech TV and Brooklyn Independent
Television. Also supporting the nonprofit community is the Brooklyn Community
Foundation located in DUMBO. It began operating in 2009 and is funded largely by the
Independence Community Bank that has been based in Brooklyn since 1850. Another
important component of the Brooklyn arts scene is the Brooklyn Society of Artists,
founded in 1917 to support artists living or working in Brooklyn. The Society was later
expanded to include artists living outside of Brooklyn, and in 1963 changed its name to
the American Society of Contemporary Artists as the organization expanded nationally.
Early on, the Society held regular exhibitions at the Pratt Institute, the Brooklyn
Academy of Music, and the Brooklyn Museum. The Heart of Brooklyn (HOB) is a key
partnership that encompasses six major Brooklyn cultural institutions located in
proximity: Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Brooklyn Museum,
Brooklyn Public Library, Prospect Park, and Prospect Park Zoo. Operating as an
independent organization since 2001, HOB promotes cultural tourism to the central
Brooklyn neighborhoods surrounding Prospect Park through collaboration with Brooklyn
Tourism & Visitor’s Center, NYC & Co. (the official tourism agency for New York
City), and community groups. HOB encourages cross-programming between its six
member organizations, and promotes these programs on its website
(http://www.heartofbrooklyn.org/).
The Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce supports the arts community with its
successful project Brooklyn Designs, an annual juried show for local designers that
attracts buyers around the world since 2008. The Chamber also promotes Brooklyn as an
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emerging artisanal food center with its promotional campaign Brooklyn Eats
(http://www.brooklyneatsonline.com/) that started in 1997, and the related campaign Buy
Brooklyn. Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz started the project Shop
Brooklyn (http://www.ishopbrooklyn.com/) to promote local independent stores.
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The
borough’s annual Brooklyn Book Festival has risen to international prominence, as have
the Brooklyn International Film Festival and the Williamsburg International Film
Festival. The annual smART Brooklyn Gallery Hop is another initiative of the Office of
the Brooklyn Borough President and Brooklyn Tourism that started in 2008. The Hop
provides free buses to gallery districts around the borough, staffed with expert docents
offering tips on collecting and buying art. Markowitz calls Brooklyn the “creative
capital” of New York City and humbly describes his borough in a 2011 Strategic Policy
Statement:
From music to food to film; from architecture to artisanal design; from
immigration to innovation; from start-ups to sustainability to star power,
the world is looking to Brooklyn–which has truly become the big stage.
The days of calling Manhattan “the City” may be over. More and more we
hear that visitors, tourists and young people looking to “make it” are not
even setting foot in Manhattan! They’re coming straight to Brooklyn. To
them, Brooklyn is New York City!
Despite Markowitz’ obvious bias towards Brooklyn, this is a sentiment increasingly
shared by others. Condé Nast Traveler magazine (Payne, 2011) lists Brooklyn as one of
the fifteen best places anywhere in the world to see right now;
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In his 2011 Strategic Policy Statement (Office of the Brooklyn Borough President), Markowitz states that
90% of Brooklyn businesses employ 20 people or less.
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Brooklyn’s tide has been rising for the better part of a decade as hipsters,
chefs, writers, and artists have fled Manhattan in search of more
affordable…everything. As these stylish immigrants have filled the
borough’s old neighborhoods, they’ve transformed lowly bodegas into
Michelin-starred restaurants, dive bars into wineries, abandoned
warehouses into playhouses, and a gothic bank building into a massive
flea market.
Also in 2011, GQ magazine named Brooklyn “the coolest city on the planet” and
continues; “Don’t take that as a knock on Manhattan, which is doing just fine. But for the
first time since, well, ever, you can spend every New York minute of your trip on the far
side of the East River and never feel like you’re missing out.” The aging population of
Brooklyn is decreasing and is being replaced by a younger generation more attracted to
the hipness of the region. The 2010 Census reports that the largest group of Brooklyn
residents (23.7%) is under 18, and the second largest group (20%) is between the ages of
35 and 49, while only 11.5% are 65 years and older.
In 2010, the Office of the Borough President reported that Brooklyn received 15
million tourists from 58 countries and 48 states. Brooklyn Tourism & Visitors Center
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targets national and international tourists that primarily come to New York City,
marketing Brooklyn as a day trip from Manhattan, but acknowledges the sporadic
international visitor that might have inside knowledge on the borough’s cultural
attractions. On the other hand, the tourism that HOB and local organizations target is
mostly local. They admit that even Brooklynites have a hard time crossing neighborhoods
to explore their own community, as many are accustomed to traveling into Manhattan for
leisure activities. Brooklyn is a community that supports its own residents, cultural
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The Brooklyn Tourism & Visitors Center is located inside the Brooklyn Borough Hall and operates
cooperatively with NYC & Co., but with its own website (http://www.visitbrooklyn.org/).
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institutions, and history, but all the same, the lure of Manhattan remains strong and
Brooklyn remains just one of the five boroughs of New York City.
The Museum and its Community
Mission Statement:
The mission of the Brooklyn Museum is to act as a bridge between the
rich artistic heritage of world cultures, as embodied in its collections, and
the unique experience of each visitor. Dedicated to the primacy of the
visitor experience, committed to excellence in every aspect of its
collections and programs, and drawing on both new and traditional tools
of communication, interpretation, and presentation, the Museum aims to
serve its diverse public as a dynamic, innovative, and welcoming center
for learning through the visual arts. (emphasis mine)
The Brooklyn Museum was founded in 1823 as the Brooklyn Apprentices’ Library in
Brooklyn Heights. After the Library moved into the Brooklyn Lyceum’s building in
1841, the institutions merged two years later to form the Brooklyn Institute. The Institute
offered evening classes to accommodate workers, including various drawing classes
(mechanical, architectural, landscape, and figure), exhibitions, and lectures. In 1890,
civic leaders reorganized the Institute as the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences that
was intended to compete with the collections of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of
Art (the Met) and the American Museum of Natural History. The Institutes’ Beaux Arts
building opened to the public in 1897, built by the architectural firm McKim, Mead, and
White. Its grand staircase, completed in 1905, was originally twice the height of the
Met’s famous steps. The initial design was intended to be four times as large as today’s
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version, a compromise with New York City government that owned the land. In 1899, the
Institute established the first children’s museum in the world (The Brooklyn Children’s
Museum), and later expanded to include the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Brooklyn
Botanic Garden, and a separate Department of Education. The Museum was one of the
Institute’s many subdivisions and grew over the years to include its own department of
fine arts, natural sciences, and ethnology. In the 1930s, the Museum decided to focus
only on fine art and cultural history, and so its natural history items were disbursed to
other institutions. All of the Institute’s subdivisions became independent in the 1970s,
although the Brooklyn Museum today is legally called the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and
Sciences, Doing Business As (DBA) Brooklyn Museum. The Brooklyn Museum belongs
to the Cultural Institutions Group of New York City, one of 33 institutional members that
are each located on City-owned property and receive significant financial and operating
support from the City.
Augustus Graham (1776–1851) is considered the founder of the Brooklyn
Museum. He and his “brother” (a euphemism for a probable homosexual relationship)
John Bell started a brewery in upstate New York, among other businesses, which they
later moved to Brooklyn in 1815. In 1822, Graham and Bell closed their brewery
business and began a life of local philanthropy. Graham founded the Brooklyn
Apprentices’ Library to provide an alternative for young male workers from drinking and
gambling by offering books to read, lectures, and entertainment. In his will, Graham left
the Library $27,000 to establish a school of design and a gallery of fine arts. The design
school that Graham envisioned first took the form of classes organized by the
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departments of fine arts and pedagogy at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences,
often in collaboration with local arts organizations such as the Brooklyn Art Association
(founded in 1861). Later, classes were organized under the Institute’s Department of
Education which then became the Brooklyn Museum Art School. However, while the
Brooklyn Museum’s education division primarily served children, the Art School served
amateur artists. Notable artists that taught or studied at the Art School include William
Baziotes, Max Beckmann, Ben Shahn, and Donald Judd. In 1985, the Art School was
transferred to Pratt Institute’s Continuing Education Division.
While the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has been in competition with
MoMA since its beginnings, despite being on opposite coasts of the country, the
Brooklyn Museum has long been in competition with the Metropolitan Museum of Art;
two encyclopedic art museums founded in the late 1880s, located in the same city just a
few subway stops away. The founders of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences
wanted to build a collection–as well as an exterior stairwell–that would rival the Met’s
that opened fifteen years prior. Today, the Brooklyn Museum is the second largest art
museum in New York City after the Met, with more than million-and-a half objects. The
Brooklyn Museum’s African collection, however, is the largest of any American art
museum today with over five thousand objects, and in 1923 it organized one of the first
exhibitions of African art in the United States. Philippe de Montebello (as cited in
Pogrebin, 2010, August 5), former director of the Met, comments on the Brooklyn
Museum:
The problem with Brooklyn is that it’s competing with the Guggenheim,
the Whitney, the Met, MoMA, all the galleries, El Museo del Barrio–you
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name it. I don’t know of any museum so marginalized by its locality and
demographic change. The Detroit Institute of Arts and the Cleveland
Museum of Art are struggling. But at least those institutions are the one
thing in town, so you can still promote them as, “Come and see great
works of art.”
Yet despite the fact that the Brooklyn Museum and the Met are both located in New York
City, they each have highly distinctive neighborhoods and institutional priorities.
Manhattan has a proportionally higher number of tourist attractions and museums, and
Brooklyn still has a reputation for crime and unrest. Like the Met, the Brooklyn Museum
has a world-class collection of art (African, Egyptian, American) and international
connections with regards to institutional partners and scholars, yet unlike the Met and
other Manhattan art museums, the Brooklyn Museum considers the borough of Brooklyn
to be its community, first and foremost. The volunteer Brooklyn Museum Community
Committee has worked to raise awareness of the museum in the community through
various programs since 1948.
Just as the early history of the Brooklyn Museum was well integrated into the
community of Brooklyn, so is the modern history of the museum, largely due to the
efforts of Dr. Arnold L. Lehman, the museum’s current director since 1997 and a highly
controversial figure that inspires either loyalty and praise or fierce criticism. Just one year
into his tenure, Lehman inaugurated First Saturdays at the museum that initiated Target’s
corporate sponsorship of the now nation-wide museum program. Target First Saturdays
offer free general admission on the first Saturday of each month (from 5pm to 11pm),
extended evening hours, free family events, gallery tours, live performances, films, a cash
bar, and more activities. Visitors to Target First Saturdays comprise a quarter of the total
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museum visitors, and on July 3, 2010, there were a record 24,000 visitors. On these
Saturdays, the Heart of Brooklyn operates HOB Connection, a free shuttle that runs
circuitously between the Brooklyn Museum and places to eat, drink, and shop in the
surrounding neighborhoods.
The museum also maintains a strong educational program with New York City
schools, providing teachers with resources (online and print), teacher training workshops,
monthly meetings at the museum, a five-day academic Teacher Institute, and an
Education Gallery at the museum. In 2000, the museum started the Museum Apprentice
Program, hiring teenagers in local high schools to give tours in the museum galleries
during the summer, assist with weekend family programs, help plan teen events, and
serve as a teen advisory board to the museum with a Teen Night Planning Committee.
The museum is dedicated to serving teens, offering a Teen Guide to Art in the museum’s
collections, opportunities for internships and work-study programs, art classes, online
activities (Ancient Egypt, and Basquiat: Street to Studio), and links to social media on its
website (MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, and Brooklyn Museum Teens on Facebook that has
725 fans as of February 28, 2012).
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Figure 60: Lobby of the Brooklyn Museum, 2011
In 1999, Lehman was responsible for creating the current mission statement for
the museum that places a priority on visitor experience and recognition of the museum’s
diverse public. To better serve this diverse public of Brooklyn, which demographics show
is younger, multi-ethnic, and largely African American, Lehman embarked on an equally
diverse exhibition program for the museum that critics deride as overly populist. And he
began with a bang. Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection (October
2, 1999–January 9, 2000) was first organized by the Royal Academy of London and
traveled to the Hamburger Bahnhoff in Berlin, attracting hundreds of thousands of
visitors before its only North American stop at the Brooklyn Museum, where the museum
claims attendance increased 55%. Popular criticism of Sensation centered on the work,
The Holy Virgin Mary (1996), in which artist Chris Ofili covered the Virgin Mary with
elephant dung, but it also extended to works by artist Damien Hirst, and even purportedly
self-interested sponsors of the exhibition that included Christie’s auction house and
Charles Saatchi, owner of the collection. The controversies escalated into a court battle
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between New York City Mayor Giuliani and Arnold Lehman. The Mayor, backed by
many senior city officials and religious organizations, threatened to cut off all funding to
the museum (its monthly payments totaled $497,554), to replace its Board of Trustees,
cancel its lease, and assume possession of the museum building, unless the museum
cancelled the exhibition and removed The Holy Virgin Mary immediately, stating that
taxpayer dollars should “not be used to support the desecration of important national or
religious symbols, of any religion.” In response, Lehman did not back down but rather
defended the museum’s first and fourteenth constitutional amendments that guarantee
free speech and equal protection under the law. On September 28, 1999, the museum
sued the City of New York and Rudolph W. Giuliani, individually and in his official
capacity as mayor, in the U. S. District Court, Eastern District of New York (99 CV
6071). Two days later, the city retaliated with a court order to evict the museum from its
city-owned land and building. After this controversy quickly became an international
scandal in the arts world and public media, the courts ruled against the mayor who agreed
to settle with the Brooklyn Museum. Not only did the City of New York reinstate funding
to the museum, but committed to provide $5.8 million in additional funding from
executive budgets for physical improvements to the museum. Nevertheless, in spite of
this great victory over public censorship of the arts, the ramifications lingered in the art
world, as explained by James Cuno (2004), former president and director of the Art
Institute of Chicago and current president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, in the
introduction to his book Whose Muse? Art Museums and the Public Trust:
Charges of blasphemy, pornography, and financial corruption were made
against the Brooklyn Museum and for months stuck to the public image of
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museums as such. Museums appeared elitist, both in the sense that they
decided what was and what was not art, even at the expense of the feelings
of the public, and because they partied and even perhaps partnered with
the rich and famous. (p. 14)
Following Sensation, the Brooklyn Museum presented two highly popular exhibitions, in
terms of an increased audience and pop culture content, which also elicited criticism of
the museum and its director as pandering to the masses instead of lifting them up to the
level of the museum. The first was Hip-Hop Nation: Roots, Rhymes, and Rage
(September 22, 2000–December 31, 2000), organized by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio. The exhibition included clothing, video, interactive D.J.
stations, and artifacts of many Brooklyn-born hip-hop artists. The exhibition Star Wars:
The Magic of Myth (April 5, 2002–July 7, 2002) was organized by the Smithsonian
Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and debuted at the National Air and Space
Museum in Washington, D.C., where it attracted over one million visitors and was one of
the most visited Smithsonian exhibitions of all time. Another popular exhibition was
Andy Warhol: The Last Decade (June 18–September 12, 2010), organized by the
Milwaukee Art Museum and critiqued as “flawed,” “spread thin,” and “imperfect” by
Roberta Smith (2010) in The New York Times. The Brooklyn Museum organized Who
Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present (October 30, 2009–
January 31, 2010), which did not receive negative reviews but rather charges of
“dumbing down” the museum.
Also controversial was the museum’s involvement with the 2010 Bravo reality
show on cable television, Work of Art: The Next Great Artist. On the television show,
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contemporary artists from across the United States compete for a cash prize of $100,000
and an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. Judges included a New York magazine art
critic, gallery owners, and an art collector; art auctioneer Simon de Pury was a mentor to
contestants, and Brooklyn Museum’s curator of contemporary art, Eugenie Tsai advised
in the final selection. The winner was Abdi Farah, whose exhibition at the museum was
titled Luminous Bodies (August 14–October 17, 2010). The New York Times critic Karen
Rosenberg (2010) denounced Bravo’s marginalization of curators that were brought in at
the last minute, and its elevation of an auction house. Criticizing the Brooklyn Museum,
she writes, “The museum’s affiliation with Bravo’s ‘Work of Art’ is most worrying as a
symptom of something bigger: a dampening of curatorial vision under the institution’s
director, Arnold Lehman.” The Village Voice (Baker, 2010) had a similar rebuke for
Lehman, “You can’t blame a 22-year-old for lunging at the brass ring and, God bless
him, snagging it. You’ve got to wonder, however, about the museum directors who
allowed TV sharpies to foist this thoroughly mediocre exercise upon their venerable
institution.” Dr. Lehman (2010) once again fought back against his critics in a letter to
The New York Times:
The Museum’s current program is based upon both a very long and
prominent history at the Museum of populist programming to engage
every wave of immigration to Brooklyn from the beginning of the 20th
century to the present–a truly amazing century-long commitment to new
and underserved audiences… The commitment to best engage our
Brooklyn community–2.7 million strong–and the commitment to using our
collection have worked together to create the most diverse and youngest
audience of any general fine arts museum in the country. Our interest is in
who is coming to the Brooklyn Museum–and embracing them–not in their
numbers. We are looking ahead in this century, not backward to the early
20th… The Brooklyn Museum seizes upon our location as a great asset in
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ensuring that we remain relevant in the 21st century, which is perhaps the
greatest challenge to almost every cultural institution anywhere.
The Brooklyn Museum partnered with the program’s second season that began on
October 12, 2011, again hosting the winning artist Kymia Nawabi with a museum
exhibition that demonstrated its independent and strong-willed spirit.
Part of the problem that the museum faces with these popular exhibitions is a
concurrent decrease in overall visitor attendance (23% in 2009). Lehman defends these
numbers by arguing that attendance fluctuates; rising with exhibitions that are more
popular such as Murakami (April 5–July 13, 2008), then decreasing when the museum
presents less popular and more scholarly exhibitions. For example, in 1998, the museum
had 585,000 visitors, in 2006 it had 300,075 visitors, and in 2009 it had 340,000
visitors.
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This issue was brought to public attention in an article in The New York Times
entitled “Brooklyn Museum’s Populism Hasn’t Lured Crowds” (Pogrebin, 2010, June
14). There were 72 comments on the museum’s website (and many more on Twitter) that
revealed a great divide between fans and critics, as much with the public as with the arts
community that both responded. The cultural journalist Lee Rosenbaum (2010) posted
two separate interviews of Lehman on her blog CultureGrrl, one with a video calling
Lehman “Brooklyn-tough” for facing such continuing public challenges. Museum
blogger Museum Nerd (2010) also defended the museum by demonstrating how a
reduction in staff in 2009 might be responsible for decreasing visitor attendance, and
stating that the museum appears to be succeeding in attracting the types of visitors that
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The Brooklyn Museum does not give out visitor statistics, unlike the other four museums studied, so
these numbers were taken from Judith Dobrzynski’s article (2011, April 5) in The Wall Street Journal.
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best reflect Brooklyn’s demographics. Pogrebin (2010, June 14) even quotes New York
City Commissioner of Cultural Affairs Kate D. Levin as stating that, “Arnold doesn’t get
enough credit for being a real pioneer in audience development.” Pogrebin refers to a
2008 museum report that reveals the average age of the museum’s visitors as 35,
compared to 58 when Lehman first arrived in 1997, now more reflective of Brooklyn’s
current demographics. The report also shows that about half of the museum’s visitors
came for the first time, 40% are from Brooklyn, and over 40% identified themselves as
“people of color.”
