How We Visit Museums in the Web 2.0 Era
James Ensor, "Masks Confronting Death," 1888
The museum, whether small or large, is an equalizer. Millions visit museums each year, hailing from urban, rural, and suburban communities. Visitors come from places foreign and domestic. But once visitors enter through the doors of the museum, they are united in one purpose: to look at art, to learn, and to experience the objects produced by different artists and cultures. Each new room in a museum reveals another mystery, the works of another period of time, the narratives or expressions of another era.
But how do we visit museums? Meaning, when we enter, though we are all there for the same higher purpose, how do we go about seeing the museum and its treasures? How do we carry out the business of actually navigating the sometimes unending hallways and rooms? What tells us to go right instead of left? Intuition? Some, when they visit museums, will always head for the star attractions. In most big museums, you’ll have these rooms. It’s where the famous paintings are and usually where the crowds are. The room at MoMA where Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” hangs is usually congested. Traffic through the room is slowed by the semicircular bulge of admirers gathered around the work. At the Met, the Egyptian rooms are like this, as well as the rooms with the Monets and the Picassos. At The Louvre, the area around the “Mona Lisa” could pass for a Tokyo intersection.
Herein lies one of the problems. For most of visitors, the museum/museum-goer relationship is a one-sided affair. The museum sits, formidable, occasionally overwhelming, and visitors go. The inquisitive explore, and that’s great. But what if our museums helped us sort things out? Helped us see what they have to offer based on what we felt like? What if it gave visitors more than just a map of rooms with names denoting style and era?
This is exactly the question MoMA has addressed in its new summer campaign. Rather than posting the myriad events and exhibitions on its website and letting potential visitors find what they may, the museum established a system which suggests things to see and do based on visiting dates and a brief character analysis. Brief means brief. Aside from available dates, visitors are asked which of the following is their favorite: “Starry Night” (the painting), “Blade Runner” (the Ridley Scott final cut version screens in August), Bossa Nova (music genre), Art Nouveau (art movement), Punk Rock (music genre), la docle vita (the sweet life, and the Fellini film, which showed on July 11), fur-covered tea-cup (the Meret Oppenheim sculpture), or concrete stereo (which may refer to the upcoming Ron Arad exhibition). Based on the answers to these questions, and after a pretty hip looking diagnostic screen, visitors are led to a pie chart listing the museum’s suggested things to see. To the right is a larger list of things to see as well. For example, I picked punk rock and my pie chart included the James Ensor exhibition up at MoMA now, an evening with samba guitar playing, and a gallery talk on Marcel Duchamp, among other events.
The system shows that MoMA is aware of the changing museum landscape and how it’s more important than ever to get people in the door to see lots of different things. But to get them in the door requires a little whimsy and, more often than not, a creative use of technology. In executing this user-friendly, interactive guide, MoMA has positioned itself as a museum ready for the future, and luckily, its artwork, which is comprised mostly of 19- and 20th-century works, backs up this image. In an age of interactivity, the museum has found a way to put information right in front of people, while allowing each visitor to feel unique. Ah, you like Bossa Nova, well, have we got the right things for you!
For big museums, this type of outreach is paramount. Facebook and Twitter have already established that communication and interactivity are the new paradigms of information sharing on the web. It is one thing to put the information on a website so people can see it. It’s quite another to help people find it, to make it interesting and fun. For older cultural institutions, it’s a line to be crossed. Museums that tend to feature works for younger audiences, like MoMA and The Brooklyn Museum and The New Museum, may have it easier when it comes to this. They have crafted an image that is young and hip and they have exhibitions that support this audience. For places like the Met or The Frick, it’s a bigger leap. Yet it’s one that has to be taken. They need to implement creative spaces online for visitors to explore beyond their hallowed halls. Only by taking one step away from the themselves, into the web, will museums allow people to learn more about what they have to offer.
via Summer At MoMA
Brooklyn Museum:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: metmuseum.org
Louvre Museum Official Website
Tate Collection: British art and international modern and contemporary art
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So true, Nick. This could be a transformative time for museums. Many are grappling with the desire to be relevant and meet the needs of audiences that are now expecting dynamic, personalized content with a history of being authoritative pulpits of culture. I think visitors come to museums craving both. This week’s New Yorker has a good article with the Met’s new director. He highlights the museum’s desire to restructure presentations to be more web-like. It’s exciting. In the coming years museums will need to become more creative about integrating and leveraging technology in unique ways to serve their missions. Stay tuned.
