Selfie Museum

The "selfie" is now so popular that the term has even been added to the dictionary, and there are tools available to improve your "selfie game," such as the selfie stick. Many museums and tourist attractions worldwide have banned selfie sticks in order to protect paintings, individual privacy and overall visitor experience (for example, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Palace of Versailles, the Colosseum in Rome, the Smithsonian Museums and many more). 

One museum in Manila, Philippines, is approaching the selfie stick differently. Art in Island lets visitors interact with the art by touching it and taking as many pictures as they want. As its Facebook page says, "Whenever you visit an art museum, you are always expected to just look around quietly.  You are not allowed to touch anything nor take pictures. You don't even have a single proof of being there. Art in Island allows visitors to interact and have fun with the art pieces. You can take as much pictures and videos you want! Here in Art in Island, we want you to BE PART OF THE ART." As this museum is the first of its kind, it is being called the "world's first selfie museum."

Here are some examples of the visitors' pictures.

Photo by: Art in Island

Photo by: Art in Island

Photo by: Art in Island

Photo by: Art in Island 

Museum Manners

The Chicago Tribune ran an article last week called "Museum Manners" on how to behave yourself in a museum, and, while we know you all have Judith Martin's entire library of books, a reminder never hurts:

With the assistance of an etiquette expert and a collection of museum employees, who, trust us, have seen it all, we have compiled a brief guide to museum manners in the age of iPhones, bucket-size coffee drinks and handbags you could pitch a tent in.

The good news is that Chicago's museum employees say you are pretty close to perfect just the way you are. They don't care what you're wearing as long as it's not a backpack. There is nothing you could say about their exhibits that would offend them; they're just happy to have started a conversation. They're flattered that you want to take their picture.

. . . Museum manners, however, have to take into account one fairly unique circumstance. "You're dealing with priceless objects. It's one of the few places that is true."

Which is why, at the Art Institute of Chicago, public affairs director Erin Hogan says, pens, flash photography and backpacks are unwelcome. Also, she says, "we are not a huge fan of pointing," which can lead to jabbing, which runs the risk of unintentional contact with artwork.

Our favorite sentence in the article? "Jeffrey Arnett, manager of development and marketing for the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago says he is frequently forced to mediate the conflict between modern visitors' hydration needs and the more arid requirements of a photography collection."

Manners and Snobisme

We're a bit late on Timothy Aubry's article "How to Behave in an Art Museum," which appeared online in Paper Monument, but it happened to catch our eye this morning after a discussion about ill-behaved children in museums. Aubry uses Pipilotti Rist's exhibition at MoMA as a vehicle to discuss the complex class negotiations involved in visiting a temple of high culture. Should we be intimidated or not? And where, exactly, is the line between enthusiastic participation and treating the museum too much like the mall? Is slouching acceptable? How loud should you talk? How fast should you walk?

There’s a difference, however, between the previous generation of strivers and ours. For both, trying too hard to show off your expertise is a dead giveaway that you haven’t got as much status as you’d like. But in previous decades there was still a belief that those who took advantage of inexpensive museum fares, public libraries, and so forth were elevating themselves. For my generation, say those born around or after 1968, the sign that you’re at the top of the hierarchy is a readiness to acknowledge that the high ground you’ve come to occupy isn’t actually higher than any other ground.

This is very American. Our purported populism has always made us wary of those claiming, by virtue of their position or education, to know better than everyone else. One thing that’s changed, though, is that this populism, often disguised as the heady skepticism of continental theory, has managed to sneak into the very bastion of elitism, into the places where the aspiring intellectual first learns how to be a pompous snob: academic humanities departments. The institutionalization of deconstruction, identity politics, and Marxist criticism, in other words, has replaced the pious attitudes of previous eras with a different set of now-habitual postures: distrust of the canon and the institutions that preserve it. Whatever their merits, these frameworks have created enough ambivalence to make art appreciation a vexing enterprise for a generation of well-educated museumgoers. Because if you don’t believe in high culture, then what are you doing at a museum?