In addition to new public programming and popular exhibitions, the museum has
embraced its Brooklyn community by supporting the new generation of artists that
contribute to its younger, more diverse population, and hip reputation. Vera L. Zolberg
(1992) discusses the Brooklyn Museum as a case study for how museums work with
artistic communities. As early as 1968, the museum had a Community Gallery for
younger, emerging artists, organized not by museum curators but by a separate advisory
committee from various Brooklyn neighborhoods. In 1985, the museum launched a new
series of exhibitions with contemporary Brooklyn artists called Working in Brooklyn, in
which the museum promoted the artists with public, social events. This program was
revisited in 2004 for the museum’s exhibition Open House: Working in Brooklyn (April
17–August 15, 2004) to celebrate the opening of its new entrance pavilion. The
exhibition included works created since 2000 by 200 Brooklyn-based artists, including
emerging, mid-career, and long-established artists such as Vito Acconci, Louise
Bourgeois, Rico Gatson, Martha Rosler, and Danny Simmons. After the museum’s Great
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Hall was redesigned in 2011 to accommodate more large-scale artworks, the Brooklyn-
based Situ Studio inaugurated the space with its installation, reOrder: An Architectural
Environment by Situ Studio (March 4, 2011–January 15, 2012). Most recently in
September 2011, the museum initiated Raw/Cooked, a year-long series of five
exhibitions by emerging Brooklyn artists for ten-week periods each, marking the first
major museum exhibition for these artists. In 2011, the museum’s annual Brooklyn Ball
was renamed the Brooklyn Artists Ball in order to highlight the museum’s partnership
with local artists. The museum’s website promoted the event; “Join us as we celebrate the
art, creativity, and influence of Brooklyn artists and the Museum’s role as a cultural
gateway.” At the Ball, the museum honored well-known Brooklyn-based artists Fred
Tomaselli, Lorna Simpson, and Fred Wilson, it featured an animated video environment
in the Great Hall by Brooklyn-based video artist and designer Sean Capone, and table
decorations were designed by Brooklyn-based artists. Nonetheless, Ellen Salpeter
(personal communication, April 15, 2011), director of Heart of Brooklyn, acknowledges
that Brooklyn artists remain dissatisfied with the museum. She states that,
The museum really is a great community partner, but Brooklyn artists
always ask, Why isn’t the Brooklyn Museum showing our work? It isn’t a
community gallery. Can you imagine people asking that of MoMA? But
there’s an expectation because they’ve done such a good job at being the
community museum. Hey, I’m a Sunday painter and I should have my
landscapes in your lobby.
In its continuing efforts to make the museum more accessible, the Brooklyn Museum
made major improvements and renovations to existing buildings starting in 1991,
designed by Arata Isozaki & Associates and James Stewart Polshek and Partners. The
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first addition was the 460-seat Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium, replacing the
museum’s original theater that was converted into the lobby more than fifty years earlier.
The museum then renovated 3,000 square feet of gallery space spanning three floors in
the museum’s Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing, although they temporarily closed the
fourth floor in 2009 due to staff reductions. But the most visible changes did not occur
until 2004, with the addition of a new 15,000 square foot shingled-glass entrance pavilion
facing the Eastern Parkway, echoing the original staircase that was removed in 1939 for
structural reasons. The 9,000 square foot lobby was also renovated, and now includes a
full-service Visitor Center with digital signage. Along with these physical changes, the
museum embarked on a strategic branding campaign with a new minimalist logo and a
name change (from Brooklyn Museum of Art back to Brooklyn Museum), what Lehman
says “better reflected the visitor-centered goals of the Museum.” The new entrance
pavilion, however, received a great amount of criticism, mostly surrounding the
contemporary design set against the original Beaux Arts buildings, but surprisingly, the
media was more favorable than the public. Herbert Muschamp (2004), architecture critic
for The New York Times, wrote that the pavilion “has got a precise if not wildly
imaginative grip on its place in urban history” and that the new interior “is potentially the
best new public space New York has seen in years. In effect a winter garden, or
orangerie, this is crystal palace architecture.” The new pavilion provides transparency
with its floor-to-ceiling glass panels, as well as flexible space for public programming
and school groups. Ellen Salpeter (personal communication, April 15, 2011) describes
how the Brooklyn Museum uses its new spaces to embrace the community.
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The renovation was all about opening up the museum. No one ever hung
out in front of the museum. Now there are benches, a dog run, free wifi,
and in the summer you’ll have 100 neighborhood people sitting in front of
the museum. It’s been about being a place for the community, without
ceding scholarship or connoisseurship.
The street-level entrance was critical to welcoming the community in contrast to great
museum staircases that imply transcendence and superiority. Even when the museum’s
original staircase was dismantled, it was replaced by dark, leaded doors that were
uninviting. “It’s not a museum on the hill,” reiterated Salpeter, but more like what
Lehman describes as, “your favorite park.”
Figure 61: Entrance Pavilion, Brooklyn Museum, 2011
Like the Met, the Brooklyn Museum has a suggested admission fee, but at a much
lower amount. While the Met charges $25 for adults, $17 for seniors and $12 for
students, the Brooklyn Museum charges $12 for adults, and $8 for seniors and students.
The museum receives a substantial amount of contributions and grants ($35,657,735 in
2009), considerably higher than the Walker, IMA, and SFMOMA, and also in 2009 it
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made $3,483,794 in earned income (exhibition fees, admissions, space rentals, programs,
parking lot). While the museum’s endowment is the smallest of all five museums at
$75,453,774 in 2009, Pogrebin (2010, June 14) reports that its endowment is back up to
$85 million, as the museum regains losses that it suffered in the stock market. The
museum is also supported by its 8,000 members, 250 1stfans (socially networked fans of
Target First Saturdays), and only two collections support groups, the Asian and Feminist
Art Councils. Although Lehman defends his low attendance numbers, he admits to being
disappointed. “It’s the one thing that frustrates me more than almost anything else,” he
says. “I’ve always felt, Where are all the people who should be here” (as cited in
Pogrebin, 2010, June 14)? The Brooklyn Museum’s diverse exhibition program, its
public programming, and its renovated spaces must be understood by its visitor-centric
mission and not compared to Manhattan-based museum models. The Brooklyn
Museum’s community is principally Brooklyn, but its vision certainly reaches outside of
Brooklyn to attract visitors from the greater New York area, tourists, and to participate
fully in the global art world. Digital technology provides the museum with innovative
solutions that address its small advertising and marketing budget, and its unique visitor
demographic.
The Role of Digital Technology
In alignment with the museum’s mission, technology has a community-oriented approach
that targets both its physical and virtual communities. The museum does not distinguish
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between these two communities; nevertheless, the differences are prominent as it
acknowledges that most of its visitors do not carry smartphones, iPads, or MP3 players
(iPods). The permanent collection galleries are more traditional like SFMOMA and IMA,
with older, interactive screens inside the Egyptian galleries, and electronic comment
screens outside other galleries. Shelley Bernstein (personal communication, April 14,
2011), the museum’s chief of technology, states that technology should always be in the
background at the museum. “When it becomes the focus,” she continues, “we have
failed.” The sign below the E-comment screen gives visitors the option of typing their
comments on that screen or commenting on the museum’s Twitter account
(@brooklynmuseum). The sign also directs visitors to read other comments at
www.brooklynmuseum.org/community.
Figure 62: Egyptian galleries, Brooklyn Museum, 2011 Figure 63: E-comments, 2011
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For temporary exhibitions, the museum experiments with iPads in the gallery that
it has found are more successful for groups of visitors than individual audio tours. One
such example is the exhibition Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties (October
28, 2011–January 29, 2012) that illustrates the museum’s integrated approach to
technology. In the physical exhibition, a popular culture timeline of the period was
created along a wall, using words and photographs placed next to objects in acrylic cases
atop a shelf. In between objects on the shelf were placed four iPads with an interactive
program for visitors, the same program that is available on the museum’s website. The
program uses Google Images to present photographs from the American 1920s for
visitors to select and compare them with images in the exhibition. The exhibition subsite
on the museum’s website neatly arranges information by curatorial text on the left side,
and on the right side images from the exhibition, hyperlinks to Tweet and Facebook like,
and then the categories of Media (the interactive program), Talk (visitor comments, blog
posts), Print (catalog, teacher packet), and Events. Below these categories is a description
of the exhibition’s Audio program with commentary by outside contributors.
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Figure 64: Brooklyn Museum website, Exhibitions (12/20/11 screen capture)
The first time that the Brooklyn Museum introduced iPads into its galleries was
for the exhibition Subjective Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958–1968 (October 15,
2010–January 9, 2011) at its Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. The exhibition
was another great example of bridging the physical and virtual divide. The iPads in the
gallery displayed 25 Wikipedia articles in English on women pop artists that were created
by the exhibition team through its extensive research on the subject. As Shelley Bernstein
(2010) describes the project they called WikiPop, “First, how do we share the research
and, second, how do we do it in a way that won’t overwhelm the visitor experience?
Wikipedia + iPads became the answer.” The iPads allowed visitors to read the articles
and also to browse through the entire English Wikipedia while standing in the gallery and
sitting in lounge areas in the exhibition. Bernstein reports that there were over 32,000
visitors to the exhibition, and approximately 12,000 sessions on the iPads. For many
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visitors this was their first experience using an iPad. After noticing that most visitors did
not pick up the devices from their stands, the museum added a sign; “Psst…It’s okay to
pick up the iPad.” Bernstein (2011, January 28) comments on the success of the project:
Overall, this project worked well on many levels. A high percentage of
visitors utilized the devices for long periods of time going pretty deep into
the wiki catalog, but also staying focused on exhibition content. Given
most people come to museums with other people, the iPads turned out to
be a social device which engaged people in a way that seemed natural to
their visit. The information in the wiki articles on these 26 artists is now
out in the world via Wikipedia and will contribute to information sharing
beyond our exhibition. This leaves us likely to do it again at the next
opportunity.
The museum contributing its research to Wikipedia made a much larger impact than just
on its own website. WikiPop’s 25 articles are available on the museum’s website
(http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/seductive_subversion/wiki/), each with a
hyperlink to the articles on Wikipedia that still remain active.
The Brooklyn Museum introduced laptops into its galleries in 2008, first with
Click! (to be discussed next) and then with The Black List Project (November 21, 2008–
March 29, 2009) where they were used as an initiative by the education department for
visitors to create personal videos related to race and its impact on their lives, called
Community Voices. As a photography exhibition, The Black List Project started out
incorporating film with the HBO documentary The Black List: Volume One that
premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008, then aired nationally, and was
presented in its entirety throughout the exhibition. Inside the gallery, the museum set up
two laptops that it had already used for Click!, it created a YouTube channel for the
exhibition (http://www.youtube.com/user/bkmuseumblacklist), and used a webcam for
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visitors to directly record videos that were sent live to the channel using YouTube’s
Quick Capture feature. The results were that visitors recorded 482 videos, 236 of which
stayed on the YouTube channel (after staff moderation), and 96 went to the Brooklyn
Museum favorites playlist. There were 43,386 total video views, and one video (recorded
by a museum security guard) was viewed over 23,000 times when it was featured on
YouTube during Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The exhibition’s channel was also given
non-profit status at YouTube that activated auto-play for the videos. Faced with the
challenges of a minimal budget, minimal staff time for editing, time constraints, and the
need for low technical barriers for visitors, the museum found a creative and simple
solution. Bernstein (2008) sums it up with, “Presto, a working video kiosk with no
overhead! I couldn’t be more excited that we were able to find a Scrappy-Doo solution
that got us over the technical and budgetary hurdles.” In posting her analysis of the
experiment in the museum’s blog, Bernstein (2009, March 30) reflects that given more
preparation time she would have allowed gallery visitors to comment on and rate other
videos, and she would have highlighted video favorites in the gallery next to the
recording area so that visitors could get inspired by others, thereby “closing the loop and
bringing the voices back into the gallery.”
There are two major exhibition projects which the Brooklyn Museum undertook
to better engage its visitors. They are both fun, entertaining, and make a strong, direct
connection between the online and physical spaces of the museum. The first is Click! A
Crowd Curated Exhibition (June 27–August 10, 2008). The Click! subsite
(http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/click/) is archived on the museum’s
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website and displays Results, Blog, Podcast, and Blurb Book. Click! was organized by
Bernstein (then manager of informations systems at the museum) and inspired by James
Surowiecki’s 2004 book The Wisdom of Crowds that claims “a diverse crowd is often
wiser at making decisions than expert individuals.” In Click!, Bernstein applies
Surowiecki’s premise to making subjective decisions about evaluating works of art. First
the museum put out an open call for artists to electronically submit a photograph on the
theme “Changing Faces of Brooklyn” together with an artist statement. After the month-
long open call ended, there was a six-week period of online audience evaluation of all
389 submissions that were presented on the museum’s website without artist attribution.
Part of the evaluation process included visitors categorizing their own knowledge of art
and perceived expertise as a factor of their geographic location. The museum placed a
number of constraints on the evaluation process in order to minimize the influence of
others, since the wisdom of the crowds is most effective when each person works as an
individual. A total of 3,344 online visitors
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evaluated the photographs on the basis of
aesthetics, photographic techniques, and how well they represent the exhibition theme,
rating them on a sliding scale from most to least effective. Click! concluded with an
exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, where 74 works (the top 20%) were installed
according to their ranking from the online evaluation process, with the more popular
works enlarged. The museum placed laptops in the gallery, created a virtual tour of the
museum for the exhibition subsite, and planned a Click! meetup for the Target First
Saturday in July 2008 to, “say hello in real space,” according to Bernstein. The exhibition
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The exhibition’s subsite reports that 46% of the online evaluators were from Brooklyn, 17.5% from New
York City, and 5% outside the United States.
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resulted in very similar rankings and an amazing amount of agreement among the
evaluators, regardless of their knowledge level, demonstrating that knowledge was a less
important factor in evaluating art. The museum’s curator of contemporary art, Eugenie
Tsai, supported the experiment from the beginning as a different type of exhibition,
admitting that it successfully achieved its goals, but that collective intelligence will not
replace curatorial expertise. The exhibition empowered the masses in the curatorial
process by providing a space within the museum (online and physical) for their voices to
be heard. As Bernstein (as cited in a museum video of a panel discussion on 2008, June
28) stated, “Web 2.0 is about people and their interaction with technology, not about
technology itself.”
Figure 65: Brooklyn Museum website, partial compilation of works shown in the gallery for Click!
exhibition (12/21/11 screen capture)
A second, more recent, museum exhibition project utilizing visitor participation
occurred in 2011, entitled Split Second: Indian Paintings (July 13, 2011–January 1,
2012), organized by Bernstein in consultation with Joan Cummins, the museum’s Lisa
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and Bernard Selz curator of Asian art. This exhibition was also inspired by a book; Blink:
The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005) by Malcolm Gladwell. Bernstein (2011,
February 3) describes her initial thinking for the project:
The book explores the power and pitfalls of initial reactions. After reading
it, I started to wonder how the same theories might apply to a visitor’s
reaction to a work of art. How does a person’s split-second reaction to a
work of art change with the addition of typical museum interpretive text?
As visitors walk through our galleries, what kind of work are they drawn
to? And if they stop, look, read, or respond, how does their opinion of that
work change?
Similar to Click!, Split Second began with a ten-week online evaluation process, and
three months later culminated in an exhibition at the museum. The project was centered
on the museum’s collection of Indian paintings dating from the fifteenth to the nineteenth
centuries, which rank among the top ten in the United States. Many of the works are very
sensitive to light and consequently are not exhibited frequently, which makes them a
good candidate for online evaluation. Split Second presented a total of 180 works and
offered visitors three scenarios with which to evaluate the works, designed to
demonstrate how different types of information, or lack of information, might affect
one’s reaction to works of art. The first scenario (the split second task) presents visitors
with a randomly generated pair of paintings for only four seconds and asks them which
they prefer. In the second (the engagement task), visitors were asked to write about a
painting before rating it on a scale, thus showing the potential effect of participation. The
third scenario (the info task) gives visitors unlimited time to view the works together with
typical interpretive text. The exhibition included 78 of the works viewed online–those
that generated the most controversial and dynamic responses during the evaluation
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process–along with computer screens to understand the online process and visualizations
of the data collected (available under Stats in the archived exhibition subsite
(http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/labs/splitsecond/). Of the total
4,653 online participants, the majority was from New York City and spent more than
twice the average time on the activity. Bernstein (2011, July 13) wrote that, “I’ll never
forget seeing this map in Google Analytics, which so clearly visualizes what happened
online–a local audience found us and they took this project very, very seriously.” In
reviewing the results, Cummins (2011) remarked that she was surprised people rated
complex images higher than more brightly colored, straight-forward images. She states,
People have asked me if the results of the Split Second experiment will
change anything about the way I present works of art in the galleries and I
have to say that the answer is probably no. Mostly that’s because I’m not
trying to sell anything in the galleries. I’m not in the business of giving
people what they like. The one place where we want to give people art that
they can instantly like (or at least find engaging) is in choosing the images
we use for our advertising. Maybe the results of Split Second can give us
some insight into the kinds of Indian paintings we choose for promotional
materials in the future. Those images can get people into the galleries and
then I’ll take it from there.
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Figure 66: Brooklyn Museum website, Split Second Rankings (12/21/11 screen capture)
What are remarkable about these two projects is how they are thoroughly archived
on the museum’s website, how much local participation these online projects generated,
and also how the museum was able to transform a “digitally-born” project to a semi-
traditional exhibition within a physical gallery. Bernstein (2011, July 13) stated that, “I
believe it is vital that digital projects inhabit the museum in real space, not just sit
online.” The field of Visitor’s Studies has entered the twenty-first century at the Brooklyn
Museum, and the results are open to the public.
Another example of online visitor participation that connects to the museum’s
collection was the museum’s June 2011 campaign to increase Brooklyn’s presence on
Historypin (www.historypin.com), a crowdsourced social website that seeks, in its own
words, “to build up a more complete understanding of the world.” While the website
initially had no historical images of Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Museum had 3,574 images
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in its collection from the late nineteenth century. As the museum began digitizing its
photographic collection, it posted images on it Flickr Commons account hoping to enlist
volunteers to geotag the images (tagging with precise geographical coordinates) so they
could be displayed on Historypin using its Google Street View technology. Although the
museum could identify many of the images, it also asked the public to provide any
additional meta-data, such as who took the photographs, exact dates, and from where they
were taken. The photos on Flickr were sorted into “mystery” images that lacked
information on their location, and “solved” images. The project was led by Bernstein who
rallied all Brooklynite fans with a call for “Let’s represent!” While New York still has a
disproportionately greater amount of photos than Brooklyn, Brooklyn is indeed
represented on the site. The Brooklyn Museum is now an institutional partner of
Historypin with its own profile on the website
(http://www.historypin.com/profile/view/Brooklyn%20Museum), where it continues its
mystery-solving, collections-based project.
