Digitisation in Museums

As a new book surveys landmark shows, museums are only just starting to catch up with the digital revolution of the photographic medium.

Around the turn of the century, books dealing with the relatively new art-historical subgenre of exhibition history were far a few between. Since the late 2000s however, as master's programmes in curatorial practice have proliferated, so too have publications on the subject of exhibition history. A recent addition to this category is Alessandra Mauro's book Photoshow; a historical survey of landmark photography exhibitions, ranging from the "International Exhibition of Artistic Photography" in Vienna in the 19th century, to Erik Kessel's 2011 show "24 hrs in Photos".

Aside from the book's descriptive analyses of the exhibitions and their significance, a number of critical and curatorial challenges presented by the medium are addressed. This included an interesting discussion between Quentin Bajac, chief curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and Alessandra Mauro, editorial director of the Forma Foundation for Photography, Milan, on the topic of curating photography in the age of the internet. "I have no doubt that the future lies in the digital museum" Bajac tells Mauro, adding, "by that I don't just mean a website [...] museums have yet to embrace the paperless form of photography, unlike the "public at large" and many artists".

For Bajac, the digital museum of the future will commission work that is meant to be looked at only on screen. (Paradoxically, digitisation allows museums to present the materiality of historic images in a way that is impossible in an exhibition or book). MoMA has started exploring the possibilities presented by digitisation, launching "Object: Photo" in December: an online extension to Bajac's exhibition of the Thomas Walther collection of Modern photography (1909-49). Utilizing technology, "Object: Photo" enables it's visitors to explore - in greater detail - the images by avant-garde photographers Alfred Stieglitz, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, and Berenice Abbott among others. Looking behind the prints, exploring the results of X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, and gaining access to additional information based on new research.

However, this is by no means a marker for change within the museum sector. Rather, an indication of MoMA's progressive intent. Depending on the art institution - their institutional outlook, type of collection, budget, and limited by architecture (to put it very simply) - museums are embracing technology at different rates and on varying levels. For instance, while the Stedelijk museum in Amsterdam launched their interactive Augmented Reality app in 2009, and MoMA allowed an external hacking of their system to create an interactive curation platform, the 'no phone' / 'no photography' in the gallery ban prevailed in the majority of UK art institutions.

It will be interesting to see where Bajac takes digitisation next at MoMA.