The closer we get to the top, it seems, the more likely we are to believe, or pretend to believe, that the ladder we’ve been climbing leads nowhere—is meaningful only to those who stare at its innumerable rungs from below. Self-improvement, we discover, is a sham. We were better off when we were just kids, when we knew what we liked effortlessly, when our passions were not learned. And so we end up in MoMA’s romper room, doing somersaults on the carpet, hoping to return to a state of innocence.

Student night at GMOA (Reopening Remixed) was a great example of this network of issues and, for the most part, they seemed to work out correctly. Yes, there was a lot more texting in the galleries than usual, but what was marvelous to see was how the 2,053 kids who turned up didn't just treat the event as a chance to grab some free food and talk to their friends. They talked about the art with one another and interacted enthusiastically with the label copy. When asked not to photograph certain works, they were disappointed because they loved the art and wanted to document it. There is, clearly, a sweet spot where appreciation of high culture and an open, welcoming attitude can mesh, but it's not easy to hit, and it probably varies depending on the visitor.

Asset-Stripping

We've written on this blog many times and linked to many an article about deaccessioning, a museum issue with which our director, Bill Eiland, is very involved on professional committees. So it was interesting to see this column on Spiked that argues against the practice of deaccessioning to provide operating support (or, indeed, anything but new accessions) from a perspective of experience with it. Tiffany Jenkins points out that there is nothing forbidding such practices in the United Kingdom, which means it seems to happen more frequently, despite outcry. Here's the money quote, which puts her argument succinctly and well:

There is good reason for this caution: to protect the institution from the vagaries of fashion, politics and financial pressures. Museums are not businesses and it is not their job to sell off their treasures to mend the roof or pay the electricity bill. Their purpose is to conserve, research and exhibit objects and art for future generations. They should think of their collections as important artefacts and art from past human civilisations, not as objects with a price tag.

Google Goggles' New Acquisition

(Picture from www.guardian.co.uk)

Plink has joined Google Goggles! For those who don’t know what in the world Google Goggles is let alone Plink, have no fear: this new program might intrigue and fascinate even the most ardent traditionalists or at least spark debate about the role of docents and the gradual phasing out of basic human communication. In essence, Plink Art is a smartphone application created by Mark Cummins and James Philbin that lets its user take a picture of any well-known work of art and immediately discern its title, artist, which museum or collector houses it, etc. After the work is identified, the application provides a link to allposters.com, in case of adoration and absolute urge to acquire a likeness of the work.

Philbin explains how Plink's technology works: “‘It picks out repeatable elements from the image you take and comes out with a statistical representation of them.’ That process works even at different angles and different lighting conditions" Cummins adds "You can start doing some really interesting things when you have recommendation data, like personalized tours based on your favourite paintings. Museums are very interested in social sharing and Facebook."

Google Goggles, Plinkart’s buyer, is a subsidiary group of Google that works to develop instant recognition programs. That is, you take a picture with your phone of whatever object you want to find out more information on—the application currently recognizes wine, logos, places, artwork, business cards, books, and landmarks—and the application will give you a compiled list of stats, prices, and general information regarding the object or place.

Although you need a smartphone for the Plinkart application (the Google Goggles program is limited to Android phones), the concept is still pretty incredible and is most certainly an idea to watch. Both teams will be working together to develop a search engine that identifies and researches more and more of the objects, scenes, and people that make up our surroundings.

Hard Times

Most articles that have appeared over the past year or so detailing the financial straits of museums and, as a result, their turn to permanent collection shows (and it is an entire genre of articles by this point) have focused on the positives of such a move, but the Wall Street Journal's "Picasso to the Rescue" takes the unusual tack of pointing out some negatives.

Exhibits drawn entirely from permanent collections can sometimes feel incomplete or unsatisfying, museum observers say. "Very few museums have got a deep enough collection to pull this off convincingly," says David Gordon, the former director of the Milwaukee Art Museum who now works as a museum consultant. He adds that the Met's extensive holdings make it one of the possible exceptions.