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Figure 67: Brooklyn Museum website, Figure 68: Flickr website, #mapBK mysteries
#mapBK (12/21/11 screen capture) (12/21/11 screen capture)
The museum’s website was last redesigned in 2004, which some might call
archaic in this rapidly changing digital age. Nevertheless, the website does a very good
job at providing interactive experiences for the online visitor, at making connections with
the physical museum and its exhibitions and events, and at linking with social media and
the museum’s blog. The Brooklyn Museum Labs is located under the Collections
heading, described as “a new area of the website where we try out features and other
cool, creative things.” Three projects are currently listed in Labs: What is Love? (“a
comparison of the various ways Web visitors love our objects”), Where in the Wikiverse
is the Brooklyn Museum? (“an investigation of what happens to our images after we
upload them to the Commons”), and Split Second: Indian Paintings.
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What is most significant about the website, however, is the extent to which it aims
to create a sense of community. On the top navigation bar, one of the ten headings (e.g.,
Visit, Support, Exhibitions, Shop, Press) is Community that prominently states,
The Brooklyn Museum believes in community and in the importance of
the visitor experience. In this area you’ll find a number of ways to connect
with us: blogs, photo and video submissions, podcasts, and more. We look
forward to hearing from you.
Under Community is included Posse (to be described later), Comment (sorted by
exhibitions and archives), Blog, Network (social media), FourSquare, Photos (shows
eight user-generated photos with a link to the Brooklyn Museum Group on Flickr),
Videos (shows four user-generated videos and a request to e-mail the museum after
uploading videos to YouTube), Tumblr, Podcast Archive (links to iTunesU and YouTube
and archives from 2006), and RSS Feeds. The Community section was developed in early
2007 after the museum experimented successfully with social media and digital
interactives starting in 2006. Nicole Caruth, formerly interpretive materials manager at
the museum, and Bernstein in her former position as manager of information systems,
discuss building an online community at a 2007 Museums and the Web conference.
Having now developed a backbone of various Web 2.0 ventures, we
gathered and combined them into one area on the Brooklyn Museum’s
Web site and called it “Community.” The move allowed for more visible
Web participation and permitted the unification of our two on-line
audiences: the Web 2.0 communities and our general Brooklyn Museum
Web site visitors. In addition to this special area, we are working to
integrate community features more directly into all areas of the Web site.
For example, when putting the Museum’s collection of Brooklyn Bridge-
related materials on-line, we also created a community area in which
visitors can share their own photos and artworks of our community’s
iconic bridge. By providing e-mail addresses for feedback when we
produce such Web projects, we are able to communicate with our visitors
directly. Our commitment to community on the Web site will continue to
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evolve with each new exhibition and as we keep abreast of new
developments in Web 2.0.
Despite the temptation to call the Community section a hub for the museum’s
engagement with social media and its online visitors, Bernstein resists, calling hubs more
of a marketing tool. Bernstein (2011, September 7) explains, “I’d rather not create a hub
and instead have a genuine presence in the networks we are on–posting when we have
something to say and keeping communication from a personal voice instead of an
institutional one, when possible.” This strategy comes from an understanding that visitors
prefer to have the convenience of all-inclusive social networks, rather than having to
leave those sites to find information on other places, such as the museum’s website.
More will be discussed on the museum’s use of social media, but its website has
many other features that make it community friendly. It is available in 52 languages, far
superseding MoMA’s website that is in seven languages. And furthermore, while
MoMA’s translated pages cover only the basic information pertaining to visitors, the
Brooklyn Museum has all its web content translated through Google Translate, including
exhibitions, collections, calendar, and more. Another unique feature of the museum’s
website is in the About section, which lists 18 curatorial staff and provides a photograph
and biography for each (although not a direct e-mail or telephone number). The museum
also provides photos and biographies of its staff when they post blog entries. Museums
are notoriously private, and while most museum websites list only their departments or at
most the main staff names, the Brooklyn Museum is participating proactively in its own
community by sharing information about its own members.
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Figure 69: Brooklyn Museum website, Author Archives in Blog (12/26/11, screen capture)
The Brooklyn Museum’s internal community consists of its staff, trustees, and
members, including the approximately 8,000 general members, 235 1stfans, and 123
posse members (as of February 29, 2012). The museum launched its 1stfans in January
2009 as fans of Target First Saturdays, created by Bernstein and membership manager
William D. Carey. The membership group is aimed at young visitors, given the low cost
of $20 a year and its dependence on social media. Carey depicts 1stfans for Fundraising
Success Magazine (2009):
There are two primary demographics we’re trying to reach with 1stfans.
The first are our monthly Target First Saturday visitors, who repeatedly
come to the museum for this free event but have not, historically, joined
the museum as members. The second group is our Web followers, who
live both near and far, and enjoy our online initiatives but also have not,
historically, joined as members. We wanted to create a new structure for
membership that makes membership more appealing for these two groups,
while also providing benefits that appeal to them given their relationship
with the museum at a low cost (both for us and for 1stfans). Our overall
goal is to grow the museum’s community of supporters through personal
relationships with 1stfans both on-site and online.
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As the first socially networked museum membership, 1stfans successfully bridges the
physical and the virtual with online promotion and social interaction that directly relates
to physical museum events. Social media includes the museum’s accounts on Facebook,
Flickr, and Twitter, as well as Meetup.com that serves as the group’s central hub
(http://www.meetup.com/1stfans/). By joining the 1stfans Meetup group, members
receive announcements about museum events. Meetup also provides a list of 1stfan
members by photo and personal comments, Discussions, Group Reviews, Photos, and
tags that describe the Meetup and connect to Meetup Worldwide. A meet-up event is
organized for 1stfan members every Target First Saturday. Two of the more practical
benefits are skipping the lines for movie tickets and coat check on those days, but the
socializing that occurs both online and physically is also a great draw for members. From
January 2008 to November 2010, 1stfan members also benefited from a Twitter Art Feed,
organized by Bernstein and the museum’s curator Eugenie Tsai that together selected a
featured artist each month, either by invitation or open call process. The featured artist
would then tweet, using Twitter as a medium for art, and the museum described each
project with a blog post. The Twitter Art Feed is now archived on the 1stfans section of
the museum’s website, which curiously is not listed under the heading Community, but
under Support and then Membership.
Another digitally enhanced membership group is the Brooklyn Museum Posse,
described on the museum’s website in the Community section as: “pos•se: n. a large
group, often with a common interest.” There is no fee to join the Posse (which is
presumably why it is not listed under Membership), rather members register and create a
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profile with as much information as they like, including screen name, image, links to
personal websites, and blog posts. The main objective of the Posse is to play collection-
based tagging games with other Posse members on the museum’s website, such as Tag!
You’re It! and Freeze Tag! These games are innovative ways in which the Brooklyn
Museum encourages its online visitors to create and edit tags for its online collection,
which in turn helps other visitors to find the objects. While Tag! You’re It! is about
creating tags, Freeze Tag! is about editing them. Posse members can flag certain tags for
removal (currently the museum states that 2,796 tags in their collection have been
challenged, marked with a red X), and then other members provide a second opinion
about the tags’ relevance. Tags, comments, and favorites are all displayed on Posse
profiles, as well as any sets that members create to organize and share objects. Tags
appear under the Collections section of the museum’s website that currently contains
96,836 digitized items (as of March 21, 2012), with a link to play the two games and a
list of the Collection Tags on the right side. On the bottom of the page are featured
Recent Comments, Recently Favorited, and Recently Tagged Objects by Posse members.
Posse members are very active on the museum’s website, despite not yet being integrated
with the museum’s social media.
The Brooklyn Museum has the most active and diverse use of social media,
compared to the five museums studied. In the Community section of its website is the
heading Network, where the museum lists its social media: Facebook, Flickr Commons,
Tumblr, Yelp, iTunesU, Flickr, Twitter, Foursquare, and YouTube. There is repetition on
this page, presumably for the sake of emphasis, because Photos and Videos are prominent
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headings, under which are listed not only Flickr and YouTube respectively, but also
sample photos and videos, and a podcast archive. Foursquare and Tumblr are separate
headings under Community. On the bottom navigation bar of the website are seven
hyperlinked logos: Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Foursquare, and
the museum blog (in WordPress). The museum also maintains accounts/pages on the
photo-sharing website Instagram, Meetup (for its 1stfans), Blip.tv for videos, Historypin,
and until recently, MySpace. The museum is not equally active on all sites, however, with
less activity on Blip.tv, Tumblr, and Foursquare. The Brooklyn Museum uses Foursquare
very differently than MoMA (the Walker only recently joined Foursquare and does not
yet have many tips, people, or check-ins), which uses it for museum staff to promote
spaces and events at the museum. The Brooklyn Museum uses Foursquare to promote
spaces and events around the museum’s neighborhood with tips provided by both
museum staff and the public.
Figure 70: Brooklyn Museum website, Community: Network (2/29/12 screen capture)
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Caruth and Bernstein discuss how the museum began to explore social media in
early 2006, first with Blip.tv and then MySpace and Flickr. For the exhibition William
Wegman: Funney/Strange (March 10–May 28, 2006), the museum installed a video by
Wegman called Museum in its lobby, which challenged Caruth and Bernstein to find a
way to provide that same experience also to their online audience. With no way to
program video into their website at the time, uploading to Blip.tv was a simple and fast
solution that also allowed the museum to track views and have public comments. Caruth
and Bernstein (2007) explain their action as, “It was the basic impulse of wanting to
share–the impetus that drives most Web 2.0 sites.” They comment on the results,
Suddenly, we had two audiences: first, our regular visitors; and, second, a
substantial new audience from Blip.tv, made up of people viewing our
content on-line even though they might never have come to our homepage
otherwise. Community happened instantly, and our visitors were giving us
direct feedback on the video by posting comments.
The second exploration occurred concurrently with the exhibition Graffiti (June 30–
September 3, 2006). Again, the challenge was to link the physical experience in the
museum with a virtual one on the website. Alongside twenty large-scale graffiti paintings
from influential artists were designated two blank walls for visitors to “tag” graffiti style
for the duration of the exhibition. These walls became known as the Museum Mural. The
museum took weekly photographs of the mural and uploaded 357 of them to its new
Flickr account. The photographs are now archived on the exhibition’s subsite
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/brooklyn_museum/sets/72157594171809720/). Online
visitors to the museum’s website were invited to create “virtual” graffiti using an online
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drawing tool that offered a virtual spray can, marker, pencil, or pen, and were then given
the option to submit the works to the museum for public display on its website, listing
only their name and location. In total, 1,388 of these graffiti drawings were submitted and
are archived on the exhibition’s subsite
(http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/graffiti/drawing_tool/drawing_tool_templa
te/drawing_gallery.php).
Figure 71: Brooklyn Museum website, Virtual Graffiti Online Gallery (12/23/11 screen capture)
The museum also utilized Flickr to establish the first museum archive of local
street art during the Graffiti exhibition, entitled Graffiti in Brooklyn. The public was
asked to take photographs of existing street art from their local Brooklyn neighborhoods
and e-mail them to the museum, which the museum then uploaded to its Flickr account
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during the exhibition; 913 photographs were submitted to the archive. Caruth and
Bernstein (2007) report what they learned from Graffiti:
The plan was a success in terms of sheer numbers, and an even bigger
success in terms of mission. We had discovered that community on the
Web didn’t necessarily mean programming on our own site. On the
contrary, seeking out our audience in their own Web communities (Flickr,
MySpace, Blip.tv,) was even more powerful. After all, why should we
expect them to come to us?
At the end of the exhibition, the Museum Mural was viewed 12,488 times online, and
Graffiti in Brooklyn was viewed 12,376 times. The museum’s MySpace page also gained
over 3,000 friends, largely aided by a local street artist Ellis G. who was interviewed for
the museum’s podcast series and had a popular presence on MySpace.
In November 2007, the Brooklyn Museum launched ArtShare, an art sharing
application on Facebook in order to create greater accessibility to the museum’s online
collection by going to where its visitors are, mainstream social networking. Bernstein
(2007) describes the application:
You can select works from the Brooklyn Museum collection to display on
your profile. But then, because social networking is about connecting and
seeing what others contribute to the social fabric, anyone can also use
ArtShare to upload their own work and share it with others. You can use
ArtShare to select a wide variety of work, then each time your profile is
loaded a different work will be displayed at random from your selections.
ArtShare was also on Facebook Pages for institutional homepages, as the Brooklyn
Museum invited other art institutions to participate, including the Walker Art Center, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Powerhouse Museum in Australia. In 2008,
ArtShare won a silver award in the Online Presence category of the American
Association of Museum’s MUSE awards, as well as its Jim Blackaby Ingenuity Award.
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ArtShare was short lived, unfortunately, due to frequent changes in Facebook’s API
(application profiling interface) and profile design layouts. The Facebook community
also began using less applications, perhaps for these reasons, and so the museum found
that usage decreased over time.
A provocative article appeared on the technology blog ReadWriteWeb by Richard
MacManus (2011), raising the question of how much social media is enough and citing
the Brooklyn Museum as a case study. Here is a summary of the article:
Some museums are trying to be more creative with social media, but step
one is to make use of the main tools. Brooklyn Museum is certainly doing
that. It has a main web site, a blog, a Facebook Page, a Twitter presence, a
Flickr account, a Tumblr, a Foursquare, and more. Unfortunately, a closer
inspection reveals that many of those social media accounts are
infrequently updated. Perhaps Brooklyn Museum would be better off
focusing on one or two of the tools and using those selected tools
creatively. There may be lessons here for other organizations attempting to
cover all social media bases.
McManus is certainly correct regarding the infrequent updating of some social media by
the Brooklyn Museum; however the global museum technology community immediately
defended the museum en masse. The article received 729 Tweets, 156 Linked In share,
63 Facebook recommend, 13 on Google Plus, and 20 online comments. One of those
comments was by Bernstein, who also wrote her own museum blog post two days later to
address McManus’ concerns. Bernstein describes the museum’s experience with
MySpace and how it is finally closing that account due to increasingly lower usage and
higher difficulty to manage the platform. Even though many MySpace users had migrated
to Facebook a while ago, the museum recognized that its visitor demographic (young,
African American, multi-ethnic, poorer) was the same group drawn to MySpace, often
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characterized as a “ghetto” space compared to Facebook that initially had a more white,
middle-class, collegiate demographic.
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Bernstein (2011, September 7) explains how the
museum’s social media strategy is consistent with its community-driven mission; “As our
audience moves from one platform to another or as platforms modify beyond recognition,
we’ll change with them and that can mean making difficult and carefully studied
decisions about when to stay and when to go.” Bernstein also clarified the museum’s
strategy for using social media: 1) stay personal 2) stay away from marketing and 3)
update when we have something specific to say and keep the noise to a minimum. This is
a very different strategy from most museums that tend to focus on the quantity over
quality of information they release on social media. Today, four Brooklyn Museum staff
tweet from different departments (visitor services, exhibitions, collections, digital media),
and Bernstein tells them to only tweet the essential. Nevertheless, Twitter is by far the
museum’s most popular social media site, currently with 349,637 followers, followed by
Facebook with 53,913 fans, then Flickr with 2,483 contacts and YouTube with 2,483
subscribers (as of March 21, 2012). The Brooklyn Museum also looks closely at how
these media facilitate true visitor engagement, and Bernstein admits her disappointment
with Facebook.
The museum’s blog is a more effective way to engage deeply with visitors online,
particularly for Bernstein and her technology department that are in charge of the blog.
Of the five museums studied, the Brooklyn Museum’s blog had the least amount of posts
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In her blog post, Bernstein references danah boyd’s 2007 article Viewing American Class Divisions
through Facebook and Myspace that revealed many of these demographic characteristics of the social
media.
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in the ten-month period of analysis (75), but a good ratio of comments to post (2.9:1).
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It
also had the least amount of posts by outside bloggers (4%), given the museum’s
restriction on posts by interns and temporary staff. The Brooklyn Museum’s blog,
however, was the highest rated for the number of technology-related posts (36%) by a
diverse group of authors from the museum’s departments of Technology, Sackler Center,
1stfans, Arts of Asia, Library & Archives, Publications, Conservation & Egyptian Art,
and Photography. Bernstein is listed on the blog as its most active author, and her posts
consistently receive a large number of comments as she reaches out to her colleagues in
the field of museum technology and other interested visitors by providing detailed
information on technology projects, their successes, and failures. She also responds to
most comments and questions in her blog postings, and is the only author on the blog that
has an e-mail link in her biography.
It is important to mention Brooklyn Museum’s mobile program, which also serves
as a conduit between its online and physical offerings. In August 2009, the museum
introduced a new mobile tour for smartphones called BklnMuse. This tour was designed
for in-gallery use where visitors first connect to the museum’s mobile website
(m.brooklynmuseum.org) through its Wi-Fi network, or simply call numbers placed next
to the objects with their traditional mobile phone (cell phone audio stops). Bernstein
(2009, August 26) describes BklnMuse as, “a gallery guide that is designed to
complement the more structured museum experience. In its most basic form, it’s a
community-powered recommendation system for the objects that are on display
47
I was unable to calculate the comparable ratio of comments to visit for the Brooklyn Museum as the
museum did not disclose its annual number of blog visits, as the other four museums did.
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here.” The web-based tour offered images of the works as well as commentary from
curators and the public, connecting to the museum’s YouTube videos, and it was also
interactive, allowing visitors to customize their own tours, suggest works to friends, and
tag works (Gallery Tag!) that went directly into the online collection (more like a
scavenger hunt through the galleries). Posse members could bookmark their favorite
works by logging on through BklnMuse. Bernstein (personal communication, April 14,
2011) admitted that the museum’s mobile program was a failure mainly because it was
such a solitary experience, because of its low usage, and because of the propensity for
what she calls “screen glue.” The museum has since discontinued BklnMuse, but today
offers an audio gallery program by PocketMuseum that consists of four options: for
visitors to use their personal cell phones to call a number at the museum for certain
labeled works (the museum offers a printed map of all stops), to download podcasts
(currently 36) for free at home using a personal MP3 player, to rent an MP3 player at the
museum ($5 for nonmembers, free for members), and to listen to content on the
museum’s website for specific exhibitions. The audio tours currently cover three
permanent collection exhibitions–American Identities, Egypt Reborn, and The Dinner
Party by Judy Chicago–as well as any tours created for temporary exhibitions.
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Figure 72: Go Mobile! signage at the Brooklyn Museum, 2011
The museum released its collections database API as open source on the Creative
Commons website (http://creativecommons.org/) March 4, 2009 after its collection came
online in October 2008, and since then has witnessed a number of individuals outside the
museum using the API to create applications based on the museum’s collection for iPads,
iPhones, browsers, and mashups.
48
In April 2009, a developer from Brooklyn-based
Iconoclash Media, Adam Shackelford, created the free Brooklyn Museum Mobile
Collection application for iPhones. Later in June 2010, the Brooklyn Museum created its
own free application for the iPhone. These two apps were both offered in the iTunes
Store, creating confusion for visitors. The museum changed its API terms to distinguish
between apps originating from the museum and others. Given this confusion, as well as
the fact that Shackelford moved from Iconoclash Media to Caravan Interactive, also
Brooklyn-based, the museum decided to temporarily remove the apps and reintroduce
them later. In May 2011, another independent app was released on iTunes; this time by
48
The applications are all listed on the museum’s website
(http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/api/docs/application_gallery)
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developer Wayne Bishop called the Art Collections iPad app, providing access to over
25,000 works. Nevertheless, Bernstein admits that visitors mainly use the apps for pre-
visit basic information or for browsing elsewhere, and not as much inside the galleries.
