ideas + images

curated by sierra gonzalez 

"It's time we Met" on Flickr

The photographs for the latest ad campaign at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York aren't from the museum's archives or commissioned photographers--they're submissions on Flickr from average museum-goers, and they're causing quite a stir.

As with many photos culled from Flickr for commercial use, professional (or aspiring) photographers are raising concerns over fair compensation for the photographs used in the "It's time we Met" campaign.  The comments on the NYTimes Arts blog covering the story neglect the fact that the photos are part of a voluntary contest that requires photographers to license their submissions (using Creative Commons) for use. While I don't think permissions is a problem, the campaign brings up some interesting points:

What will the quality of the museum visit be like with visitors snapping photos left and right? Will this inspire (or even condone?) visitors posing like Greek statues for the sake of a good photo? Does this lessen the respect for the art, or does it encourage visitors to take a closer look at what they're seeing?

How does this change the Met's relationship with photographers? Some professional photographers see the contest as a penny-pinching way to grab marketing creative and are resentful of the museum's perceived lack of support for their industry. (On the other hand, as a non-profit, the Met's advertising budget may require cost-saving tactics.) Other photographers are grateful that the Met has embraced picture-taking in most of its galleries, since many museums do not allow photographing art (for various reasons).

What does this mean for museums on the web? The Met's embrace of social media shows that they're keeping tabs of communication trends and open to learning from their visitors. (The museum's participation--along with over a dozen other art institutions--in Wikipedia Loves Art is another great example.) Is online content for museum websites on its way to being user-driven?

Filed under  //   advertising   creative commons   flickr   marketing   museum   photography  

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Saved by Science: Behind the scenes at AMNH


Waiting Room, Justine Cooper, 2005.

As part of Seed's birthday celebration for Charles Darwin, Carl Zimmer went behind the scenes at the American Natural History Museum in New York to look at the history of collecting science collections. Justine Cooper's accompanying photographs capture some haunting vignettes of the museum behind the curtain.*

*I had the Wizard of Oz in mind when I wrote that, but now it reminds me of Charles Peale's self portrait that reveals his personal collection--America's first museum--behind a red curtain:

The Artist in His Museum, Charles Willson Peale, 1822.

Filed under  //   behind the scenes   museum   new york   photography   science  

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Stimulating the arts

Are you suggesting that somehow if you work in [the arts], it isn't real when you lose your job, your mortgage or your health insurance? We're trying to treat people who work in the arts the same way as anybody else.

On Friday, Wisconsin Representative David Obey (a Democrat, unsurprisingly) successfully argued on the House floor to include the arts in the stimulus plan.  Though the earlier plan that passed through the Senate did not include any arts funding, the plan that Obama will sign includes $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts, which would be able to pass the money along to museums, theaters and art centers. (Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma had tried to bar these organizations from receiving stimulus money in an amendment that lumped them with casinos, golf courses, and swimming pools as "wasteful, non-stimulative" projects.)

While arts funding has long been a point of contention and a part of the culture war between Democrats and Republicans, the arts industry provides 6 million jobs, $30 billion in tax revenue and $166 billion in annual economic impact; it's also at a 12.5% unemployment rate, according to the NYTimes article that reported NEA's stimulus funding. As in other sectors, the full impact of the current economy on the arts is still unknown, but likewise, the stimulus funding—though it won't be a quick fix—will be a step towards recovery.

Filed under  //   art   economy   museum   politics  

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273 seconds of silence

What is it like to watch—or perform—John Cage's famously "silent" piece 4'33"? SFMOMA gallery attendant Michael Zelenko posted his experience on the museum's blog:

At some point during the third movement, as if orchestrated, all these previously unacknowledged sounds seemed to come together. It felt to me as if the museum itself was performing for us. When it was all over I turned to the audience and heard the pitter-patter of applause, not quite sure who it was for.


The (performance? installation? artwork? all of the above?) was part of SFMOMA's The Art of Participation exhibition, which closed Sunday.

