New Technologies in Museums

Crossover Summit

Wednesday 3rd November

For those interested in the application of technology in museums and galleries, this is an interesting session being offered as part of Sheffield Documentary Festival:

'There will also be a special showcase of how archives, museums and galleries are exploiting new platforms to enhance public access to launch a new Crossover Lab programme designed to forge collaborations between film-makers, games, web or mobile developers and archive holders.'

Bring-a-thing-athon

The Wellcome Collection have instigated a quite spectacularly named 'bring-a-thing-athon' for their next artist-led exhibition, Things. Intriguingly, you can bring them anything between 12 and 19 October as long as it's smaller than your head (although the small print says you can't lend or donate wet specimens, human remains or explosives. Boring.)

Gallery Wall to Hyde Park Floor, ‘What the flock?!’

Hi everyone I’m Alex and this is my first blog. Where better to start than a trail of stenciled sheep, each titled ‘What the flock?!’ The trail lead me through Hyde park yesterday morning to a full flock of cardboard cutouts stuck on sticks and some hanging in the trees. Projects like these are now a normal site to behold when walking through cities and parks. Over the last 50 years art has slowly moved away from gallery and museum walls, and now pretty much anywhere constitutes an art space. There was no sign of an artist or establishment, which made it ever more intriguing. If I had seen this in a gallery or museum situation my experience would have been somewhat different. The spontaneity of time and place allowed me to look at, think about and make conclusions (or not) about the ‘piece’ without any preconditions. I think seeing art outside gallery walls brings new dimensions to a work as it engages with the environment and the minds of those who would not usually encounter art. All in all it got my brain ticking (which at 9.30 in the morning is quite an achievement) and gave me a cheap giggle on the way to uni. I am excited to see more of this kind of thing next week at Leeds Light Night!

Alex

MGHG Conference in Leeds

The Museums and Galleries History Group Conference, 'Museums and the Market' took place at the new Leeds City Museum last weekend (10th-11th September). It was considered to be a great success by all attendees and speakers! You can read the conference programme in an earlier post on the Blog, but the event was buzzing and there was lots of debate...I just wish it could have gone on longer!
Thanks to all the people that came along, and the speakers (from USA, Germany, Belgium and across the UK)...and of course to our Keynote Speaker, Helen Rees Leahy....I'll load some more pics from the conference soon.....
I'm off to Antwerp later this week, for another Conference/Workshop...this time on the 'Location of Value'.....more anon!
Mark

Curator, there's a butterfly in my fruit

This week I managed to put down my bucket and spade long enough to see what the many and various museums of Brighton and Hove had to offer. The Royal Pavilion was showing a particularly interesting installation/intervention of three thousand black ceramic butterflies by Clare Twomey called 'A Dark Day in Paradise'. It teetered quite efficiently between decorative and distressing, the play between theme and variation was satisfying. I'm not sure of the stability of their significance, I was reminded occasionally of the treasure hunts galleries and museums stage for children in that, paradoxically, concentration can become distracting. Also surprising that they weren't also for sale in the gift shop!

New Design Template...a new Blog-o-sphere

The Blog has been a bit quiet lately, with only the valiant efforts of Rebecca to keep the lamp burning...(Thanks Rebecca!)....I've been a little bit preoccupied, writing some stuff I'm supposed to be delivering soon...(more anon.).
But anyway, I thought, in order to breath some more life into the embers I'd redesign the webpage...(well, it's more of a pret-a-webpage, rather than me actually fiddling about with photo-shop...and that comment demonstrates that I'm really not up-to-date with these techy things.....)...so what do you think?...or should we go back to the old design?

Anyway...thanks Rebecca for a really provocative post...and you're right, these 'traditional' museum displays are quite romantic...(in a positive sense, I mean....as in the poetics of history....)..and are part of the heritage of museum displays..maybe there should be a new body to protect museums from being re-displayed?....maybe we should develop a Grading for Museums...as they do for Architecture etc...?

More blogging to come...
Mark

In Praise of Independent Museums

I think this might be the best one room, one pound museum I've come across on my recent travels. I thought these dioramas from Marazion Museum were really worth sharing. It's easy to be disparaging, but museums that lie outside centralised funding structures and formal accreditation can perhaps pursue more interesting, or eccentric, or alarming, modes of classification and conservation. At their best, independent museums seem to disrupt the ways in which the museum professional is figured, even revealing their efforts as just a little turgid. Or perhaps I'm being unintentionally condescending in implying an enthusiastic amateurishness at work, in a similar way to the contemporary perception of 'outsider art'?