In April 2011, Bernstein expressed a desire to terminate all applications and
devices at the museum, but from her blog postings she appears satisfied with the current
use of iPads for groups of visitors in the museum’s Youth and Beauty exhibition.
Bernstein (2010, October 5) describes her approach to mobile tours:
It is our responsibility, collectively, to try new approaches and provide as
many entry points into content and the museum as possible. In terms of
Brooklyn’s people-focused mission, we believe a people-focused
application is the way to go. The curated content is already on the walls in
the form of object installation, labels and didactics, in-gallery multimedia
and gallery design. The power of the device means we can provide
something else, something more unique. We believe leveraging the power
of our visitor’s voices in combination with our own is a worthy goal.
Trying to provide entry points for all kinds of visitors is an expensive endeavor when
only some visitors have the latest digital devices. On the other hand, most visitors have
mobile phones, which explains the endurance of the museum’s cell phone audio program.
Also onsite the museum offers iPods for rent with audio tours, iPads for visitors to
interact more deeply with exhibition content, paper brochures in Chinese, Russian,
Spanish and English, and both traditional comment books and digital comment screens.
In October 2011, Bernstein began a trial period for introducing QR codes into the
museum, and in January 2012 reported on the results. Because of the very low usage in
the building, especially when compared to pre-QR code use of various applications,
Bernstein (2012) acknowledges that it might work for special projects, but “we probably
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need to stay away from it as a baseline visitor amenity if we are to be at all inclusive
about how we serve content.”
Lessons Learned
The Brooklyn Museum was recognized by the federal Institute of Museum and Library
Services (IMLS) with the 2011 National Medal for Museum and Library Service,
described in an IMLS press release as “the nation’s highest honor for museums and
libraries for extraordinary civic, education, economic, environmental, and social
contributions.” In 2006, the museum won the Jim Blackaby Ingenuity Award from the
American Association of Museums (for the teen website for its 2005 exhibition
Basquiat), and in 2008 it won the Forrester Groundswell Award for Social Impact for
three of its programs (ArtShare, Click! exhibition, and Posse). The museum has also
received national awards for its scholarly work, including the 2006 AAM Curators
Award for Excellence, for “Outstanding Catalogue Based on a Permanent Collection”
(American Paintings in the Brooklyn Museum: Artists Born by 1876). Charity Navigator
Rating gave the Brooklyn Museum a score of 62.22, by far the highest of all five
museums studied (the closest is the Indianapolis Museum of Art at 60.59, the Walker is
47.8, SFMOMA is 54.57, and MoMA is the lowest at 43.23). The independent rating
service evaluates nonprofit organizations by their financial health, organizational
efficiency, and organizational capacity. So how can an art museum be simultaneously so
highly recognized and criticized, serving a population that is poor, multiethnic, and
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marginalized, and lying in the shadows of one of the greatest art centers of the world
(Manhattan)? What is its secret?
Perhaps the very location of the Brooklyn Museum is the answer to its success.
Perhaps the museum can afford to be risk-taking, controversial, and independent-minded
precisely because it is in the shadows of Manhattan. Despite the Brooklyn Museum’s
world-class collection and curatorial staff, it cannot compete with the budgets, legacies,
and fame of Manhattan-based art museums. Brooklyn can also not compete with
Manhattan as far as its residents (on the basis of wealth and education) and its amount of
tourists, both of which contribute to the wealth of its cultural institutions. When Philippe
de Montebello (as cited in Pogrebin, 2010, August 5) compared the Brooklyn Museum to
the struggling Detroit Institute of Arts and the Cleveland Museum of Art, he noted that
those institutions “are the one thing in town” as opposed to the Brooklyn Museum that
must compete with Manhattan museums. He called this competition a problem, and
declared the museum “marginalized by its locality.” What de Montebello neglected to
observe, however, were the opportunities afforded by this marginalization. Undoubtedly
if museums have large enough endowments–such as the Indianapolis Museum of Art–
they can afford to take risks and be innovative (and even controversial), but the Brooklyn
Museum has an endowment of $75.5 million in 2010, up from $69.4 million in 2009 (the
other four museums studied have endowments well over $100 million). The popular
phrase, “necessity is the mother of invention” is particularly applicable to the Brooklyn
Museum. One example is how the museum uses third-party software (WordPress) for its
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blog to keep up with new software developments despite not having programmers on
staff.
De Montebello also notes another “problem” of the Brooklyn Museum; the
demographic change of its community. Again, de Montebello sees problems when he
should see opportunities. Brooklyn is a community that has continuously experienced
change since the time of colonial explorers in the seventeenth century and their
introduction of African slaves. Thanks to Manhattan, Brooklyn welcomed its poor
immigrants at the same time as it welcomed its wealthy industrialists, and today it
welcomes artists as they escape the overcrowded, overpriced island across the Hudson
River. Brooklyn is a global community, but in a very different way than Manhattan; it is a
community of global immigrants and artists more than global tourists and corporations.
The Brooklyn Museum has a local community of visitors that is global in nature.
Responding to its local constituencies of African Americans, East Africans, West
Africans, Asians, and Latinos, the museum creates innovative programming that connects
to its permanent collection of works from Egypt, Africa, Islam, Asia, and the Americas.
The demographic of Brooklyn is also younger, which offers an opportunity to produce
socially-focused programming online and onsite, creating social capital and bonding the
already tight community of Brooklyn, while focusing on its contemporary art and
photographic collections and on incorporating local Brooklyn artists. The challenge with
the more economically disadvantaged demographic of Brooklyn, however, is its general
disconnect with technology and social media; I say general because while the younger
population may not have their own digital devices, they are certainly familiar with them
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and will find ways to publicly access the Internet and social media, such as at the
centrally located Brooklyn Public Library just down the street from the museum. The
robust online experiences on the museum’s website demonstrate an understanding of
locality over physicality. Whether or not the museum’s physical visitors from Brooklyn
and the greater New York area come and visit, the website provides them with an equally
rich art experience that serves either as substitution or supplement to the physical visit.
The art world has criticized the Brooklyn Museum for being too “populist” with
its exhibitions and public programs, but the museum is successful because it confidently
knows its community and dares to reach out to that community, responding to its needs
and affinities that are sometimes scholarly and sometimes entertaining. The museum has
had the freedom to experiment and pilot new programs, adapting to the changing needs of
its community and the world around it, with the enthusiastic support of its equally
courageous and controversial director, Dr. Arnold Lehman. This agility and flexibility is
important with digital technology that is constantly changing and introducing new
platforms, devices, and opportunities for organizations that desire a greater interaction
and communication with their public. Shelley Bernstein once told an audience that to use
social media correctly, the museum must experience it the same way that the public does,
24/7. Another reason for the success of the Brooklyn Museum is the tenacity of
Bernstein, her curiosity to experiment, and her ingenuity to make things happen with
limited staff and budget. Bernstein has worked at the museum since 1999, initially as an
assistant in the Egyptian department; she is a true Brooklynite who lives in Red Hook,
although born in Houston. In 2010, she was listed in the “40 under Forty” list by Crain’s
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New York Business. Many museums hesitate to embark on digital projects because of the
extra amount of staff time needed, which is true indeed, as Bernstein affirms. However,
to Bernstein, her job is driven by a strong affinity towards digital technology and loyalty
towards both the visitor-centric mission of the museum and its local community.
The Brooklyn Museum strives to be an egalitarian collective more than a network
or even a community which both require a certain degree of hierarchy. The museum
engages its visitors, local community, and local artists in order for them to actively
participate in the museum, often facilitated by digital technology. Bernstein often speaks
of the museum’s digital strategy that moves with its audience from platform to platform,
that seeks out audiences in their own web communities, and that leverages the power of
visitors’ voices in combination with those of the museum. The museum’s use of
technology is indeed culturally determined, reflecting firstly the culture of the museum as
visitor-centric, and secondly reflecting the culture of those very visitors that it serves.
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Chapter Nine: Reclaiming Place49
This thesis proposes the reemergence of place for museums in the digital age, but a very
different concept of place; rather a place/experience that allows for fluidity, movement,
and links through the interconnected network of space and time. Eileen Hooper-Greenhill
(as cited in Watson, 2007) writes that, “Where the modernist museum was (and is)
imagined as a building, the museum in the future may be imagined as a process or an
experience” (p. 82). In his book Making Museums Matter, Stephen Weil (2002)
concurred;
The museum of the near future, as thus envisioned, will in itself be an
ideologically neutral organization. It will in essence be one of a range of
organizations–instruments, really–available to the supporting community
to be used in pursuit of its communal goals. As an intricate and potentially
powerful instrument of communication, it will make available to the
community, and for the community’s purpose, its profound expertise at
telling stories, eliciting emotion, triggering memories, stirring
imagination, and prompting discovery–its expertise in stimulating all those
object-based responses. (p. 200)
Museums are changing as their communities are changing, and communities are changing
together with (not because of) technology and its infrastructures. Ross Parry calls this a
change from “hard space to soft space.” He asserts that,
With both the physical forms themselves (the architecture) and our
conception of them (the discourse) transformed, we witness a movement
from a museum’s space that is prescribed, authored, physical, closed,
linear and distant, to a space that instead tends to be something more
dynamic, discursive, imagined, open, radical, and immersive. (Parry,
2007, p. 72)
49
Casey, Edward S. 1997. The fate of place: A philosophical history. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
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The museums that survive and succeed in the digital age are open to these new spaces
that their visitors inhabit, embracing the new ways in which their visitors learn and
experience art, and accepting the symbiosis of physical and virtual spaces and
experiences. The physical places of the museum may not always reflect the changing
nature of museology of museums in the digital age; to understand these changes is to
understand the holistic museum as distributed throughout its physical and virtual spaces,
its local and global communities, and through its offering of both immediate and time-
less experiences.
Upon presenting the 2010 IMLS National Medal Awards to museums and
libraries, First Lady Michelle Obama declared that,
While some of your work may be national in scope, ultimately your most
powerful impact is local. Each of you is an integral part of your
community. Each of you strives every day to meet the needs of the people
who walk through your doors.
In 2009, the IMLS Director, Dr. Anne-Imelda Radice described medal winners as
“institutions that demonstrate innovative approaches to public service, exceeding the
expected levels of community outreach.” The Brooklyn Museum won the award in 2011,
and the Indianapolis Museum of Art won it in 2009 (out of a total of ten U.S. museums
and libraries each year). The Japanese American National Museum (JANM) in Los
Angeles was a 2010 recipient of the award, and is another particularly interesting case
study. JANM has organized various exhibitions reflecting the ethnic and racial diversity
of not only Japanese Americans, but also of its community of Los Angeles. One such
exhibition was The Power of Place: Boyle Heights (September 8, 2002–February 23,
2003) that explored issues of immigrants, multiculturalism, and community building in
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one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods. From the center of Jewish life in Los Angeles to a
Chicano stronghold in East Los Angeles today, the neighborhood was never an important
part of Japanese American culture in Los Angeles, but served to create strong
connections between the museum and its local place for the exhibition. On its website,
JANM describes its rationale for the exhibition;
The Japanese American National Museum has been working to become a
new kind of museum–one that actively involves the people and
communities it serves as equal partners...The Boyle Heights Project is one
facet of the National Museum’s efforts and extends across disciplinary,
generational, ethnic, and religious lines.
Museums today are symbiotic with their communities, cultures, and places. They have a
reciprocal relationship where they grow and learn from their communities as much as
they serve those very communities. The cultural heritage scholar Andrea Witcomb (as
cited in Watson, 2007) believes that museums should be understood today as “institutions
which actually produce the very notion of community and culture” (p. 134). And with the
opportunities afforded by digital technology, visitors continue to observe and learn from
museums as much as they now create and participate in them.
Numerous foundations and government arts agencies are providing the financial
support for museums, municipalities, and arts organizations to jointly explore new ways
in which to better engage their local places and communities. One new grant from 2011 is
called ArtPlace, a public-private collaboration between the National Endowment for the
Arts (NEA), the Ford Foundation, ten other national foundations, and seven federal
agencies. ArtPlace is a “creative placemaking” effort that strives to revitalize cities and
towns across the United States through innovative models that place the arts at the center
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of economic development. Its website (http://www.artplaceamerica.org/) states,
“ArtPlace believes that art, culture and creativity expressed powerfully through place can
create vibrant communities, thus increasing the desire and the economic opportunity for
people to thrive in place. It is all about the local.” For the initial round of grants, ArtPlace
distributed $11.5 million to 34 locally initiated projects, and expects to distribute the
same in its second grants cycle. Another NEA program from 2011 is Our Town Grant
(http://www.nea.gov/grants/apply/OurTown/index.html) that also mentions the goals of
“Creative Placemaking” on its website. It initially distributed $6.6 million in grants to 51
communities in 34 states for public-private partnerships that will strengthen the arts while
“shaping the social, physical, and economic character of their neighborhoods, towns,
cities, and regions.” The Our Town program seeks to create community identity and a
sense of place, and to encourage transformative creative activity. The notion of Creative
Placemaking originated from a 2010 white paper written by Ann Markusen and Anne
Gadwa for the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, an NEA initiative in partnership with
the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the American Architectural Foundation.
The IMLS partnered with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
and its Digital Media and Learning Initiative to create 21st century Learning Labs in
libraries and museums around the United States. In November, 2011, they announced the
first twelve winners of the national competition for funding to plan and design the labs.
The only art museum chosen is the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, which will
also participate–in person and online–in a “community of practice” to provide technical
assistance, networking, and cross-project learning. The museum’s lab will be called
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hang@mfah: Houston.Art.New.Generation, and will operate in partnership with the
Glassell Junior School of Art. The lab’s primary audience is from the Houston
Independent School District, the largest public school district in Texas serving mostly
economically disadvantaged and at-risk students. The museum envisions the lab as, “a
place where young people can learn about themselves, digital media, and art in an out-of-
school museum setting, with a mentor and community of peers,” a place to truly help
bridge the digital divide by not just providing Internet access but by promoting creative
uses of digital technology. IMLS Director Susan Hildreth (2011, November 17) stated
that, “Libraries and museums are part of re-envisioning learning in the 21st century; they
are trusted community institutions where teens can follow their passions and imagine
exciting futures.”
Also in 2011, The Innovation Lab for Museums debuted as a collaboration
between EmcArts and the American Association of Museums’ Center for the Future of
Museums, supported by MetLife Foundation. The Lab is intended to help museums
incubate and test innovative strategies to address major challenges in all areas of their
operations, providing funding, technical expertise, and networking opportunities to
grantees. The program stated its preference for three areas: youth education, demographic
transformation, and participatory experiences (described as a generational demographic
transformation). The 2011 Request for Proposals describes the latter two areas:
Innovative projects related to demographic transformation may help
develop a deeper and more nuanced relationship with the diverse
communities surrounding the museum, nurture a cadre of diverse future
museum practitioners, or help the museum serve unmet community needs
that may be outside the scope of traditional museum operations. (p. 2)
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Innovative projects related to participatory experiences may explore how
museums can become places to hang out, engage and contribute; blur the
boundaries between “back of the house” and “front of the house;” and act
as moderators and filters of contributed wisdom and diverse perspectives,
in addition to being sources of scholarship and opinion. (pp. 2–3)
The MetLife Foundation has its own granting program that started in 2008, called
Museum and Community Connections, awarding $1 million a year for three years. This
program is targeted at art museums that “reach out to large numbers of people of all ages
and backgrounds through imaginative programs and/or exhibits that help us understand
and appreciate each other and our world.” One of the recipients was the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art for EAT LACMA, an exhibition, education, and outreach program
that focused on improving the quality of life through growing, preparing, and sharing
food at the museum.
Only one program specifically mentions digital technology, but they all support
projects that provide new and innovative solutions to revitalizing local communities.
Solutions are not always digital, but often comprise both analog and digital solutions,
traditional and avant-garde ideas that respond to a multi-generational and diverse
audience. What is important to note about these programs is the recognition at a national,
federal, and funder-level of the importance for museums to connect with their local
communities, and particularly in partnership with public agencies and other institutions.
This last chapter serves as a supplement to the five case studies just reviewed in
great detail. While these five museums selected are the most technologically innovative
art museums in the United States today, in the holistic way described, this thesis would
be remiss if it did not acknowledge other examples of situated technology praxis in
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museums. These following examples include other medium- to large-sized art museums
across the United States and abroad, and a last brief case study of the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art, a museum in my own community that has experienced a
remarkable transformation in the last six years under new leadership and a renewed
commitment to marking its place. All these digital projects represent innovative ways in
which the field of museums is incorporating new digital technologies, but only a selection
stand out for the ways in which they do so while also strengthening their communities,
engaging their visitors, and providing a link between online and physical spaces and
experiences. An in-depth digital ethnographic analysis of these museums would reveal
how many of their digital practices reflect their particular local places, communities, and
cultures, and how the museums are increasingly conscious of and responsive to them.
Greater Than Five
One of the best ways to gain a broad perspective on innovative museum projects
worldwide is to review the annual awards distributed at two major conferences; the
American Association of Museums (AAM), and the international Museums and the Web
(MW). The AAM MUSE Award is selected and presented by the organization’s Media
and Technology Standing Professional Committee, a group of international professionals
active in the field. Museums and the Web presents its Best of the Web Awards, similarly
selected by a panel of peers in the field, from those projects nominated by museum
professionals around the world. It is interesting to see how both of the awards’ categories
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have changed over the years, incorporating new technologies as they find their way into
the museum field, combining others to make new categories, and removing others more
obsolete (such as Two-Way Communication for the AAM in 2006, and E-Services/E-
Commerce for the 2007 MW). In 2011, the AAM MUSE Award included the following
categories: The Jim Blackaby Ingenuity Award, Applications & APIs, Audio Tours &
Podcasts, Digital Communities, Education & Outreach, Games & Augmented Reality,
Interactive Kiosks, Interpretive Interactive Installations, Mobile Applications,
Multimedia Installations, Online Presence, Public Outreach, and Video, Film, &
Computer Animation. Also in 2011, Museum and the Web’s Best of the Web Awards
included the following categories: Exhibition, Long-lived, Innovative/Experimental,
Museum Professional, Research/Online Collection, Education, Small Museum site,
Audio/Visual/Podcast, Mobile, Social Media, People’s Choice, and Best Overall Museum
Site. The recipients are too many to include here in this thesis, and both conferences
recognize the broad category of museums (including gardens, zoos, children’s museums,
history museums, science centers, and more), but a few winners are described below.
