Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Monday, February 11, 2008
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
A question posted on a museum listserv asked what to do when a museum board feared digitizing the collection because it imagined this was primarily a beacon for ebay thieves.
My response:
I have worked at Point Elliceand the Canadian government, in an effort to preserve what is there, digitized the entire collection. It is a mode of _preservation_. The reality is that all information that is not digitized in 2008 and onwards has a diminishing value in the Western world. This is especially true of museums and history where interpretation into online forms and networks is really the question. So it is not if but how that looms large.
See the crowdsourcing/Flickr discussion on this list for more info re: how use online resources to get research and organization work done.
I honestly don't even understand the safety part. Your board honestly believe thieves use the internet to plan robberies. I think the risks are way way way lower than the benefits. I mean the Lourve is online (http://www.louvre.fr/llv/commun/home.jsp?bmLocale=en) and they have an extremely valuable collection. Ebay is not a pawn shop of museum thieves.
I know that this is the huge struggle for museums, especially regional ones, the webdivide. I encounter it at the magazine I write for as well. Moving from print to digital is a huge hurdle. But it is no longer something that _will_ happen- it has happened. If you are not online, in a very meaningful sense to a vast number of your audience, you don't really exist.
My response:
I have worked at Point Elliceand the Canadian government, in an effort to preserve what is there, digitized the entire collection. It is a mode of _preservation_. The reality is that all information that is not digitized in 2008 and onwards has a diminishing value in the Western world. This is especially true of museums and history where interpretation into online forms and networks is really the question. So it is not if but how that looms large.
See the crowdsourcing/Flickr discussion on this list for more info re: how use online resources to get research and organization work done.
I honestly don't even understand the safety part. Your board honestly believe thieves use the internet to plan robberies. I think the risks are way way way lower than the benefits. I mean the Lourve is online (http://www.louvre.fr/llv/commun/home.jsp?bmLocale=en) and they have an extremely valuable collection. Ebay is not a pawn shop of museum thieves.
I know that this is the huge struggle for museums, especially regional ones, the webdivide. I encounter it at the magazine I write for as well. Moving from print to digital is a huge hurdle. But it is no longer something that _will_ happen- it has happened. If you are not online, in a very meaningful sense to a vast number of your audience, you don't really exist.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Bogota opens 'museum of laziness'
Lazy museum
A museum dedicated to laziness has opened in Colombia's capital, Bogota.
The event features sofas placed in front of televisions, hammocks and beds - anything associated with the avoidance of work.
The idea is to get people during the holiday season to think about laziness and its opposite, extreme work, and perhaps reach some balanced conclusion.
Visitors will have to shed their laziness long enough to get to the museum soon - it closes in a week.
A museum dedicated to laziness has opened in Colombia's capital, Bogota.
The event features sofas placed in front of televisions, hammocks and beds - anything associated with the avoidance of work.
The idea is to get people during the holiday season to think about laziness and its opposite, extreme work, and perhaps reach some balanced conclusion.
Visitors will have to shed their laziness long enough to get to the museum soon - it closes in a week.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
On Continuums:
An excerpt from
They Thought They Were Free
The Germans, 1933-45
Milton Mayer
But Then It Was Too Late
"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.
"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.
"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.
They Thought They Were Free
The Germans, 1933-45
Milton Mayer
But Then It Was Too Late
"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.
"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.
"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Monday, December 31, 2007
Museum of Bad Art: Framer framed?
UNSEEN FORCES #3
Love Is Being Out On a Limb Together
Oil on board by Unknown
21" x 24.5"
Japanese in its simplicity. American in its text. This valentine in blue hangs in MOBA as a tribute to the poster poems of the seventies.
http://www.museumofbadart.org/collection/unseen-3.html
Love Is Being Out On a Limb Together
Oil on board by Unknown
21" x 24.5"
Japanese in its simplicity. American in its text. This valentine in blue hangs in MOBA as a tribute to the poster poems of the seventies.
http://www.museumofbadart.org/collection/unseen-3.html
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