Mpaugh,
Thanks for your wise comments. I agree with everything you said. Museums do have to step up to the plate in order to meet the changing demands of their patrons. As cultural institutions, museums have been around for thousands of years, and as the culture around them has changed, they have changed. But these days change moves at an accelerated pace, and museums have to keep up with this. They have the resources and the brains to do this; it’s just a matter of keeping their ears to the ground as well.
In response to another comment. See in context »Interesting piece and an interesting challenge. But there’s another issue that technology can’t necessarily address: attention. If you choose to enter the space of a gallery or museum, you are there, arguably (?) to look, think, reflect — not just gulp culture as you stride past, as so many people do. On a recent visit to MOMA, I was shocked to see how people treated the space as a shopping mall, somewhere to talk and be seen, not a place to sit and absorb the beauty and ideas. Call me a fogey, but if you are only able to really appreciate anything if it’s personalized and interactive, there’s a whole lot you’ll never even consider looking at. Nature, say.
I’d argue for teasing people into museums more seductively, but not having to pander to speeded up consumption because that’s what the rest of the world is doing. Slow, careful attention is actually not such a bad thing, but it takes practice.
Caitlin,
I agree with you, but there has to be a balance found. For museums that can exhibit works of art that utilize new media forms, interactivity, electronic works, works that comment on the state of larger contemporary issues, they have to do that because it will attract new, younger audiences. For museums who tend to attract patrons who go more for works from centuries ago, I think they have to find a novel way to make these works of art attractive to younger people who respond to the methods of communication most used by their peers. And of course, some, old or young, just do not respond to art in a contemplative manner, no matter what you entice them. There is no replacing the emotional impact of a a great work of art, but I think key to the process is getting people in the door, then they are more apt to study things, to take their time. The scene you describe at MoMA is unfortunate. It one part location, tourist attraction. There will always be those people. But at the same time, their admission fees contribute to the museum’s health and they allow other patrons who want to sit and contemplate to continue to do so. Well, it’s them and a lot of generous contributions from donors.
In response to another comment. See in context »But here’s what I really don’t get. Does everything have to be explained or be interactive to attract interest and attention? Can a work of art, in whatever medium, not be enjoyed and appreciated for what it is….without commentary, hands-on participation or guidance? Not to be argumentative, but this seems infantilizing. Part of what growing up has meant for centuries is, in some measure, the ability to meld your own deeply individual, selfish interests into a larger cultural whole, not forever demanding your niche interests and mode of communicating be accommodated…or else.
Crawling back into my cave now.
I don’t take your post as being argumentative at all. Seriously. It’s good to converse over these things. That’s why we are here. So, yes, I do think a work of art can be enjoyed these days without a helping hand, or some kind of trigger that says, here’s how I am relating to you and your generation. I think those bridges exist in our minds without us having to build them. I can stare at a JMW Turner for hours an never get bored with it. However, I do not think it is infantalizing to communicate with younger generations via a method they know to get their attention. Obama did it during his election campaign and it worked. Museums should be doing the same to get some excitement going. About the last part you mentioned, you are right about that too. We do have to join the group in our thinking. It makes for a more interesting tapestry that way. But these are tough times for the arts (and for publishing), so I think there is a need to try something different, to reach out more, be more enticing.
Check out today’s NYT story about the Louvre and how many people race past the art. It speaks to your point, while the writer suggests (how retro is that?) sitting still long enough while on holiday to sketch with his 10-year-old son, the point being to learn to focus attention for more than seconds. It’s got to be a learned skill.
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