The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. is a federal initiative that
includes 19 museums and galleries, the National Zoological Park, nine research centers,
and a traveling exhibition service (SITES). The Smithsonian is able to create many
projects in-house because of its consolidated resources, as evident in its website
(http://www.si.edu/). Under the Connect heading of the website, visitors can find not only
the traditional social media links and museum blog, but also twelve mobile applications
for iPhone, iPad, Android, and iPod Touch, seven different mobile websites, and
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seventeen podcasts on iTunes where the Smithsonian has a consolidated Channel for its
general application as well. Also under Connect is Virtual World that lists the
Institution’s online exhibitions (340 total), three different online activities/games, and the
Latino Virtual Museum in Second Life, described on the website as, “a cross-platform
immersive education initiative based on bilingual mixed media experiences created to
enhance visitor’s knowledge, understanding and appreciation of Latino Cultural Heritage
through innovative and engaging online experiences.” Leading many of these projects is
Nancy Proctor, head of mobile strategies and initiatives, who praises the multilateral
nature of mobile technology as a social platform today. Proctor is joined by Michael
Edson, the director of Web and new-media strategy, and supported by the Smithsonian’s
new secretary, G. Wayne Clough, who served as president of the Georgia Institute of
Technology. Proctor was responsible for the Smithsonian’s public Web and New Media
Strategy Wiki (http://smithsonian-webstrategy.wikispaces.com/), which won the People’s
Choice Award at Museums and the Web 2011. The wiki states, “Anybody–inside or
outside the Smithsonian–can join this wiki and help us. We figure it’s your Smithsonian
Institution too & you have a stake in its future.” The Institution is currently exploring AR
(alternate reality) applications for Art & Industries, and the National Museum of Natural
History’s Bone Hall, and is incorporating the image recognition application Google
Goggles into its projects.
A brief description of a few of the Smithsonian’s digital projects will provide
insight into how it is utilizing technology today. Museums on Main Street (MoMS) is a
traveling project organized by SITES. Since 1994, MoMS has been exhibited in more
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than 690 communities in 42 states and Guam. On its website
(http://www.museumonmainstreet.org/) are the archived online exhibitions, links to
social media, an interactive map of exhibitions and events, the Road Reports Across
America blog, and Stories from Main Street where individuals share photographs,
recordings, and videos from a mobile application (for all Apple devices) on their
smartphones, as well as listen to other recordings “by people like you.” In May 2011, the
Smithsonian debuted its free iPhone and iPad application called Leafsnap, the first
mobile app to identify plants simply by photographing a leaf. The app uses facial
recognition technology so people can instantly search a library of leaf images created by
scientists at the Smithsonian, providing a species name, high-resolution photographs, and
information on the tree’s flowers, fruit, seeds, and bark. For the first time, the public can
directly access the collection of the U.S. National Herbarium at the Smithsonian’s
National Museum of Natural History that began in 1848 and is one of the world’s ten
largest plant collections. The Smithsonian is also interested in engaging citizen scientists
with this application to provide information on specimens that could be added to the
collection and to augment the collection’s data.
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Figure 73: Flickr website, Fill the Gap! at SAAM (12/29/11 screen capture)
Another project that invited public participation was initiated by the Smithsonian
American Art Museum (SAAM) in 2009, entitled Fill the Gap! At the SAAM, the Luce
Foundation Center for American Art serves as the museum’s visible storage facility with
over 3,300 works of art displayed in 64 glass cases for public viewing. When artworks
leave the storage facility for exhibition, loan, or conservation, there is a gap in the case
that needs to be replaced. Using its Flickr photostream, the museum asks viewers to
choose an image from a pre-selected group that best fits within the gap. The selected
image is sent to the museum’s chief curator for approval, inserted, and the person is
credited on the object’s label. The gap can also be filled by public vote, both at the Luce
Foundation Center and online on Flickr. In 2006, SAAM launched the website Meet Me
at Midnight, an interactive, online adventure for kids eight to ten years old that presents
an art history mystery in cartoon style. The website won a number of awards, including
Adobe Site of the Day (May 17, 2006), Interactive Media Awards: Outstanding
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Achievement: Museum (2006), International Academy of the Visual Arts: Davey
Awards: Silver for Education and Children (2007), AAM MUSE Awards: Bronze (2007),
Web Marketing Association WebAwards: Arts Standard of Excellence (2006). In 2008,
SAAM created the world’s first museum-based alternate reality game (ARG) that ran for
almost five months, titled Ghosts of a Chance. The scavenger hunt-like game took place
in the physical world (at SAAM, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, and the
Congressional Cemetery), and also in the virtual world (on the museum’s website,
YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, and on a Flickr group created by a player). The game was
a 2009 Official Webby Honoree in the Environmental and Experience Marketing
category.
The Denver Art Museum in Colorado created a new initiative in 2010 to cultivate
young adults, funded by the IMLS. The Collective is an online community of 604
members (as of March 21, 2012), “who come together to create, converse, and connect,”
according to its website (http://collective.denverartmuseum.org). The Collective directly
links to events at the museum, and is based on the success of the Untitled series of events
on Final Friday nights at the museum, described by the museum as “This is your brain on
art, your take on creative issues that are far from black and white.” The Collective’s
website includes information on Untitled events, Happenings around town (“One-of-a-
kind happenings co-created by members of the Collective. Convene with creative movers
and shakers.”), a link to the museum’s blog, and other educational initiatives including
dDIY (digital Do It Yourself) at-home creative activities which upon completion can be
uploaded to the website and shared publicly. Social media on the site includes Facebook
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and Twitter, with excerpts from the Blog and Twitter on the bottom. Aside from The
Collective that targets young adults, the museum also has a website that targets kids ages
eight to ten, called Wacky Kids Website (http://www.wackykids.org/). The website is
interactive (Explore Cool Places) with art activities to do at home or school (Make Stuff),
and links and book titles at the Denver Public Library. Inside its physical galleries, the
museum has installed award-winning TouchTables and interactive kiosks with touch
screens, spearheaded by the museum’s former director of technology, Bruce Wyman.
In 2008, the Dallas Museum of Art in Texas opened a Center for Creative
Connections (C3) inside the museum, providing both analog and digital ways for visitors
to explore the creative process by interacting with art, artists, and the community. The
Center brings visiting artists every six months, offers hands-on workshops for adults, and
for children there is Arturo’s Nest (ages 0–4) and the Young Learner’s Gallery (ages 5–
8). The Center also houses the museum’s Tech Lab, where visitors are encouraged to
“experiment with and use technology in unique ways to respond to works of art in the
Museum’s collection and create original art work.” At the Tech Lab there are web-based
interactive programs on computer stations, and drop-in classes and workshops for adults
and families about social media, gaming, video, sound design, stop-motion animation, 3-
D design, and more. The museum also offers smARTphone tours of its permanent
collection and temporary exhibitions. Visitors can use their own smartphone or borrow
museum iPod Touches for free. In 2003, former museum director Bonnie Pitman began a
seven-year study of museum visitors to better understand their preferences and behaviors.
The study was conducted by the consulting firm Randi Korn & Associates, Inc., and
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consisted of six separate studies,
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culminating in a new museum strategy called
Framework for Engaging with Art. The studies identified four distinct, yet related types
(visitor clusters): Tentative Observers, Curious Participants, Discerning Independents,
and Committed Enthusiasts. Findings from the research led the museum to seek an IMLS
National Leadership Grant to redesign its website and create a new online content
management and delivery system. The museum received a grant of $519,435 in
December 2007, and introduced its new website in 2009. Front and center in the new
website is the heading Communities, listing the museum’s social media (Facebook,
Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, MySpace), as well as Gowalla, Foursquare, LinkedIn, the
museum’s Wikipedia page, e-news, Calendar, and its blog Uncrated (by Wordpress). The
museum also has a separate blog for families (We Art Family!) and for Educators, and
organizes Flickr meet-ups for visitors who upload their museum photos on the museum’s
Flickr photostream. Arts Network is the museum’s new internal content management
system that allows visitors to customize information across platforms, providing a mobile
website and free wifi at the museum. The museum describes it as “a television-style
network system” that offers four different channels mirroring the four visitor clusters.
Under the heading View, the museum’s website also has a section on Texas Artists that
highlights objects in the collection made by artists working in Texas, as well as an online
database of Texan objects that it maintains jointly with local partner institutions.
On January 1, 2009, Thomas P. Campbell became the new director of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met), replacing Philippe de Montebello who had
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All of the studies are listed on the museum’s website, http://www.dm-
art.org/AboutUs/Frameworkforengagingwithart/index.htm
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served for 31 years as director. Campbell was a curator of European sculpture and
decorative arts at the Met for 13 years, and at 47, younger than his predecessor when he
assumed the position. Campbell has made tremendous advances in his first two years,
most amazing for a venerable, institution like the Met, a museum in the classical tradition
of marble columns, entrance steps that visitors climb to the top, and a world leader in art
scholarship and conservation. Campbell’s mark may not change much the external
appearance of the museum; however, as he tries to bring the Met along the populist wave
of the modern museum there will be great changes indeed. In order to assist him in this
task, Campbell invited Pitman from the Dallas Museum of Art to talk to his staff about
visitor engagement. Campbell (as cited in Kennedy, 2011) explained that, “We have to
recognize that a great many of our visitors don’t know their way around and they don’t
know much about art,” adding that technology could be the best way to solve these
challenges. Firstly, Campbell consolidated the museum’s technology operations into a
new department for digital media that reports directly to him, hiring Erin Coburn
(formerly at the Getty Museum) in 2010 to head the department as its new officer of
digital media. Another behind-the-scenes change still in process is the challenging task of
wiring the museum’s 1902 Beaux-Arts building for WiFi for visitors to utilize their
digital devices for multi-media audio tours that the museum will start creating for its
permanent collection. The Met has started introducing touchscreen computers in the
galleries (so far only the American period and decorative art rooms), and created its first
iPhone application to accompany the popular exhibition Guitar Heroes: Legendary
Craftsmen from Italy to New York (February 9–July 4, 2011). It currently rents iTouch
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devices for museum visitors at the price of $5–7. In 2011, The Met also joined the
Google Art Project as a partnering institution, choosing Pieter Breugel the Elder’s The
Harvesters as its iconic work to be featured in super-high definition. Campbell comments
on this new collaboration in a museum blog post (2011, February 1);
The Google Art Project coincides with a variety of Met initiatives that
demystify the Museum through digital means by sharing our collections
and ongoing work with a broader online public around the world. Most
important of all, these projects encourage people to visit museums and
come face-to-face with great works of art.
A major change for the Met was a new redesign of its website in September 2011.
Campbell (as cited in Kennedy, 2011) describes the website, “Since becoming Director, I
have stressed two priorities: scholarship and accessibility. Our new website, which
launched today, certainly embodies both of these aims.” The website consolidated the
museum’s digital programs in the section MetMedia, available on its bottom navigation
bar alongside MetKids and MetStore. MetMedia offers videos, podcasts and audio,
interactive, Kids Zone and MetShare (Facebook, Twitter, Google Goggles, YouTube,
Foursquare, iTunesU, and Delicious). MetShare is introduced by the following text:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is pleased to offer visitors several new
ways to enhance their understanding of and appreciation for works of art
in its collection, and to connect with and share their experiences with
others. All of these endeavors simply represent additional ways for the
Museum to further the mission that has guided it since 1870:
“…encouraging and developing the study of the fine arts, and the
application of arts to manufacture and practical life, of advancing the
general knowledge of kindred subjects, and, to that end, of furnishing
popular instruction.”
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A new feature of the website is the impressive audio-video program Connections,
curiously located in the Exhibitions section. While Connections makes surprising
connections between staff members and the permanent collection, its value lies more in
shattering the cold, intimidating image of the Met by revealing a personal, softer image of
its staff, democratically displayed all in black and white with provocative headings to
their profiles (e.g., Dark Energy, Mutts, Blood, Magic, Crocodiles, Survival, Date Night).
Museum staff are publicly presented for the first time with names, titles, photos (most
smiling), and personal stories about their lives, jobs, and relationships to the museum.
Figure 74: The Metropolitan Museum of Art website, Connections (12/29/11 screen capture)
Another notable new feature is The Met Around the World that premiered on the
Met’s website (http://www.metmuseum.org/met-around-the-world/) in November 2011 in
the form of an interactive map searchable by types of museum activities (traveling
exhibitions, traveling works of art, conservation, excavations, fellowships, exchanges and
other collaborations). The program is described on the website; “The work of the
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Metropolitan Museum reflects the global scope of its collections and extends across the
world through a variety of initiatives and programs outlined here…” It is telling of the
Met’s primarily global focus that it first introduced an international map, and in 2012
plans to introduce The Met Around America. Probably the most important change to the
Met’s website is the new consolidated collections-management database system that
allows for an easier search function and the ability to deliver information on multiple
platforms. Digitization of the museum’s entire collection is a primary concern for
Campbell, who wants an online record for each of the nearly two million objects in the
collection. He explains the need by asking, “At a time when scholarship is rapidly
advancing, are you best serving a collection by publishing a three-volume catalog of 800
pieces, where much of it becomes out of date within six months” (as cited in Rosenbaum,
2010, February 2)? Campbell’s focus on the website is understandable, given that its
research has found that more than 40% of museum visitors first viewed the website
before visiting in person. In 2010, the physical museum had 5.6 million visitors, and the
website had 50 million visitors.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York is part of a global network
of museums managed by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, also based in New
York; it could be called the flagship museum as it all started there in 1939. Other
museums include the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in
Venice, Italy (Solomon R. Guggenheim’s niece), the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin,
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Germany,
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and the upcoming Guggenheim Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.
Despite the Guggenheim’s decidedly global focus, it has not been known for its use of
digital technology in the service of its global community other than a basic website and
social media. Nevertheless, a few recent initiatives are bringing the Guggenheim quickly
into the digital age, on both a global and a local level. In 2010, the Guggenheim partnered
with YouTube to develop the first YouTube Play: A Biennial of Creative Video. In a
video describing the project, Nancy Spector (2010), deputy director and chief curator at
the museum, explained the impetus behind this project as wanting to “reach the broadest
possible audience,” and as a chance to explore digital media. “We have always been a
museum of the new,” she stated, where there are no hierarchy among mediums of art.
From the perspective of YouTube, it was interested in bringing “the world of access to
the world of excellence and the established art world.” The Biennial was an open call for
creative video entries made to the global YouTube community, resulting in more than
23,000 video submissions. A jury selected 200 for the first round, and then made a final
selection of 25 that were presented at all Guggenheim museums around the world on
October 20, 2010. The following night a live event took place at the Guggenheim
Museum in New York. The public was not able to vote on the videos or see the original
entries, only the short list of 200 and the final 25. Still available on the YouTube Play
Channel is a video highlighting a selection of the final 25 videos, YouTube Play: Live
from the Guggenheim (http://www.youtube.com/play). The Biennial was also developed
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The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Deutsche Bank announced on February 6, 2012, that
Deutsche Guggenheim would close by the end of 2012, when the 15-year contract expires for the
partnership.
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in partnership with HP and Intel that contributed to its online educational component (MP
+ Intel Make Tutorials) that offers videos of video-making techniques such as music and
fashion film, digital flipbook, experimental film, time lapse, 2-D character animation, and
stop-motion animation. Clearly the Guggenheim has succeeded in reaching the broadest
possible audience; the YouTube Play channel has 24,759,214 channel views, 9,902,512
upload views, 49,624 subscribers, and 45,255 channel comments (as of March 1, 2012).
Figure 75: Guggenheim website, Stillspotting nyc, Noise Map (12/29/11 screen capture)
Two other recent initiatives at the Guggenheim focus on the local place more than
the global. Stillspotting nyc began in 2010 as a two-year multidisciplinary project
centered on the museum’s Architecture and Urban Studies program in collaboration with
the Spatial Information Design Lab (SIDL) at the Graduate School of Architecture,
Planning and Preservation at Columbia University in New York. Projects are organized
around the city’s five boroughs, where every three to five months stillspots are identified,
created, or transformed by architects, designers, composers, and philosophers into public
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events or installations. The website (http://stillspotting.guggenheim.org/) describes the
project,
Living in a big city can be fun. There’s so much going on–lots of people,
traffic, and things to do. But where can you go to get a break from all the
activity? ...stillspotting nyc has asked artists and architects to answer that
question and to create “spots” for us to enjoy “stillness.”
The museum commissioned SIDL to develop a mapping study on silence and noise in
New York City, resulting in an interactive map
(http://stillspotting.guggenheim.org/noise-map/) that presents actual noise complaints to
the city government from residents (over 270,000 in one year). The website offers a PDF
activity for kids to find their own stillspots, designed by the museum’s Sackler Center for
Arts Education, and an interactive map to create personal stillspots and share them
online. Another element was a collaboration with students in the Master of Fine Arts
program in the Photography, Video and Related Media department at the New York
School of Visual Arts, who created short videos on “the visual, aural, and sociological
ecology of the urban landscape.” The project was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation
NYC Opportunities Fund and a MetLife Foundation Museum and Community
Connections grant.
In August 2011, the BMW Guggenheim Lab was launched as a long-term
collaboration between the Guggenheim Foundation and the German auto company
BMW. The Lab works in three two-year cycles for a total of a six-year “journey around
the world” to study issues and create innovative solutions for contemporary urban life.
The Lab is a mobile laboratory housed in a movable structure, located first in New York
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City (August 3–October 16, 2011), then in Berlin, Germany (May 24–July 29, 2012),
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and finally in Mumbai, India, each cycle concluding with a museum exhibition. The
Berlin cycle will be presented in association with ANCB Metropolitan Laboratory, and
the Mumbai cycle with the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum. In addition, each cycle will have
its own physical structure designed by a different architect, its own theme, and its own
international team of emerging leaders in the fields of urbanism, architecture, art, design,
science, technology, education, and sustainability. The New York theme was Confronting
Comfort that explored “notions of individual and collective comfort and the urgent need
for environmental and social responsibility.” On its website, the Guggenheim Foundation
describes its commitment to “international communication and cross-cultural
exchange…that enable the Foundation to engage ever-broader audiences and promote
broad cultural discourse.” Richard Armstrong (as cited in Vogel, 2011, August 1),
director of the museum and foundation, describes the Lab, “When people say we’re
taking it to the streets, we literally are. Hopefully this will be a petri dish of ideas for the
decision makers of tomorrow. But it is no glamorous version of a Greek temple.”
Engaging public discourse is a central element to the Lab, through free public programs
organized at the physical lab, a website (http://www.bmwguggenheimlab.org/), blog
(LAB|log), and social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Foursquare). The
website also offers an online game called Urbanology
(http://www.bmwguggenheimlab.org/urbanology-
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The BMW Guggenheim released a statement on March 19, 2012, that it will withdraw from its proposed
site in Kreuzberg, Berlin, scheduled to open on May 24, in response to threats by local activists who argued
that the project would “accelerate the gentrification” of the neighborhood (Hickley, 2012).
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online/?utm_source=hootsuite&utm_medium=sm&utm_campaign=bgltwitter) that asks,
“What would your future city look like?” Presented with a selection of real-world urban
dilemmas, players make decisions that impact their cities negatively or positively, taking
into account eight major categories (innovation, transportation, health, affordability,
wealth, lifestyle, sustainability, and livability). The game calculates the closest real-world
equivalent to the city created by the player.