It's unclear whether Gordon is speaking specifically about blockbuster permanent collection shows like the Metropolitan Museum of Art's upcoming Picasso exhibition or generally. He has a far better point if he means the former than the latter, which would suggest that museums shouldn't even bother with permanent collections beyond what's on the walls at all times. Author Candace Jackson mentions one reason permanent collection shows can be valuable: namely, fragility.

Most museums display less than 10% of the artwork in their collection at any given time. The works in storage often include a mix of museum-worthy pieces that can be pulled out for special exhibitions, and others that aren't fit for public viewing because they are fragile, damaged or simply no longer considered examples of great art. The Met has 34 Picasso paintings, but usually shows only 25 to 28 of them at a time. The artist's drawings and prints are generally not on view at the museum, because they are more fragile, but they will be included in the spring exhibit.

She also uses an exhibition at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis as a positive example of a creative permanent collection show:

Though not every museum has a closetful of Picassos to draw from, institutions across the country have come up with creative ways to put together shows from their own storerooms. At the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, museum-goers can take another look at the museum's permanent collection—using binoculars. The "Benches & Binoculars" exhibit features a salon-style gallery, hung floor to ceiling with works from of the museum's collection, like "Office at Night" by Edward Hopper. Visitors are encouraged to view the works through binoculars. Chief curator Darsie Alexander says the exhibition was meant to be "experimental, maybe even light-hearted," and to her surprise, has become one of the most popular galleries in the museum, requiring additional security guards because of the crowds.

The quote from Gordon actually follows this paragraph immediately, which makes it even more (potentially) insulting. Not all exhibitions aim to be comprehensive, and it's doubtful that even the Met's will be. Part of the appeal of permanent collection shows comes from seeing how a collection is built, not from rehashing the same old masterpieces once again, and these shows can be interestingly focused in a way larger exhibitions rarely are.

Voices of the Future

The Center for the Future of Museums has launched a program called “Voices of the Future” to encourage a discussion about the future of museums. CFM is asking for “creative, innovative thinkers” from diverse backgrounds and fields to “capture and share their hopes and dreams” in five-minute videos or interviews. These segments will be uploaded to YouTube, and if you don’t have access to a camera, CFM will mail you an interview kit or you can submit written testimonials.

If you are having trouble organizing your thoughts or just need a push to get the talk rolling, CFM has provided a list of suggested interview questions. You can also get an idea of how to structure an interview by checking out the videos already posted on the CFM YouTube channel.

CFM is an initiative of the American Association of Museums (AAM) created to help museums grow beyond traditional boundaries so that they can serve a changing society; it takes the form of a think tank and research and design lab meant to produce creative solutions to growing concerns in the museum community. Members of AAM identified the top four challenges facing the future of museums as: the need to increase public funding, staying informed on changes in technology as well as securing funding to implement new technology in museums, finding qualified and interested individuals to take up the mantle of leadership among museum professionals, and maintaining relevance within the community during times of rapid social and cultural change.

Economic Recovery for Art Museums

Not that the Art Newspaper isn't correct in that things are starting to look up, a bit, for art museums, but the focus on 25 leading institutions means a focus on 25 of the wealthier institutions in the country. The size of their various endowments means that a percentage drop means a bigger number on which to focus, as in this opening paragraph:

A year ago, with forecasters predicting another Great Depression, museum directors were slashing operating budgets as the value of endowments fell by at least 15%. The results: cancelled exhibitions, redundancy notices and pay freezes for those who survived (a few directors voluntarily cut their own salaries). Even the wealthiest museum was affected. The J. Paul Getty Trust was forced to make a 24% cut in employees, as the value of its endowment shrank to $4.4bn in June 2009, from $5.9bn a year before, a fall of 25%.

On the other hand, 1) having $4.4 billion at all seems like rather a lot compared to the amounts much smaller institutions have on hand, and 2) when the stock market recovers, those endowments and institutions seem to have an easier time recovering. Again, it's good news, but please don't forget the difficulties of smaller museums, where laying off staff and cutting programs can have a bigger impact, proportionately.

