Art in Unusual Spaces

MA Programme visit to London

Hello All,

thanks to all of those who managed to make it to London during Reading Week, I'm sure you'll all agree that we had a great time. The visits to the museums were stimulating and it was fantastic that Kim Sloan, Curator of the Enlightenment Galleries at the British Museum was able to speak to us about the rationale and the process of constructing the display and interpretation....here's a few of the students relaxing in the Great Court at the British Museum after some hard thinking!
We are off to Manchester this week, to the Manchester Art Gallery and the Imperial War Museum North.....
more anon...
Mark

The Talking Walls

I received an email from a friend about two months ago, telling me about a project she's involved in at the moment called The Talking Walls®. Eleni, another former art historian, is now taking her masters in Marketing at Southampton and has been helping her tutor develop this new programme.

The Talking Walls® merges the disciplines of art history, museology and marketing. Designed specifically for museums, galleries, heritage sites and historical buildings the aim of the project is to create a 3D tour of the spaces. The tour will then be made available in the form of a multimedia application, which the visitor will then be able to download onto a hand-held device such as their phone. The user should then be able to personalise the content in order to suit their own interests and learning preferences. According to the project manager, the user will be able to 'visually explore and navigate where they are visiting' and to 'learn[ing] about the the history of a specific place/space/object, and how this has changed over time.'

The project is currently being trialled at Beaulieu Abbey, Hampshire and a pilot preview is available at http://www.thetalkingwalls.co.uk/ When I first checked this out about 6 weeks ago the whole thing was fairly disappointing but having a look recently, it's obvious that the project has progressed and I'm sad to say but it's slowly growing on me...that said, I'm still undecided about how I feel about this overall project....check it out and let me know what you think....

Mobile Museums

The V&A have recently published an app called Tipu's iTiger, a simulation of an object in their collection that allows a distanced psudo-interaction with it's keyboard. There's a great video the 'real' noise it makes here. I'm struggling to decide what I think about this one, perhaps it does the work of imaginative projection when handling isn't possible, but there is something odd about digital mediation and the way in which a single object is given primacy above the rest of the collection. It might be an extension of the increasing use of iPod Touches (is that the plural?!) instead of audio guides in museums and galleries, but perhaps that's another thread.

2 day symposium

Hi everyone,

I thought this looked interesting, wondering if anybody is going along?

The Horniman Museum and the School of MuseumStudies at the University of Leicester 2 day Conference
Museum Curators and Communities:Embedded Approaches to Participation, Collaboration, Inclusion.26 – 27 November 2009

See http://www.le.ac.uk/ms/profdev/curcom.html

Cheers,
Sibyl.

'Questions of Collecting' Talk Series- SAB Gallery

The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery will be hosting several speakers speakers on themes of collecting over the coming months, in a series entitled 'Questions of Collecting' supported by the Centre for Critical Studies in Museums, Galleries and Heritage.

Coming up at the Gallery this month are

Tuesday, 10 November, 6pm: 'Collecting Contemporary Photography' - Gill Howard (Pavilion)

Tuesday, 24 November, 6pm: 'Collecting the Avant-Garde: Lascelles and Fawkes as patrons in the early nineteenth century' - Prof. David Hill (University of Leeds)

Free tea and coffee provided beforehand, and plenty of time for discussion/debate following! Hope to see you all there soon.