The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles has very traditional art galleries,
interrupted only in the passageways by its GettyGuide kiosk systems for visitors to access
multimedia information via headphones. The GettyGuide provides videos, audio
recordings, and detailed information on over 300 works in the museum’s collection in
Spanish and English, and can be accessed on an iPod touch available for free at the
museum, on visitors’ smartphones using the new Google Goggles application, and in the
Collection section of the museum’s website that offers a bookmarking feature. Getty
Bookmarks are free for visitors that register online with their e-mail address, allowing
them to create a personalized online gallery based on favorite works of art first seen at the
museum or in anticipation of a museum visit. Visitors can share their gallery and create
customized museum tours. The Getty website also offers online activities for youth,
including Getty Games and Whyville
(http://www.whyville.net/smmk/top/gates?source=getty). Whyville is a virtual world for
teens and pre-teens, accessed by a link to Getty Games from the museums’ website under
Games, and also on the link for Connect with Us (that lists social media, blog, ArtBabble,
calendar, and e-newsletter). As described on the museum’s website,
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Visit the Getty Museum in Whyville where you can play games and learn
about art from anywhere in the world! The Getty Museum in Whyville is a
virtual companion to the renowned Getty Center in Los Angeles. Travel
the Whyville virtual globe and explore the history of art with the Getty
Treasure Hunt! The Getty in Whyville is where you can get together with
friends to chat art, play art, and get inspired to make your own art!
Getty Games (http://www.getty.edu/gettygames/) also includes the interactive online
games Match Madness, Switch, Jigsaw Puzzles, and Detail Detective, all based upon
works in the Getty’s permanent collection. Another interesting feature of the website is
under the heading Collection that includes not only the traditional images and text, but
seamlessly integrates multimedia information and social media with a section called
Watch Videos that links to the museum’s pages on YouTube and ArtBabble.
While this thesis focuses on art museums in the United States, primarily for the
sake of brevity, it must likewise acknowledge the innovative work in art museums
outside the United States, and particularly in Europe. I must note, however, that the new
museology is presently more developed within the United States due to its longer history
of populist museological practices, visitor studies, visitor services, and the field of
museum education. This is another reason why these five case studies are important
forecasters of situated technology practices in museums worldwide. I will very briefly list
a few examples of museums outside the United States, which is certainly not complete as
museums around the world are rapidly embracing digital technologies. In fact, many of
these museums are more technologically advanced than many U.S. museums.
Nevertheless, what they often lack is an understanding of how technology can support
and respond to a museum’s community, physical place, and local culture.
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The Powerhouse Museum in Australia is not a traditional art museum; it is a
public museum that opened in 1988, but its collections date back to the 1880s covering
history, science, technology, design, industry, decorative arts, music, transport, and space
exploration. The museum incorporated QR codes in its exhibitions early in 2008, and was
also an early adopter of the mobile website. It released its collection API as open source
in 2010, and encourages outside applications, even going so far as to host developer hack
days to build experimental applications. Inside the museum it uses iPads for audio/visual
displays with touchscreen games. The museum’s website is amazingly transparent, partly
due to it being a public institution, and makes publicly available its Strategic Plan 2009–
2012, Annual Report, Organization Chart, and Facts and Figures (number of visitors,
staff, objects in collection, etc.). Under the heading Open Access Information, the
museum references the Government Information (Public Access) Act, in which
government agencies are encouraged to proactively release government information.
Most of the digital projects have been led by Sebastian Chan, formerly the museum’s
head of digital, social, and emerging technologies, and currently the director of digital
and emerging media at the Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design
Museum in New York. Chan’s blog Fresh + New(er) (http://www.freshandnew.org/) is
an excellent source of up-to-date information on museums and digital media.
In Barcelona, Spain, the Museu Picasso’s website
(http://www.museupicasso.bcn.cat/en/) is notable for a number of reasons. It has an
interactive timeline of Pablo Picasso, tags, and two virtual tours of the collection’s
highlights. Under the Get Involved heading is listed Subscribe to e-news, Play, and
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Online-community. The heading’s text reads, “We invite you to become part of the
Museu Picasso Community. With your participation, the museum will undoubtedly
improve its performance. Thank you, everybody, for your contributions.” Play includes
three interactive games; Picasso Memory, Game Chrono, and “The Embrace.” Online-
community includes the museum’s social media (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube,
Delicious, and Slideshare), its free application for iPhone and iPad, El Blog, and RSS
feeds. This website design was spearheaded by the museum’s former project manager
Conxa Rodá, now head of digital projects for the Barcelona City Council. Another
important project in Barcelona comes from the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona
(MACBA). RWM (Rádio Web MACBA) is described on the museum’s website
(http://rwm.macba.cat/en/home/) under the heading Audio and Video, as an online radio
project that “explores the possibilities of the internet and radio as space of synthesis and
exhibition.” The programs are organized by curatorial, research, special, and son[i]a, are
available on demand as podcasts on iTunes and by subscription, and are searchable by
program, word, date, and tags. RWM also has a Twitter feed (@Radio_Web_MACBA)
with 2,172 followers (as of March 21, 2012).
The Tate Museum in England (encompassing Tate Britain, Tate Modern, Tate
Liverpool, and Tate St. Ives), has done a remarkable job with digital media, mostly on its
website and mobile, two platforms in which it is easy to consolidate efforts much like the
expansive Smithsonian Institute. Given the ethnic diversity of modern-day England, as
well as the museum’s global reach, its consolidated website (http://www.tate.org.uk/) is
available in 13 languages plus British Sign Language. Not only does the Tate have an e-
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bulletin, it also has a magazine Tate Etc., promoted by the museum as “Europe’s largest
art magazine” that is available in print as a paid subscription and selected content online.
The Tate offers two online courses on art techniques and methods under the heading
Learn Online, an online art resource for visually impaired people since 2002 called i-
map, and the Tate Channel that includes Tate Shots (weekly series of short videos),
podcasts, its blog, and links to museum channels on YouTube, iTunes, and iTunesU. The
Tate blog is well integrated with its social media and clearly promoted on the museum’s
homepage, and offers a segment called Tate Debate where museum staff post on special
issues to debate with the public. In the galleries, Tate Modern has a multimedia guide
with video, artist interviews, a children’s tour and interactive games, and two new
applications for the iPhone and iPad. One is called Tate Trumps, a card game for visitors
to play with the collection, and the most recent is Race Against Time, which takes visitors
back to 1890, visiting major art movements along the way. Also in the physical galleries
is the museum’s Interactive Zone with books, films, games, and interactive multimedia.
Figure 76: Tate Museum website, Tate Kids (12/3/12 screen capture)
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The most notable digital projects of the Tate Museum, however, are its websites
devoted to kids and youth. Tate Kids (http://kids.tate.org.uk/) is aimed at kids four to 12
years old, with additional downloadable information for teachers and parents and links to
the websites Tate Families (http://www.tate.org.uk/families/) and Tate Schools and
Teachers (http://www.tate.org.uk/schoolsteachers/). Tate Kids lets kids create their
personalized gallery of works from the museums’ collections on My Gallery which they
can share publicly, submit their own artwork, leave comments, and rate other galleries
that are highlighted by popularity. There are downloadable activities on Tate Create, E-
Cards to send, kids can change the website background from a preselected assortment of
designs, play 14 online games with three levels of skill, view five films created by other
kids (Art Sparks), and read the Tate Kids Blog (with a link to Twitter). The website for
youth ages 13 to 25 is Young Tate, described on the main website
(https://www.tate.org.uk/youngtate/) as, “a youth art initiative run by and for young
creatives giving everyone the opportunity to reach their own conclusions about art.”
Young Tate is different for each of the four Tate museums; Tate Modern has Raw Canvas
for ages 15 to 23, Tate St. Ives has The Collective (called SPEX for ages 16 to 25), and
Tate Liverpool and Tate Britain also participate in The Collective
(http://collectives.tate.org.uk/) that offers an online community for youth. Similar to teen
programs at U.S. museums, each Tate museum has a group of local members that
organize events, workshops, and long-term projects. The Collective connects these local
youth with a larger group of youth that register online to become members and create
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virtual public portfolios where they can upload works and participate in Community
Groups. It is on Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus, and offers Student Resources with
Exam Help, Artists Online (three virtual exhibitions), interactive games, and information
on applying to art or design school with advice from working artists.
Also in England (London) is the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). For a
museum that promotes itself as, “the world’s greatest museum of art and design” on its
website, it should not come as a surprise that its website is remarkably rich in content and
innovation. Back in 2007, the V&A was already using Web 2.0 technologies to build
online interpretive communities with an interactive tile game, a blog by its artist-in-
residence, and a ceramics wiki. Juliette Fritsch (2007a), the museum’s former head of
gallery interpretation, evaluation and resources, refers to constructivist models from the
early 1990s and writes of the museum’s approach to community and the Internet,
The aim is also to enable visitors to be able to contact and exchange with
others interested in the same areas of experience. That is to say, to build an
environment of information population and exchange that links the idea
and nature of the physical visit to the gallery beyond those physical
boundaries... By giving a forum for this community both on-line and in the
galleries we hope to have a constantly evolving level of dynamic
community experience and exchange as part of the permanent gallery
interpretation. (p. 6)
Evaluating the V&A’s website today reveals that it has minimal presence on social media
(Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr), but it has its own V&A Channel for multimedia
content. The website’s Search the Collections (http://collections.vam.ac.uk/) feature won
a Museums and the Web award for the category Research in 2010. When a visitor clicks
on a collections record, there appears not only the image and curatorial text, but also links
to Related Content, Related Images from the museum’s collections, Teachers’ Resources,
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a Reading List, Links, Events at the museum, Shop Online, related videos, and a link that
reads, “Browse More Images Like This.” When accessing records, visitors are able to
print, email, bookmark/share the record on screen, access a QR code with more
information, and “Help us improve our images.” Once visitors are registered online, they
can contribute to the collections section. This crowdsourcing feature asks online visitors
to help the museum improve how it presents cropped images on the website by
suggesting the best view, with before and after examples. Gail Durbin (2004), the
museum’s deputy director for learning and visitor services, comments on the museum’s
incorporation of user-generated material; “The Victoria and Albert Museum was founded
in order to improve the quality of British art and design, so it is entirely appropriate that
our Web site should include images and other creative work by visitors.”
The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam has been closed for renovations since 2003,
but still wants to make its collection accessible to the public. Out of this challenge, was
born one of the first museum experiments with augmented reality (AR). The project is
called ARtours (http://www.stedelijk.nl/en/now-at-the-stedelijk/spotlight/artours) and
was funded for the first two years (2010–2011) by the Dutch Ministry of Culture. AR
works with smartphones that have the Layer AR application and GPS (global positioning
system) so that users can see images or text superimposed onto the real-world
environment in three-dimensionality (3D) when holding up their phone screens. The
ARtours consist of various projects, the first of which worked with art students to exhibit
their work using AR, called Ik op het Museumplein or Me in Museum Square
(http://www.ikophetmuseumplein.nl/). The second project, ARtotheque, places a unique
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QR code on 170 artworks in the museum’s collection that are out on loan. Two upcoming
projects include an AR-based tour of Amsterdam including design objects from the
museum’s collection, an indoor AR tour at the museum for a temporary exhibition with
two emerging Dutch artists, and a potential AR collaboration between other museums
and commercial partners in Amsterdam. Hein Wills (as cited in mobiThinking, n.d.), the
museum’s project manager for ARtours, describes what he has learned;
The moment that AR becomes linked to web and social media initiatives
of a museum it will be a powerful tool, reaching out and engaging our
audience. It’s a great way of expanding the brand, giving the museum a
more ubiquitous presence. But there will still be a need for real museums
because looking at an augmented or virtual piece of art will never replace
viewing the original, live and in person.
The Musée du Louvre in Paris, France, is not only one of the most traditional museums as
far as gallery installment, as one of the first public museums created in the eighteenth
century in a Renaissance palace, but one of the world’s most international art museums
regarding scholarship, professional relations, and visitors (66% of its visitors come from
outside France). With a record 8.8 million visitors in 2011 to the physical museum (the
world’s most visited museum), the Louvre’s new digital experiment targets those
physical visitors. Starting in March 2012, the Louvre will replace its conventional audio
guides with Nintendo handheld video game consoles, partly because of the low adoption
rate of the audio guides (4%). The Louvre’s head of multimedia, Agnes Alfandari (AFP,
2011), admits that the Louvre is the first museum in the world to make this bold move.
The museum is starting out with 5,000 consoles for visitors with an interactive 3D
museum map that will pinpoint their exact location, offer commentary in seven
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languages, and a variety of themed tours including some for children. At a museum press
conference, the Louvre’s director Henri Loyrette (AFP, 2011) stated that, “Digital
development has become a strategic issue for museums. People’s habits have changed.
But that offers us a huge opportunity to extend the museum’s territory and build a lasting
relationship with our visitors.” The Louvre is also redesigning its website and offering
updated smartphone and iPad applications. While the Louvre has a definite reach
outwards through its satellite space in Lens, France and soon in Abu Dhabi, United Arab
Emirates, this digital project focuses on the museum’s most famous Parisian site and its
physical visitors.
The concept of virtual museums supports this thesis’ notion of reclaiming place
today as a place/experience or a “soft space.” Virtual museums exist only on the Internet,
although their architecture mimics that of physical museums, their collections are genuine
artworks (meaning both physical and digital) by physical artists, and they are run by
genuine professionals in physical offices. Nevertheless, virtual museums are more about
experiences than places because they are freely accessible by anyone with a digital device
and an Internet connection, regardless of where that visitor may be located. The first and
most recent example, the Adobe Museum of Digital Media (AMDM), is perhaps more
understandable as a virtual space because it is the first virtual art museum that is focused
on the medium of digital art. Launched in October 2010 by the Bay Area-based software
company Adobe, the museum states on its website that, “it is open 365 days a year, 24
hours a day, and accessible everywhere.” The museum offers a tour of its building
designed by the Italian architect Filippo Innocenti, which it claims would equal 57,680
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square meters in the physical world. Space is used to house the museum’s permanent
collection, to archive past exhibitions, and to present temporary exhibitions. Museum
membership is free, requiring visitors only to register their name and e-mail to receive
benefits such as special interviews with curators and artists, access to seminars and
exclusive events, and advance viewing of exhibitions. As described on the website by the
museum’s creative director Keith Anderson,
One of the things we kept stopping and asking ourselves as we were
developing the museum is, how would this work in the real world? How
would it be in a real brick and mortar building, because we wanted to take
the museum experiences that were familiar to people and then transfer
those over to the digital space?
While the buildings or collections may not be physical in a virtual museum, it is
important to understand that there are indeed intangible connections to the physical
realm, for both developers and visitors.
Figure 77: Adobe Museum of Digital Media website, Map (1/3/12 screen capture)
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The second example from 1997 is the Museo Virtual de Artes El País (MUVA),
whose collection represents digital images of actual artwork from Uruguay. MUVA was
first started by the Uruguayan art historian, critic, and curator Alicia Haber because of the
lack of funds to build a contemporary art museum in Uruguay. While the AMDM is not
only virtual but also entirely separated from any local, physical place or culture, this is
not the case for MUVA. Rather, the very existence of MUVA is a factor of its local place
and culture, and as such it reflects both. Haber, the museum’s director and curator,
describes this factor on the website:
The creation of MUVA…is related to the frustrations and limitations
stemming from certain socio-economic realities and to the constraints of
the Uruguayan society… Funds for art, museums and art centres are
insufficient. There is a gap between the high quality level and the strong
production of art, the enormous quantity of artists in relation to the
population and the very low investment in museum, collections, buying
art, art in public spaces, etc.
MUVA was designed by the Uruguayan architect Ricardo Supparo, and is located
in Punta Carretas in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, described by the
museum as one of the most beautiful and privileged neighborhoods in the city.
The website shows the position of the museum within a residential area, next to a
street with cars and pedestrians, with the ocean in the background and the sound
of birds and waves. MUVA presents the work of modern and contemporary
Uruguayan artists, including a gallery of digital art. When viewing artwork, there
is a zoom function, multimedia information, the background color can be
changed, and work can be saved in My Collection.
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Figure 78: MUVA website, Information (12/29/11 screen shot)
Haber (1998) discusses in great detail the demographics of Uruguay and
Montevideo, its high adult literacy rate, life expectancy, and percentage of population
living in the city. Culture is important to Uruguayans, she claims, but the art scene
suffers. At the same time, Haber reports that Uruguay’s consumption of the Internet is
growing fast, with the largest per capita rate in Latin America. She confirms that,
“Perhaps, to a certain extent and in certain circles, there is even more eagerness to use the
medium in Uruguay because of an intense feeling of isolation of the Southern Cone from
the centers of intellectual and cultural power.” Haber believes that MUVA has the
potential to give Uruguayan art “a new place in the world,” a place that is no longer
dependent on the traditional physical structure of museums or art institutions. She
summarizes the museum on the website,
The conception of museums has changed. They are not real buildings
inside which heritage is preserved and exhibited anymore. The cyber-
museums, an undeniable reality, play another role. They are an
information site, a discussion forum, a useful place for investigation and
for the spreading of knowledge. They have the advantage of being an
interactive system in which anyone at anytime can experience art, without
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the requirement of a physical place. The virtual thing is not opposed to
reality. The virtual museum is much closer to the original idea of the
museion: a lecture forum and, instead of objects, a collection of
information, archives, investigation, knowledge and production.
Haber depicts MUVA much like how a museum blog serves a museum, as a virtual
forum for discourse between professionals and the public, linking back to the museum
website for more information and virtual interaction, and potentially to the physical
museum at a later time. In MUVA’s case, however, the website links back to Uruguay, a
place which most visitors will not likely visit, but will learn more about through its art.
Marking Place: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art
At the time I began conducting research for this thesis in early 2010, the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art (LACMA) was not one of the most technologically innovative art
museums in the country. While its blog Untitled had won awards, there was nothing
particularly notable about it in comparison with other museum blogs, except for the fact
that the museum curiously produced a book on blog postings from the first few years,
ostensibly for promotional purposes. A few of the museum’s temporary exhibitions
included interactive kiosks in the gallery, it offered the standard audio tours with
headphones and the wand for rent, and it offered free wifi; again nothing noteworthy. It
was a difficult decision not to include LACMA as a case study, as a Los Angeles-based
researcher, a native of Los Angeles, and a long-time museum member. But everything
has now changed. Michael Govan became the CEO and Wallis Annenberg director of
LACMA in 2006, previously president and director of the Dia Art Foundation in New
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York City for eleven years and before that deputy director of the Guggenheim Museum
for six years.
In reacting to the controversial high salary of Govan ($6 million for a five-year
contract), museum trustee Bobby Kotick remarked in a 2009 Los Angeles Times article
that, “The reputation of LACMA was not a good one. There was definitely skepticism
whether L.A. was committed to building a cultural institution that would be on par with
the Met and MoMA.” The competition that LACMA is focused on presently, however, is
firstly on a local level and eventually on a national level, as Kotick referenced New York
City. The museum compares itself with the Getty Museum, the top museum destination
in Los Angeles and well recognized by residents and tourists alike. LACMA is not a
major tourist destination, with its members and local repeat visitors comprising 85% of
the museum’s attendance. An Awareness and Visitation Study commissioned by the
museum (LACMA Strategic Plan, 2009, p. 47) revealed that two-thirds of Los Angeles
County residents cannot correctly identify the museum’s location in the Mid-Wilshire
district. The comparison is not a fair one though, as the Getty Museum is part of a group
of institutions including the Getty Research Institute, the Getty Conservation Institute, the
Getty Foundation, and the Getty Villa, all funded by the J. Paul Getty Trust with an
endowment of $9.58 billion (FY 2009–2010); the third largest foundation in the United
States and the largest art institution in the world. LACMA notes that the Getty’s
progression in recent years makes it a “formidable competitor” in that people are more
aware of the museum, but also of the campus as being a cultural and educational center.
