GMOA in the News

GMOA's virtual museum in Second Life is featured in an article in Georgia Magazine titled "The New College Classroom: Closeups."

GMOA in the News

Lee Shearer of the Athens Banner-Herald called yesterday to ask some questions about new media/social media, and this article that mentions GMOA and its Second Life endeavors is the result of his labors. We talked about a lot more on the phone that didn't make it in, including our efforts in Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, and maybe, just maybe, we've helped Lee another step along the way toward participating in the first two.

YouTube

Did you know MOMA had a YouTube channel?



This video is part of a series in which the museum's staff tried to convey something about the institution in 30 seconds. There are also sections of the channel devoted to videos about new exhibitions.

The Georgia Museum of Art also has a YouTube channel, but it's much smaller. Still, you can watch our introduction to Second Life and slideshows of the 2008 and 2007 MFA exit shows. Maybe we should add some cartwheeling?

Second Life GMOA Gets More Like Real-Life GMOA

One of our major projects during the past spring semester at UGA, in which public relations interns Lauren Coppage, Orian Edelman and Caitlin Neglia were very involved, was the creation and recording of scripts for various paintings in the Second Life version of the museum. The idea was that visitors to the Second Life GMOA would be able to walk up to an image and see instructions on how to play a 30-second audio clip giving more information about the painting and/or the artist. Well, the interns did a fabulous job, working with our curators to produce text, then recording it, and our buddies over at the Center for Teaching and Learning have just gotten all the clips up live. We encourage you to revisit (or visit for the first time) the Second Life GMOA (instructions are here) and click around to hear all the clips. If you're having trouble hearing anything, check your "preferences" to make sure you have "play streaming music when available" checked.

In the News

The New York Times covers the opening of Roxy Paine's huge sculpture Maelstrom at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's rooftop garden, complete with an audio slideshow of its installation in which Paine discusses the work. To see more of Paine's works, which have an undeniable power, click here.

The paper also considers, in the course of reviewing the new exhibition Compass in Hand: Selections From the Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection at the Museum of Modern Art, the curatorial difficulties that can be associated with a huge gift, welcome as it might be in many ways. (There's also a slideshow of the drawings, which include a Lee Bontecou.)

And it has a favorable impression of The Pictures Generation, 1974-1984, which just opened at the Met and has been receiving a lot of other good press. (Slideshow here.) The Met itself has a useful essay on its website about how, exactly, to define the generation addressed in the exhibition.

The Morris Museum of Art, in Augusta, Ga., will open Southern Eccentric: Paintings by Larry Connatser on May 2. The New Georgia Encyclopedia has a good entry on Connatser, a prolific self-taught Georgia artist who painted murals in several cities within the state.

Art Daily also has an article on Bank of America's Museums on Us program, which enables BOA customers to receive free admission to numerous museums (listed at the end of the article) one weekend a month. (Note that being a member of the Friends of the Georgia Museum of Art provides one with similar advantages.) GMOA is not part of the program for the simple reason that we already have free admission.

Finally, today and tomorrow (April 24 and 25) is the Second Annual Virtual Worlds: Libraries, Education and Museums Conference in Second Life. We're sorry about the late notice, but we're sure you can still get in if you'd like to.

GMOA in the News

The Second Life GMOA is the main story on UGA's homepage today! And it's well timed, too, as we've just finished making some improvements to the virtual building and reopened it to the public. UGA has tied the story in to their "Building the Learning Environment" series, and you can find it here. MagicProject.net, a French website on e-art and cyberculture, has visited our virtual location and written about it, although our French is a little rusty. Still, teleportez-vous seems encouraging and clear enough! Please visit us in Second Life, and keep coming back. Soon we'll have audio labels recorded and posted for several of the paintings, meaning you can walk up, click on them, and hear a 30-second clip about the work and the artist.

In the News

The New York Times' Michael Kimmelman writes about the losses to art and culture in the earthquake in Abruzzo and makes this interesting point:

Italy is not like America. Art isn’t reduced here to a litany of obscene auction prices or lamentations over the bursting bubble of shameless excess. It’s a matter of daily life, linking home and history. Italians don’t visit museums much, truth be told, because they already live in them and can’t live without them. The art world might retrieve a useful lesson from the rubble.

Nick Cave's show at Yerba Buena of "Soundsuits" is covered as well, and eminently worth a look.


Art Daily has picked up the story about the Second Life version of the Georgia Museum of Art. Please, if you're at all techie, consider visiting us there, where you can wander around the galleries, looking at art, and watch a brief movie in the auditorium.

Second Life Launched

The Athens Banner-Herald has a nice piece today on the virtual Georgia Museum of Art in Second Life, which is up and running, although not completely finished (we're still in the process of recording audio labels for some of the works of art on the walls and creating an introductory video to be hosted on our website explaining how to register and what to do to get to the museum). The ABH points out that the Center for Teaching and Learning, which did all the programming for the Second Life museum, will be hosting a public seminar this Friday (April 10) at 2 p.m. in room 250 of the Miller Learning Center on the UGA Second Life island in general but also specifically on the museum, and our own Jenny Williams, media relations coordinator and the woman who's made this project happen, will be on hand to present for part of the seminar. Expect to see a lot more about Second Life as we continue to develop our virtual presence.

Second Life: What Is It?

Unless you happened to be present for one of the great presentations given by our media relations coordinator, Jenny Williams, regarding the Georgia Museum of Art's venture into Second Life, you may not know what, exactly, that is. Jenny passed along the following YouTube video that gives a good introduction to the virtual world and how users outside of individuals (businesses, governments, nonprofits) are using it to further their goals.



This second video gives a nice concrete example of a firm using Second Life:



You can register for an account and find out more about it here. The virtual museum is coming along nicely, and we're working on recording blurbs about some of the works of art on its walls that visitors will be able to listen to as they walk around inside it.