AAM Strategic Plan: The Spark

The American Association of Museums (AAM) has just released its strategic plan for 2010-2015, titled "The Spark" (you can download it at that link) and consisting of four goals: excellence, advocacy, sustainability and alignment. The plan is brief (a four-page pdf) and outlines beliefs and values as well as goals. AAM says these will guide "decision making and will drive the Association’s behavior and activities into the future [as well as articulating] a vision for museums, the field, and AAM. We have reworked our mission to highlight our strong commitment to leadership, advocacy, collaboration and service." Those goals may sound pretty abstract, but they're focused more in the document itself.

Excellence = "Develop clearly defined levels of excellence accessible to the entire museum field and recognized by the public."

Advocacy = "Promote the value of museums."

Sustainability = "Build a financially stable and sustainable association in order to provide the best possible service and leadership to the field."

Alignment = "Align internal and external resources, culture, and structures with our strategic plan, vision, values and beliefs."

Each of these is then further broken down into even more concrete steps, such as "Communicate museum standards to the field and to the general public" under "Excellence."

Take a look at the plan and let us know 1) whether you think these are the right goals to pursue and beliefs to espouse, and 2) any ideas you have for making those goals reality and those beliefs more visible. We'd love to hear from you.

Important Read

CultureGrrl has an update on the deaccessioning situations at Fisk and Randolph College that all parties who care about the future of university museums should read. The short version is that, even though both institutions have stabilized financially to some extent, the sale of works is now seen as an option, and it's hard to stuff the genie back in the bottle.

Museum Expansions

Prompted by an article in the New York Times that declares in its headline, "In the Arts, Bigger Buildings May Not Be Better," CultureGrrl has some good thoughts on the matter, pointing out some inaccuracies and some crucial cases overlooked, as well as taking a more measured stance. Yes, many arts institutions seem to build huge structures on a whim, focusing on sexy architecture and the potential of increased tourism more than actual needs, and perhaps we're particularly sensitive to criticisms of this sort, being right smack in the middle of a building project ourselves (a desperately needed expansion!), but the article does seem like the kind of not particularly thoughtful questioning of what the journalist perceives as received wisdom. Here's the key paragraph from Rosenbaum's response on her blog:

Nevertheless, museum expansion isn't an evil to be avoided, as Robin's article seems to suggest. It just needs to be done for the right reasons and with a secure financial underpinning. That means not only knowing in advance where the necessary construction money is coming from, but also amassing the endowment funds required to cover the increased operating costs of the expanded facility. If you don't know where that money is coming from, you need to delay the project. There's nothing wrong with that.

Reasonable Middle Ground

We don't know if you've been following all the weighing in over the past week or so with regard to the New Museum's upcoming exhibition drawn from Dakis Joannou's collection, sparked by Tyler Green (who has all of the relevant links, including to the recent front-page New York Times story on the subject), but Richard Lacayo, in Time, has a very measured response to all of it (Green even points out that he agrees with Lacayo), including the following important point:

I've written about these single collector shows before and as I said then I don't see the point of an absolutist position against them. Especially for smaller museums and museums outside the biggest cites, collector shows are a way to offer visitors a look at work the museum could never otherwise offer them. Obviously, the same could be said for a show in a larger museum. But those institutions, which are more likely to be on the circuit for big traveling shows, have other options for bringing in works from outside.

Speaking of complicated museum issues...

Lee Rosenbaum, a.k.a., CultureGrrl, cornered Timothy Rub, current director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, who was previously director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, about his former institution's court battle and attempt to redirect funds designated for acquisitions to construction of its new wing, due to a downturn in the stock market. Yes, it's a complicated financial situation, and his time was limited in this case, but it would have been nice to see him explain a little better the details of why he and his board felt these particular decisions had to be made rather than saying,

My point to you is it's a really interesting and very complex calculation that has to do with things as varied as bond ratings and cash flow from pledges that we currently have or that we might anticipate in the future. It has to do with bonding capacity and with calculating the cost of capital. It has to do with the institution's willingness to take on risk in terms of future obligations. It has to do with whether you resolve to pay for something now as opposed to having the institution pay for it much later.