Furthermore, when the Getty Center opened in 1997, its very location was a source of
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great controversy. Perched atop a hilltop in the exclusive neighborhood of Brentwood,
the museum appeared inaccessible to the people below, a symbol of the Getty’s
tremendous wealth and status, despite the Disneyland-like tram that it built to transport
visitors from the underground parking lot. Nevertheless, in 2011, LACMA and the Getty
jointly acquired the Robert Mapplethorpe archive, which will be housed at the Getty
Research Institute. Acting Getty museum president David Bomford (as cited in Finkel,
2011) described it as “an unprecedented collaboration” between the two institutions.
The second source of competition for LACMA today is the entertainment industry
of Los Angeles, primarily Hollywood and the film industry, but also the ancillary and
rapidly growing fields of gaming, digital media, animation, communication arts,
product/industrial design, music, fashion, and architecture. The 2011 Otis Report on the
Creative Economy notes that the creative economy (which includes all of these fields) of
Los Angeles County generated an estimated $115 billion in revenues in 2010,
representing the fourth largest industry in the region. LACMA understands well that it is
located in the entertainment capital of the world, and that it must present itself to visitors
as a leisure destination. The museum’s Strategic Plan (2009) reflects this concern:
In the crowded “entertainment” landscape of Los Angeles, the Museum
competes for visitors amongst a diverse array of choices: from the well-
financed marketing of films and popular culture, to the outdoor activities
available year-round in Southern California, to major theme parks and
beaches. Through expanded outreach to diverse audiences, from
schoolchildren to the taste-making influencers of the entertainment
industry, LACMA seeks to increase visitorship to rival and ultimately
surpass that of the Getty, whose iconic architecture and location continue
to make it the first choice among museum-going tourists. (p. 25)
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It is interesting to note a most recent development in the museum’s expansion that
partners with the entertainment industry; the announcement on October 4, 2011, of a
memorandum of understanding signed between LACMA and the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences for the purpose of the latter creating a museum dedicated to
movies and the movie industry in the museum’s LACMA West building on its campus.
Commenting on the news, Govan stated in a museum press release (2011, October 4)
that, “This represents a seismic shift in the cultural landscape of Los Angeles, and an
extraordinary new resource for residents proud of their local history, and for fans of
cinema worldwide.” Co-chair of the LACMA Board of Trustees Terry Semel added that,
“The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will provide a much needed destination for
cultural tourists and Los Angelenos to learn more about cinema.” LACMA will provide
valuable space and visibility to the Academy, and in return will reap the benefits of its
tourists and visitors, as well as becoming an official part of the entertainment industry.
LACMA is substantially funded (more than 33% of its operating budget) by the
county of Los Angeles and its board of supervisors, but is managed and operated by
Museum Associates, a non-profit public benefit corporation that is governed by a board
of trustees. The museum was first established in 1910 as the Los Angeles Museum of
History, Science and Art, located in Exposition Park close to downtown Los Angeles
(later to become the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County at the same
location). In 1961, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was created as a separate
institution that focused on art, and four years later opened its new buildings on Wilshire
Boulevard where it currently stands. The museum has continued to add new buildings to
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its extensive campus in the Mid-Wilshire district with the Anderson Building in 1986
(renamed the Art of the Americas building in 2007), the Pavilion for Japanese Art in
1988, the acquisition of the adjacent May Company department store in 1994 (now
LACMA West), the Broad Contemporary Art Museum in 2008, and the Lynda and
Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion in 2010; the last two adding 105,000 square feet and
designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano.
LACMA now talks comfortably about its campus much like the Getty Center’s
campus, and provides a campus map on its website. And even greater than a campus,
LACMA refers to the notion of a “cultural town square” in its Statement of Purpose
(2009),
The Board of Trustees of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is
committed to activating LACMA’s collection, facilities, and programs in
innovative ways that will set the institution apart from its peers. We strive
to create a cultural town square in Los Angeles that expresses a twenty-
first century worldview of excellence in art and provides a varied,
enjoyable, and educational experience for the widest possible audience. (p.
45)
While the museum has been adding new buildings since the 1980s, it initiated the
Transformation Campaign in 2004 to expand, upgrade, and unify the twenty-acre
campus. In addition to two new buildings for art, the museum also added a gourmet
restaurant and outdoor bar, and major large-scale artworks by Chris Burden, Barbara
Kruger, and Robert Irwin, noting an increase in attendance from 600,000 in 2005 to
nearly one million in 2011. LACMA’s website describes this campaign; “LACMA is
emboldening its status as an international destination and essential gathering-place for the
diverse audiences of Los Angeles.”
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LACMA is also continuing its longstanding efforts to insert itself into the
community of Los Angeles with educational programs in classrooms, libraries, and
public exhibition spaces. Given the great expanse of Los Angeles County (the largest
county in the United States with 4,058 square miles) and the miles of freeways that define
it, the museum created two successful mobile programs; the Maya Mobile and the
Ancient World Mobile. These mobiles are two 48-foot trucks that travel to schools within
the Los Angeles Unified School District (seventh and sixth grades respectively), serving
as mobile studios and classrooms based on the museum’s permanent collection. What is
important here, though, is that the buses doesn’t just take the museum experience to the
schools, they also brings students and teachers to the museum by offering free
transportation and docent tours, bridging the fixed and the mobile.
LACMA’s participation in Watts is another extension into the community. In
October 2010, LACMA announced a one-year agreement with the City of Los Angeles’
Department of Cultural Affairs to help preserve Watts Towers, a national historic
landmark, providing staff-time and expertise to identify repairs and partnering with other
local institutions as well as community members. Govan declared in a museum press
release (2010, October 21) that,
By expanding LACMA’s mission to include the care, preservation, and
interpretation of architectural and sculptural works of art within the
community that are at risk of neglect and deterioration, we are changing
the way LACMA functions as a museum, from what we collect to how we
work within the community more directly.
Led by artist Edgar Arceneaux, the ongoing Watts House Project works with artists and
architects to energize the underserved neighborhood across from Watts Towers and its
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adjacent arts center. LACMA sponsors the Garcia House, where architects Escher
GuneWardena and Slanguage Studio (artists Mario Ybarra Jr. and Karla Diaz) work with
the Garcia family to develop plans for their home. LACMA presented an exhibition of
the Slanguage artists at the museum (July 2–September 25, 2011), connecting their public
artwork completed at the Watts residency site to the museum.
Figure 79: Watts House Project, 2010 Figure 80: Edgar Arceneaux & Mario Ybarra Jr.
While LACMA is working more closely than ever with its local community, it
still does not reflect that community in its physical visitors. The commissioned visitation
study (LACMA, 2009, p. 49) revealed that in 2008, museum visitors were 61%
Caucasian, 18% Hispanic, 4% African American, and 17% Asian American/Other.
According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the Los Angeles County population is 28% White
not Hispanic, 48% Hispanic, 9% Black, and 14% Asian. Yet institutional changes takes
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time; time to organize new exhibitions, to focus on specific collections for acquisition
and exhibition, to hire new staff, and to create new partnerships and programs. In the
museum’s membership magazine for March/April 2012, Govan reveals that one of the
achievements he’s most proud is the number of Latin American art exhibitions presented
at the museum, resulting in partnerships with numerous Mexican institutions. LACMA is
also organizing a traveling exhibition from its collection of ancient Indian art (India’s
Universe) that will travel to Mexico and Chile for the first time.
The museum’s 2009 strategic plan notes a desire to redesign its website, to
enhance its web presence, and to prioritize the use of blogs, social media, search engine
optimization, and e-mail/text/cell phone applications. A notable function of LACMA’s
website is its live Twitter feed prominently placed on the home page with three separate
Twitter accounts; in English, Spanish, and a separate community account. LACMA also
admits its goal to become the first encyclopedic museum to adopt online publishing as the
norm. The January 2010 launch of the online Reading Room takes the museum one step
further to its goal. The Reading Room
(http://lacma.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/introducing-the-reading-room/) contains out-of-
print or hard-to-find museum catalogs for free to read online or downloadable as a PDF
document. LACMA also recently created a new staff position, associate vice president of
technology and digital media, held by Amy Heibel who was previously the museum’s
director of web and digital media. Heibel will be leading many of the new digital
innovations soon to come.
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The museum’s Strategic Plan (2009) identifies LACMA as a trendsetter and
declares that, “Culturally, the organization must become less cautious and more
innovative.” One of Govan’s braver moves has been the acquisition of Michael Heizer’s
monumental earth work, Levitated Mass. Heizer conceived the work in 1968, but
discovered the appropriate boulder decades later in Riverside, California. The exhibition
(scheduled for summer 2012) consists of a 456-foot slot carved into the ground at the
museum for visitors to walk through, over which is placed the 340-ton, 21-foot tall
monolithic granite boulder. The boulder was transported by the museum on a custom-
made vehicle almost three freeway lanes wide, traveling an 85-mile journey that lasted
around ten days. Govan admits that the cost is close to ten million dollars, most coming
from private and corporate donations, but says, “It’s a gift to the city of Los Angeles.”
Figure 81: Transporting the boulder to LACMA, March 9, 2012
Govan (2011) describes the significance of Levitated Mass to the museum in a video:
It is an ancient tradition of moving monoliths to mark a place. The idea is
that LACMA’s campus really is a center for Los Angeles, a cultural
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center, a multicultural center, and this rock will mark it very physically, in
a very timeless and light manner as you walk under it.
LACMA is marking its place in innovative and integrated ways, using a boulder,
community partnerships, physical enhancements, and digital experiments.
The case of LACMA today characterizes the situation of most museums in the
digital age. Museums are more than ever committed to recreating a sense of place; the
place of their own museum, and the place of their museum within the local community.
However, LACMA is at the same time more than ever aware of belonging to an
international community facilitated by both the Internet and rapid developments in
globalization across all facets of life such as travel, shopping, news, culture, and
entertainment from around the world that seamlessly flow across borders. As Govan
noted in the museum’s membership magazine (2012), “LACMA is as active around the
world as it is right here on campus.” But LACMA’s global focus is not inconsistent with
its local focus; rather it is a reflection of it. In Los Angeles County, 35.4% of the
population is foreign born and 56% speak a language other than English at home (U.S.
Census, 2010). Furthermore, the museum’s immediate neighborhood of Mid-Wilshire is
the most diverse in the county, with a mixture of Mexicans and Koreans living in close
proximity. Therefore, the museum’s global focus, particularly to Asia and Latin America,
reflects a recognition of LACMA’s diverse community, marking its place not only in Los
Angeles but worldwide through its expanding network of people, experiences, and
communications.
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Chapter 10: A Balancing Act
The five case studies, as well as the preceding examples from around the world and
cyberspace, all demonstrate the tremendous opportunities and value that arise from art
museums employing situated technology praxis. New digital technologies have
contributed to a dis-placement of place that no longer signifies physicality, locality, or
permanence. Yet museums are not ignoring their local communities or physical
collections and spaces, but rather they are constructing a synthesized vision of local and
global, fixed and mobile, physical and virtual, hegemonic and populist. Every local
community has global connections with immigrant Diaspora, the mass media, and the
global reach of commerce, indicating parity that is reflected also in museum websites that
are grounded in the local while connecting to the global. Even the smallest, locally based
institutions have some web presence, helping museums connect with their multi-ethnic
communities, expanding the global reach of their audiences, and enriching programs with
a more diverse selection of voices. Museums are disregarding the limitations of
traditional binary terms, focusing more on visitor interests and affinities that provide
strong bonds to the museum and build social relations in a networked age.
The five case studies are exemplary not only because of their pioneering use of
digital technology as related to locality, culture, and community, but above all, because
they are highly cognizant of the changing museology in the digital age. Through
extensive interviews with staff, reading staff writings in blogs, books, and articles, and
even listening to them in videos, it is clear that these five museums are already asking the
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right questions about how they must adapt to best serve their changing visitors in the
digital age, how much they must adapt, and how to reconcile change with tradition and
endurance. Nevertheless, these five museums do not yet have answers to these questions
that perhaps will be found only in retrospection. A changing museology offers
opportunities for the museum institution to reinvent itself as it adapts and survives in the
digital age, but it also offers threats that need to be addressed. Situated technology praxis
presents tremendous challenges to the museum institution, limiting or weakening certain
distinctive characteristics, roles, and practices. As such, it is necessary to end this thesis
with a balanced analysis by revealing many of the very questions and concerns that these
museums have been discussing internally.
Museums’ attention to their visitors reached a peak in the late twentieth century
with the new museology and the populist trend, much like how they are becoming more
attentive to their communities and local cultures today. The field of visitor studies
continues strong, with museums still commissioning and conducting studies that provide
detailed information on both physical and online visitor demographics, behavior patterns,
and affinities. Aside from the more traditional surveys and focus groups, museums are
adopting new practices for online analysis such as data mining and web analytics,
including geo-informational data mining that tracks location. Museums also maintain
strong connections with their local communities through public programming,
institutional partnerships, and school programs. Technology facilitates all of these
activities, as we have seen great examples of in the preceding cases, even serving to
create new global communities through social media. Ironically, however, there are
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dangers associated with these ostensibly beneficial activities. One danger arises when
museums stereotype visitors in order to better understand their broad community by
breaking it down into more manageable types of personality, activities, and interests. This
stereotyping leads to narrowcasting, a practice common in the advertising industry that
directly targets select audiences, as opposed to the older forms of broadcasting
(television, radio, newspapers) that indiscriminately target the masses.
The personalization of the masses is not dangerous by itself, nor is the museum’s
increased focus on visitor affinities such as film, photography, social events, and
curatorial talks. The problem is that visitors are being defined by their demographic
background and their past behavior, which museums and advertisers alike use to predict
future behavior. Narrowcasting is certainly a more serious concern in the commercial
sector, as customers receive specially targeted advertisements, coupons, and
announcements that limit their selection and influence consumer activities, while
museum visitors can still choose from a long list of categories of information to receive
electronically. Advertisers are also not as altruistic (and reputable) as the non-profit
sector in providing free information, educational services, and access to digital materials.
Museums organize their websites into separate categories to facilitate online access of
information largely by activities (e.g., visit, explore, learn, support, shop) or by identities
(e.g., family, educators, members). As technology enables museums to better understand
and serve their visitors, it is important to remember that those visitors are not merely
static categories to be fed selected information. The societal value of art museums is to
constantly surprise, educate, inspire, provoke, and invoke wonder based on unfamiliar
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activities and affinities. In the commercial world, it’s called spontaneous purchasing,
impulse buying or browsing, and museums are no less familiar with the critical act of
discovery, both online and onsite.
As museums continue responding to their changing visitors and communities,
there is another danger of becoming too myopic. The digital age is responsible for a
participatory culture, particularly amongst the youth, that have come to expect a
participatory museum experience that involves digital technologies or opportunities to
contribute. The term participatory culture, however, covers only a segment of society
today that does not affect older, more traditional museum visitors that may be distracted
by devices or upset by docents requesting their participation. The condition of museum
myopia is triggered by a desire to serve one group at the expense of another, one place at
the expense of another, and by a desire to pursue trends at the expense of remaining
reliable. Museums, like advertisers, have target audiences, which at the moment are
principally the younger visitors that will hopefully grow up to become loyal museum
members and sponsors, and then bring their families and friends to the museum. Yet our
society is aging very rapidly as longevity increases and fertility decreases around the
world. Older visitors have time for leisure activities such as museums, but often have
particular interests and behaviors that favor a more traditional museum experience. The
danger of museums’ desire to reflect society too much is the impossibility of serving all
segments equally, pandering to populism in curatorial and public programming, and
losing sight of the enduring role of museums in society.
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Another danger in following the latest trends is adopting technology purely for the
sake of technology. It is generally agreed upon that digital technology can facilitate most
traditional museum tasks, including internal ones for administration and data
management, as well as external ones for marketing, scholarship, and education. Being a
technologically-savvy museum with the latest digital devices can be the marker of a
progressive, modern, even hip institution to trustees, foundations, and many visitors. Yet
priorities must be chosen in a tight economic environment, and digital projects require
great amounts of financial and human resources. These five cases have demonstrated ably
that technology should always function in the service of the institution, never
overshadowing the art or the visitors’ experience. Even if some visitors come equipped
with the most up-to-date phones and tablets, loaded with GPS and applications to read
QR codes and access social media, museums must consider the totality of their
community, visitors, and local culture–including their internal museum culture–when
designing digital programs. Museums are not always quick to change, and even their
adoption of new digital technologies may not signal institutional change. Entering the
physical galleries of some of the most technologically advanced art museums today
(SFMOMA, IMA, Brooklyn Museum), visitors may be surprised at the traditional nature
of the spaces, with very little digital technology placed adjacent to the artwork. While
these museums acknowledge their online and physical visitors as equally important, they
also acknowledge that online experiences are different from physical ones and therefore
should provide different environments.
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If the changing museology of the digital age allows museums to survive, therefore
reinforcing their hegemony, then the open culture in which visitors are interacting,
participating, and creating, must be closely examined to determine to what extent these
new activities truly allow for increased agency and change the ontological structure of
museums, or if they are merely popular experiments meant to entice visitors, especially
younger ones. Similarly, the instances of networked communities in museums must be
examined for the extent to which museums are reinforcing the one-to-many, transmission
of information they have long relied upon, expanded to reach the global masses through
telecommunications technology and the Internet, or whether museums are supporting a
more social, lateral relationship between their visitors, both physically and virtually, in
order to foster social capital and expand social networks. I talk about networked
communities for museums in the digital age rather than just social networks, because as a
community they support common interests, tasks, goals, and social interaction amongst
their members both online and in physical spaces. Communities are hierarchical in
nature, even communities of interest, and social pressure is placed on members to
contribute and participate at various levels. Participation requires individual identification
by names, photos/avatars, biographical profiles, and personal contact. A few examples of
this level of community building are the Brooklyn Museum’s 1stfans and Posse, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Connections, MoMA PS1’s Studio Visit, the Walker Art
Center’s mnartists.org, and the Tate Collectives, that all profile their individual members
and support social interaction online, complemented by physically based activities and
events.
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As we recall the cultural struggle between universalism and relativism, museums
must remain aware of the need to maintain a balance. Indeed museums are universalist in
that they represent socially normative values and promote universally shared experiences
and sentiments through works of art, predominantly with encyclopedic museums. Yet
despite their cultural authority and hegemonic position in society, museums are not
interested in assimilating their visitors, but rather in using that influence to provide a
forum for multiple voices to be heard in the relativist tradition. Furthermore, museums
have always been voluntary places of respite, safety, and aspiration often likened to
churches and temples (despite their struggle for neutrality). Much like modern churches
today, museums must respond to commonplace needs while retaining their lofty allure.
Since the populist museology began decades ago, museums have begun to
experience a fundamental shift that has prepared them for this current shift in the digital
age. Nevertheless, there are significant, enduring elements of museums that will, and
should, not change as they continue to influence society. Most museums have not
changed dramatically in terms of their physical spaces, the installment of their galleries,
and their basic composition (lobby, galleries, café, store, library, reading room, children’s
space). Once visitors become familiar and comfortable with museums, they come to
expect the same on repeat visits, especially with popular works in the permanent
collections. Even a commitment to maintaining a traditional museum places can be
challenging to museums that are exploring innovative online spaces and experiences.
