Arianna Huffington wrote a thoughtful post this week on the challenge museums face in balancing new technologies with preserving the analog wonder of the museumgoing experience.
“It’s great to see institutions dedicated to what is often seen as elitist high art engaging with the bottom-up energy of the web,” she writes. “But if museums forget their DNA and get their heads turned by every new tech hottie that shimmies by, they will undercut the point of their existence. Too much of the wrong kind of connection can actually disconnect us from an aesthetic experience.”
It’s all about finding the right balance, of course. I visit museum websites and tap into their Facebook pages and Twitter feeds to learn more about the artists or events they’re featuring, but when I visit in person, I seek silence and contemplation, not a community of voices.
I prefer to attend exhibits alone and I never use audio tours. If I’m really interested, I’ll visit twice–once to read the wall text, once to focus on the collection. I’ve found the balance that works for me.
At the same time, I appreciate museums that are innovating in new media, to draw people into exhibits and expand community reach. Done right, it can strengthen a museum’s mission.
This list of 41 examples from the blog Know Your Own Bone shows what a dynamic space this is. It prompted me to think about which D.C. museums are using new media in interesting ways.
So, on the last day of 2010, a list of five best practices that stood out this year:
1. Best blog content: It isn’t glitzy, but the Smithsonian Collections blog does a great job of opening up the institution’s vaults to expose artifacts you might never see on public view. I especially love the photography posts, like this one about a family photo album donated to the Freer-Sackler by Iranian author Azar Nafisi.
2. Best slideshow: Last fall, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum sponsored a trip to Sudan to “bear witness” against the genocide there. The slideshow that resulted from the trip, featuring moving photos by Washington Post photographer Lucian Perkins, was an effective way to tell Sudan’s story and amplify the museum’s mission.
3. Best use of Facebook: The Hirshhorn’s daily FB “visitor snapshots” are just plain fun — combination personal backstory, incisive art criticism, and off-beat humor. Though they’ve profiled museumgoers from across the country, the Nov. 17 squirrel cameo (and an even better follow-up, Dec. 22) had to be the year’s masterstroke. Like them; you’ll see.
4. Best iPhone app: Not something I would use, but kudos to the National Museum of Natural History for converting one of its most popular in-museum activities, the MEanderthal photo booth, into a mobile app. The app allows users to morph photos of themselves into neanderthals. Kids love it.
5. Best use of video: I have to give this one to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, for incorporating consistently interesting exhibition videos on its website. They’re stylishly shot and feature the right ratio of curator-artist commentary (clearly a low tolerance for dull talking heads). This Chuck Close video was the year’s winner.