At any rate, you should go read the rest of the interview.

Different Thoughts on Brandeis

We meant to link to this last week, but Rudolph Weingartner, former dean of arts and sciences at Northwestern, wrote a column for Inside Higher Ed on the deaccessioning at the Rose Museum that presents the other side of the issue. Weingartner makes no bones about where he's coming from, even early in the piece:

Understand that my print collection went to Northwestern because I had been dean of arts and sciences there for thirteen years. Understand also that regarding this issue, my experience as dean trumps my love of art and that is why I disagree with the views expressed in numerous articles in The New York Times and one this month in Inside Higher Ed called “Avoiding the Next Brandeis."

He argues that university museums do little to promote relationships with the rest of campus, writing

But why should they be so regarded when, by my admittedly not systematic observations, most of those museums do nothing or very little to deserve to be so regarded? As dean, I had to bludgeon the Block Gallery to present an exhibit of the work of Northwestern’s prize painters, William Conger, Ed Paschke and James Valerio. (This was before the Gallery was transformed into a Museum and long before its current director, David Robertson, came to Northwestern.) Art history departments are mostly held at arm's length by campus museums who prize their (inappropriate) autonomy. Mostly, the museums don’t even know how to communicate with other than art faculty on campus.

But should deans have such an influence over what the university museum presents? Doesn't that tread on curatorial independence? Weingartner's other major argument is that these museums need not own the works they present, that temporary exhibitions would do just as well to promote the study of works of art:

It is excellent, therefore, that this cluster of issues is being looked at. In my view, however, the goals sought by the task force for campus art museums are not likely to be realized by means of works of arts owned by museums, but rather by means of exhibits brought in and often locally curated for specific pedagogic purposes.

But having works on display for a limited time and inaccessible after that period by necessity limits their study. A permanent collection is a huge asset to a campus, not to mention that the acquisitions of university museums are naturally different in intent than the acquisitions of private institutions, private collectors or galleries. We understand where Weingartner is coming from, and, again, he admits his bias early on, but we also respectfully disagree with many aspects of his argument.

Museum Issues

Inside Higher Ed has a good article titled "Avoiding the Next Brandeis." It calls attention to the ACUMG petition we informed you of a while back, which you can still sign if it slipped your mind, and gets a lot of good material from David Alan Robertson, president of ACUMG.

He noted that campus museums are in an unusual situation in that many of them receive substantial funds from non-college sources and yet report to colleges. At Northwestern, he said, about 35 percent of the annual budget for the museum comes from the university, another 18 percent from endowment funds designated for the museum, and the rest is from a variety of source -- gifts, grants and so forth. Much of the outside funding comes with goals relating to the public, and there can be "a tension between the museums' public responsibilities and their university responsibilities," he said.

The new task force has already held meetings with two of the regional accrediting agencies for higher education, trying to impress upon those bodies that museums shouldn't be viewed as extras, but as "teaching institutions and research institutions" that are central, Robertson said.

Another strategy being discussed is encouraging colleges to define the financial exigency plans -- or what they would do in a severe financial crisis -- and to make the case that museums should not be the first institutions to be closed, Robertson said.

In less serious news, you may also want to check out this New York Times article on the spread of the verb "curate."

For many who adopt the term, or bestow it on others, “it’s an innocent form of self-inflation,” said John H. McWhorter, a linguist and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. “You’re implying that there is some similarity between what you do and what someone with an advanced degree who works at a museum does.”

We actually try not to use "curate" as a verb--it's a pet peeve of our director's.

An Update on the Rose Museum

The advisory committee formed at Brandeis University to make recommendations on the future of the Rose Museum has issued its report, and here's the Boston Globe's summary of it. As everyone notes, the report recommends that the university keep the Rose open but takes no stand on whether or not it is acceptable to sell any of the museum's collection, which, of course, is the central issue here.