In their book about online learning, William Crow and Herminia Din (2009) write that,
“The physical location of a museum can be one of its greatest assets but also one of its
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greatest challenges” (p. 56). Museums are essentially institutions of learning, of cultural
and historic preservation, and scholarly pursuit. They are arbiters of cultural norms and
values through their curatorial processes that merge high and popular culture within the
sacred gallery space as well as mixing different periods and art forms, through targeting
current issues related to art for discussion and often debate, and choosing certain artists
above others to exhibit and collect. Museums are able to sustain this tremendous socio-
cultural power because they are trusted and revered organizations (AAM, 2001). Trust is
a factor of authority, tradition, legitimacy, and expertise. That trust has grown during the
populist museology because museums are viewed as more conscious of and relevant to
their visitors, evident in the popularity of New York City museums as places of refuge
after the 2001 World Trade Center bombings. The challenge of how to adapt to a
changing society by remaining relevant, while still retaining familiar and traditional
elements is one shared by large and small museums alike, much like the challenge of
responding to local communities that may or may not reflect a museum’s global
connections, its interest in digital projects, or its robust website. There is much at stake
for the future with situated technology praxis, and these exemplary museums can help to
guide the way.
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Conclusion
To understand the changing nature of museology in the digital age is not merely to study
the new technologies used by museums and their visitors, or the new digital experiments
conducted, but rather to frame this shift with four major constructs: place, community,
technology, and culture. The previous shift in museology that took place in the late
twentieth century turned the museum into a populist institution more focused on the
particular needs and interests of visitors, trying to study visitors, and creating
personalized, meaningful experiences for them. In this current shift, the museum is no
longer working for its visitors, but with its visitors, as participatory culture enables new
shared experiences such as crowd-curated exhibitions, social tagging, and social media;
shared between the museum and its visitors, and also between visitors and their peers. If
the post-Postmodern museum is to remain relevant, vital, and meaningful, then it must
adapt to a changing society, which means not only recognizing and incorporating new
digital tools for communication, but more importantly, recognizing the changing needs
and aspirations of society as reflected in its communities of physical and virtual visitors.
While all these museums cited are large, financially stable, and well established, we
cannot attribute their innovative uses of technology merely to having sufficient funding
and staffing. For this reason, the implication of this research for the future of museums
applies to cultural institutions of all size and type. By reflecting on how the four major
constructs have changed in the digital age, museums can better comprehend this socio-
cultural shift and consequently reflect it in their practices.
351
Place: In Technological Visions, Katie Hafner (2004) writes that, “People still want a
sense of place, a sense of belonging, in a physical way” (p. 302). Hafner is referring more
to an experience than a place, a physical sensation of comfort and familiarity that can
occur with both physical and online spaces of any nature. A new way to think about place
in the digital age is as a process, flow, or experience. Place remains a critical component
of digital society in the same way that physical objects remain critical to art museums,
despite the ubiquity of their digital images. These place-based digital experiences can
certainly be physically grounded in the museum and its environs, such as audio tours,
kiosks, touchtables or digital comment screens, but they can also reference the physical
museum from virtual or physically remote spaces, such as the Global Louvre, Met
Around the World, and the Guggenheim Museum’s Still-Spotting project and BMW Lab.
Museum websites are the main place in which museums draw virtual visitors to their
physical collections, events, staff, and programs, especially for the valuable pre-visit
information that comprises the majority of website visits (e.g., directions, hours, tickets,
calendar). However, as museums become more like a distributed network of spaces and
experiences rather than a single, brick and mortar place, these websites also take visitors
farther away with hyperlinks to social media as well as to the websites of community
organizations and programmatic partners. How museums conceive of their “place” in the
digital age determines the extent to which they comfortably integrate online and onsite
information, experiences, and objects, as well as integrating local and global members
into their holistic (and often nebulous) community.
352
Community: If we could classify present-day museums as communities of interest,
websites would emerge as one of the critical tools for museums to support the
development of specific interests while strengthening social bonds. Yet many museums
are hesitant to call their website an online hub as they recognize the decentralized nature
of the museum experience today. Websites can be very effective tools for museums to
better serve specific sub-communities or constituencies (artists, members, families, and
teens), offering separate sections for each with downloadable information, hyperlinks,
and rich multi-media content. Technology can best serves a museum’s community when
that community–or sub-community–is well-defined, even narrowly defined to the point
of becoming dangerously stagnant; such as local artists, international arts community,
and educators. Yet websites are not self-sustaining online communities, just one more
node within the distributed museum network. In Museums and Community, Elizabeth
Crooke (2007) asserts that, “the community unit will not bond without reason; instead,
particular circumstances must give rise for the need to come together” (p. 31). Social
media play a critical role in this task, facilitating the coming together of individuals in
virtual and physical spaces, perhaps even more effective because of their peer-based
influence. In reflecting on today’s relevance of his 2000 book Bowling Alone, Robert
Putnam (2007) identifies the 9–11 generation that gives him more hope for participation
and civic engagement as based on the social cohesion that characterizes it, believing
social capital and community to be “conceptual cousins.” Communities are networked in
the digital age as they organically connect with a myriad of other communities of
353
individuals, interests, and institutions. By integrating social media with their websites,
museums can access the networked communities that their visitors belong to, such as
with MoMA’s Facebook page for its Online Courses Alumni, SFMOMA’s Open Space
blog, or Brooklyn Museum’s 1stfans on Meetup.com.
Technology: Ben Schneiderman (2002) wrote the book Leonardo’s Laptop: Human
Needs and the New Computing Technologies, in which he describes technology today;
“The old computing was about what computers could do; the new computing is about
what users can do…The time is right for the high-tech world to attend more closely to the
needs of humanity” (p. 2). Art museums are eager to embrace technologies that empower
their visitors and provide social opportunities for networking which can ultimately
benefit them. Yet more important than understanding and adopting the newest
technological platforms, is for museums to understand the context within which those
technologies are used. Technology is a tool for museums to achieve certain goals, a tool
to support experiential infrastructure, and only by first recognizing their goals and
structure as locally and culturally constructed will museums have the most effective
results. The differences between these five museums’ uses of technology can be
attributed to distinct museum strategies and objectives, often due to the very nature of the
director, as well as distinct geographic and demographic communities. Considering the
influence of digital technology on museums today, we can look to technological optimists
and pessimists; Pierre Lévy and Clay Shirkey as the former, and Jonathan Zittrain, Jaron
Lanier, and Sherry Turkle as the latter. Then there are also the technological determinists,
354
most famously Marshall McLuhan (1994), who wrote, “We shape our tools, and then our
tools shape us.” Langdon Winner (1987), however, is most appropriate to this discussion
when he states in Autonomous Technology that, “Pessimism, it is argued, leads to
inaction, which merely reinforces the status quo. This is somehow different from
optimism, which leads to activity within the existing arrangement of things and reinforces
the status quo” (pp. 52–53). Technological optimism is as destructive as technological
pessimism, according to Winner, in that both permit technology to overshadow its more
critical socio-cultural implications.
Culture: Art museums can be considered hegemonic in that they reflect the dominant
culture in which they function and play a leadership role in shaping culture itself (Hall,
1982). The consensus theory of hegemony (Williams, Grossberg, Hall) suggests that
hegemony dominates through consent rather than coercion, and that it survives by
changing and incorporating emergent forms that bolster its dominance and relevance to
society. Today, private art museums in the United States operate as public/private non-
profit organizations that are largely influenced by powerful financial and corporate
interests. They are indeed independent, and are conscious of that being a factor of their
cultural authority and legitimacy, nonetheless, art museums are not neutral organizations,
and the decisions they make (curatorial, programmatic, administrative) are often
interpreted as externally influenced, or critiqued for their partiality that in turn influences
the field. For example, both the Sensation and Murakami exhibitions at the Brooklyn
Museum were criticized for being influenced by private, corporate interests (Charles
355
Saatchi, Christie’s, and Louis Vuitton), MoMA’s early focus on European modernist
artists instead of emerging American abstract expressionist artists was due to its director
Alfred Barr, and the Walker’s decision to terminate its new media curatorial program
incited the global arts community. Yet precisely because of the “social” nature of social
media, there exist differences and hierarchies as in any society. Raymond Williams
(1958/1983b) argues for a common culture and a common experience like the
universalists, but this does not mean an equal culture. He believes that inequality within
society is “inevitable and even welcome.” While peer-based social networks are more
democratic, there are still opinion leaders and followers. The opinions, attitudes, and
values of friends and family members play an important role in mediating (and
reconstructing) messages, as Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld (1955) famously explain in
Personal Influence: The part played by people in the flow of mass communications.
Museums are empowering their visitors with new digital experiments that allow common
voices to be heard in the same space as curators–for virtual visitors to “curate”
personalized online spaces and galleries, and many other participatory practices–but the
empowerment is bracketed within a deeply hierarchical space where the museum retains
final authority over curation, installation, didactics, acquisition of works, and more.
Glenn Lowry (2011) believes that the digital revolution is driven by content, and
acknowledges that museums are content-rich organizations. The ability to produce
multimedia content, especially in-house, is a great asset for museums that can generate
new partnerships (SFMOMA channel on Virgin America airlines), become leaders within
356
the museum community (IMA’s ArtBabble) and the global arts community (Walker’s
new website redesign), and allow for layered visitor experiences across various digital
platforms such as mobile, online, video, and touchscreen displays. Museums have long
been valued for the content they produce, exemplified by MoMA and SFMOMA’s radio
and television programs from the 1930s to 1950s. Their ability to create multimedia
content today keeps them relevant to visitors that are rapidly accessing data across new
platforms as they develop. Nevertheless, the focus on content distracts us from discussing
the socially relevant ways in which visitors are accessing, distributing, and personalizing
such museum content. Walker curator Francesco Bonami describes this phenomenon;
“Placing the art on the wall, or on the floor, and reproducing it in a catalogue is no longer
sufficient. The institution should be a center for communication, not just exhibition” (as
cited in Blauvelt, 2005, p. 229). Similarly, Sebastian Chan (2011) claims that, “Once a
visitor carries a fully searchable encyclopedia in their pocket…the whole idea of a
‘museum’ and how it could and should be designed changes.” Understanding the
changing nature of museology today helps explain how and why museums are creating
new experiences not limited to physical or local places, how they are supporting an open,
participatory culture while maintaining authority and expertise, and how they are
establishing networked communities even as they continue to represent a central node
within the global, distributed space of museums in the digital age. The core implication of
situated technology practice, however, lies more in endurance rather than change, as
museums’ ability to change is precisely the reason for their survival in the digital age.
These five case studies are important to the field because they vividly demonstrate how to
357
recognize the changing museology today as it relates to place, community, technology,
and culture, and how to skillfully maneuver change by remaining faithful to the essential
roles, practices, and constitution of museums in society.
358
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Appendix A: Social Media Descriptions
Delicious: http://delicious.com/
A social bookmarking service to tag (bookmark), store, and share videos, pictures,
tweets, blog posts, or articles. It was founded in 2003 as del.icio.us, then sold to AVOS in
2011 and re-launched as a site for “curation and discovery.”
Facebook: www.facebook.com
A social networking service and website launched in February 2004. It is free, but
requires registration for individuals over 13 years old and organizations to create a
personal profile, invite friends, and share text, photographs, and videos.
Flickr: www.flickr.com
An online system for managing and sharing images and video created in 2004 and
acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. Free access to photos and videos, but users must register to
upload content and create a profile page.
Flickr Commons:
http://www.flickr.com/commons?GXHC_gx_session_id_=6afecb2055a3c52c
Museums and archives post their images here, released under a “no known restrictions”
license issued January 2008, to “firstly show your hidden treasures in the world’s public
photography archives, and secondly to show how your input and knowledge can help
make these collections even richer.”
foursquare: https://foursquare.com/
A location-based social networking website for GPS-enabled mobile phones that allows
users to post their location at a place (“check in”) by mobile website, text messaging, or
application in order to connect with friends, discover new places, and receive coupons.
Foursquare Brands allows companies to create pages of tips for customers and fans when
they check in. It was launched in 2009.
Google+:
https://plus.google.com/up/start/?continue=https://plus.google.com/&type=st&gpcaz=30d
1d473
Google Plus was launched by Google on January 2011 as a social networking service,
integrating Google Profiles and Google Buzz, and introducing new services like Circles,
Hangouts, Sparks, Badges, and Pages. It is available on the web and mobile devices.
Google Goggles: http://www.google.com/mobile/goggles/#text
A downloadable image recognition application from Google Mobile that allows visitors
to photograph works of art with their mobile devices and immediately receive
information on the object or product. Launched in October 2010, and used by the
Metropolitan Museum of Art.
399
Gowalla: http://blog.gowalla.com/
A location-based social network launched in 2007, where users can check in at “Spots” in
their local area through a mobile app or mobile website. Users can make “Trips” that link
up to 20 related Spots. Gowalla was acquired by Facebook in December 2011 (not its
user data), and is now closed.
Historypin: http://www.historypin.com/
A crowdsourced social website that seeks “to build up a more complete understanding of
the world.” Users “pin” photographs, videos, and audio clips to the map with dates,
location, and descriptions. Launched in July 2011 by the London-based, nonprofit We
Are What We Do, partnering with Google that provides its Map and Street View
technology.
Instagram: http://instagr.am/
A free photosharing application for iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch, launched in October 2010
that provides 11 custom filters to transform photographs (in a square shape in homage to
Kodak Instamatic and Polaroid cameras), which can then be instantly shared on
Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, or its website.
iTunes: http://www.apple.com/itunes/
Introduced by Apple in January 2001, iTunes is used for downloading, playing, saving,
and organizing music, audio, and video files on computers (also on all Apple media
products) through a user’s virtual library. Customers can purchase music, television
shows, games, audiobooks, podcasts, applications, and movies on the iTunesStore.
iTunesU: http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/
Short for iTunesUniversity, it is part of the iTunesStore launched in 2007 and dedicated
to higher education around the world, offering free online courses (audio and video),
lectures, podcasts, virtual campus tours, and other information on universities. It has now
been expanded to grades K through 12.
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/
Launched in May 2003, a professional networking site with free membership from
around the world. Users can invite other contacts for a Connection used for introductions,
recommendations, job searches, and posting resumes.
Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/
A social network for local groups, it aims at revitalizing local community and facilitates
the organization of local groups and face-to-face meetings based on users’ zip codes,
cities, or topics. It was launched in 2001 in New York City.
Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/
Founded in 2003 in Beverly Hills as the social networking site MySpace, it has been
outranked by Facebook in popularity since 2008 mostly by teens. It now calls itself a
400
“social entertainment website” more focused on music (Myspace Music), movies,
celebrities, games, and television on multiple platforms.
SCVNGR: http://scvngr.com/
Both a social, location-based game (users unlock badges, earning points and real rewards
by doing challenges) and a game platform for mobile phones, crowdsourced by
individuals and institutions around the world that build challenges. Popular with orienting
new students on college campuses.
Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/
A professional and educational community that allows users to upload and share
powerpoint presentations, PDF documents, webinars, and professional videos, and to rate
and comment on others. Launched in October 2006, it recently added ZipCasts, a social
web conferencing system with a chat function.
StumbleUpon: http://www.stumbleupon.com/
A discovery engine for the Web based on collaborative filtering by Like or Dislike
recommendations from users (Stumblers). Founded in 2001, it later added StumbleVideo
and StumbleThru for use with specific websites.
Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/
A microblogging platform and social networking website that allows users to post
multimedia content as a short-form blog (tumblelog), launched in New York City in
2007. Blogs can be private or public, and it is adaptive to all mobile devices.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/
A real-time social information network consisting of Tweets that are 140 character-long
bits of information sent from individual and companies, including photos, videos, and
text. Launched in July 2006, and is now available globally on all mobile devices.
Yelp: http://www.yelp.com/
A website for user reviews, local searches, and a social networking community, it was
founded in 2004 in San Francisco to connect people with local businesses and services.
U.S. and Canadian businesses post free accounts with photos and text and can
communicate directly with reviewers who create a profile on the site.
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/
A video-sharing, social networking website founded in February 2005 and now owned by
Google. Registered users upload originally created videos for others to watch, rate,
comment on, and share, and also for companies and advertisers to distribute videos. It
now offers full-length films, television episodes, and movie rentals for U.S., UK, and
Canada.
401
Appendix B: Museum Data Compilation
Latest Annual Report
Latest 990 Form
Number of Annual Visitors
Visitor Breakdown by Demographics
Admission
Number of Staff
Number of Volunteers
Type of Museum
Contributions and Grants
Earned Income
Annual Budget
Number of Website Visitors
Technology Plan
Number of E-mail Subscribers
Twitter
Facebook
Flickr
YouTube
iTunesU
Other Social Media
Blog
Artist Residencies
Community Programs and Partnerships
Number of Works in Collection
Number of Local Artists in Collection
Total Number of Members
List of Memberships
Special Interest Groups
Mobile Applications
Mobile Website
Mobile Tours
Last Website (Re)Design
Free Wifi at Museum
Charity Navigator Rating
Endowment
Mission Statement
Alexa Web Statistics (September 2011)
Other
402
Appendix C: Interview Subjects
Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA)
Jennifer Anderson, Senior Communications Coordinator, IMA
Maxwell Anderson, The Melvin & Bren Simon Director and CEO, IMA
Rachel Craft, Director of Media/ Publishing, IMA
Robert Stein, Chief Information Officer/ Director of MIS, IMA
Katie Zarich, Deputy Director for Public Affairs, IMA
Dave Lawrence, President and CEO, The Arts Council of Indianapolis
Chris Gahl, Director of Communications, Indianapolis Convention and Visitors
Association
Walker Art Center
Darsie Alexander, Chief Curator, Walker Art Center
Robin Dowden, Director of New Media Initiatives, Walker Art Center
Ryan French, Director of Marketing, Walker Art Center
Sarah Schultz, Director of Education and Community Programs, Walker Art Center
Olga Viso, Director, Walker Art Center
Kevin Hanstad, Director of Market Research, Meet Minneapolis
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)
Erica Gangsei, Manager of Interpretive Media, Education, SFMOMA
Dana Mitroff Silvers, Website Manager, SFMOMA
Peter Samis, Associate Curator of Interpretation and Education, SFMOMA
Suzanne Stein, Community Producer, SFMOMA
Lisa Hasenbalg, Director, Arts and Culture Marketing, San Francisco Convention and
Visitors Bureau
Tere Romo, Program Officer for Arts and Culture, San Francisco Arts Foundation
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
Allegra Burnette, Creative Director of Digital Media, MoMA
Beth Harris, Director of Digital Learning, MoMA
Peter Reed, Senior Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs, MoMA
Wendy Woon, Deputy Director for Education, MoMA
Santiago Grullón, Senior Director, Research and Analysis, NYC & Company
Brooklyn Museum
Shelley Bernstein, Chief of Technology, Brooklyn Museum
Essie Lash, Communications and New Media Manager, Heart of Brooklyn
Ellen F. Salpeter, Director, Heart of Brooklyn
Carolina Miranda, Brooklyn-based art writer and blogger (C-Monster.net)
Ella J. Weiss, President, Brooklyn Arts Council
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