To Free or Not to Free

Whenever we read about Bank of America's Museums on Us program, which offers free admission to a growing list of museums one weekend a month to account-holders, we're a little envious of the museums that can brag about being on its list. The Georgia Museum of Art is always free, so we can't participate, but Art Daily did run an interesting article about free admission to museums and what it means to the public. Museums in the UK have had no admission fees since 2001, and the Art Fund has been studying the results of that decision (its publication is available here as a pdf). The implementation of free admission has led to a doubling in the number of visitors to museums in the UK, and it makes the public feel they have a stake in the collections, but other barriers remain to visitorship increasing still more, such as a sense of exclusion or anxiety about a lack of knowledge. Free is great, but it's not the only answer.

GMOA in the News

We would be remiss if we failed to mention the fact that, in a recent Wall Street Journal article titled "How to Sell a Museum Masterpiece," our director, William U. Eiland, was quoted. The article, by Daniel Grant, focuses on the criticism directed at the Orange County Museum of Art's recent sale of 18 California Impressionist paintings to a private collector in Laguna Beach, not, in this case, because of their being deaccessioned at all (procedures were followed there), but because of the way in which they were sold. The guidelines set forth by the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), for which Eiland chairs the professional issues committee, do not require sale at public auction, and every situation is different, but, as Eiland put it, "At auction, there is no gerrymandering the price, no hocus pocus." We recommend you read the article, which is useful in the way it explains one of the many thorny issues of museum ethics, and we extend a high five to our fearless leader.

Image Rights and Digital Databases

Lynn Boland sent this along last week:

Just in case there were still any questions about the positive correlation between having more images of works of art from the collection on the website, and on-site museum attendance--not to mention the myriad of other benefits--this IMLS-funded study should put them to rest. From the press release: “The Internet is not replacing in-person visits to libraries and museums and may actually increase onsite use of libraries and museums. There is a positive relationship between Internet use and in-person visits to museums and public libraries.” The report is called Interconnections, IMLS National Study on the Use of Museums, Libraries and the Internet and you can reach it by clicking here (there's also a snazzy PowerPoint presentation you can download).

We've also been reading the April 2009 issue of MuseumVIEWS (an organization that focuses on small and mid-sized museums), which addresses the issue of image rights in its cover article (not yet posted online) by Christine Sundt, who writes:

In the longstanding and fruitful partnership between art museums and publishers, tighter controls and escalating costs during the last decade have brought about frustration, confusion, and headaches for both parties. The licensing of art images--and the attendant costs and restrictions--has become a burden, especially in today's economy, when both museums and publishers are facing severe financial constraints and shortfalls.

Sundt comes down strongly on the side of open access and Creative Commons licensing, as well as in favor of digitizing collections, which can promote the easy and inexpensive distribution of images. She points out:

. . . the effect of the scaled pricing has been to pressure publishers into reproducing works of art in small black-and-white format rather than in reasonably sized color prints, to print smaller editions (at higher retail prices), and to pare down the image programs of their art books. The result has been less attractive, more expensive art books and fewer of them--surely not the aim of the publisher, the author, or the museum.

Sometimes a museum's fee is inconsistent. When, for example, the institution generously waives or reduces fees for scholars or nonprofit presses, it encourages the publication of scholarly works for arts professionals. But, in maintaining regular fees for other non-scholarly projects, it discourages "gateway" books such as children's books, textbooks, and beautifully produced gift books, all of which are vital in bringing new audiences to art. . . . What could be the alternatives to the traditional criteria for scaling fees? To waive fees for all mission-driven uses (books, journal articles, and educational Web sites) while increasing fees for other uses (note cards, tote bags, coasters, aprons, advertising campaigns, and the like). Or, to consider other ways to generate revenue for the museum that do not place the burden on images and scholarship.

We're doing our best to move into the digital age, but the issues are complex, and there are always new wrinkles that occur.