Filed under  //   museum   music   performance   sfmoma  

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MoMA Atlantic/Pacific

Momaspan

Photo: Chester Higgins Jr. for the New York Times

Until mid-March, Brooklyn's Atlantic/Pacific subway station will host over 50 masterpieces from the MoMA... sort of. The glossy reproductions of Pollock, Picasso, and others (complete with the same wall text seen at the MoMA in Midtown) are part of the museum's ad campaign designed to remind New Yorkers of the masterpieces in their backyard and drive membership sales. The project, which occupies every single ad space in the station, also includes a microsite with video tours, a Flickr-generated gallery, and resources to learn more about the art on display. [NYT]

Filed under  //   advertising   art   brooklyn   museum   new york   public art  

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The Romance of Objects

MIT professor Sherry Turkle has a brief piece in Seed encouraging children to fall in love with the world of things after noticing that her students and colleagues developed scientific curiosity "by the physics of sand castles, by playing with soap bubbles, by the mesmerizing power of a crystal radio."

Objects don't nudge every child toward science, but for some, a rich object world is the best way to give science a chance.

Objects, Turkle argues, inspire scientific inquiry and encourage children to construct relationships with their environments. Turkle starts with relatively low-tech objects, but even though she touches on beginnings of computer culture, she seems hesitant to  include computers in that category of objects that motivate young children to learn. If you pick up some of her books (The Second Self, Evocative Objects) it becomes clearer that—at least with those she's interviewed, both children and adults—computers are some of the most influential and intimate objects of our lives.

Though Turkle has widened her studies from computer culture to a broader understanding of material culture and the role of objects in our lives, the Seed article merits a second read with a tech context, since that's the focus of much of her previous research, and, after all, technology is encorporated into many of the objects we use. Replace "object" with "computer", and the argument becomes a little more contentious:

...Many of us discourage the object passions of children, perhaps out of fear that they will become "trapped," learning to prefer the company of objects to the company of other children. Indeed, when the world of people is too frightening, children may retreat into the safety of what can be predicted and controlled. This should not give objects a bad name. They can make children feel safe, valuable, and part of something larger than themselves.

Filed under  //   education   material culture   science  

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A new museum in San Francisco's Presidio

Should Gap founder Don Fisher build a museum for his modern art collection in the Presidio?  Jimmy Stamp at Life Without Buildings looks to sci-fi for an answer.

It seems that at some point in this alternate history, San Francisco's preservationists eventually conceded defeat. An "air tram station" boldly looks out over the Golden Gate Bridge and SF Bay. A softer mix of Brutalism and basic curvy sci-fi movie architecture. Ideal? No. But definitely an improvement over the current faux-historic designs mandated by overly-vocal and underly-visionary individuals, committees and trusts.

Filed under  //   architecture   museum   san francisco   sci-fi   science  

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Prado and Google Earth

This shows you the body of the painting, but what you won't find here is the soul.

Miguel Zugaza, director of the Prado museum on its partnership with Google Earth. Fourteen of the museum's masterpieces have been photographed at a resolution of up to 14,000 megapixels and can be viewed using Google Earth's 3-D buildings layer. (If, like me, you don't have Google Earth installed you can also take a peek on Maps.)

Filed under  //   art   google   museum   technology  

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Objectified trailer

From the director of Helvetica, upcoming film Objectified is about "our relationship to mass-produced objects and, by extension, the people who design them":

Filed under  //   design   film   material culture   movie  

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Design in downturns

"What designers do really well is work within constraints, work with what they have," said Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art. "This might be the time when designers can really do their job, and do it in a humanistic spirit."

A few articles have come out recently on designers' roles during a depression:

Design Loves a Depression [Michael Cannell, NYT]
The Antonelli quote above comes from Cannell's look at the designs that have emerged--and endured--during rough times. The Modern design that came out of the Great Depression and WWII benefited from cheap materials and informal home life; today's economic crisis will likely focus on call for less less manufacturing waste and fewer products heading to landfills.  Cannell predicts that new designs must be affordable, durable, and sustainable in order to sell during lean times.

Creative Solutions in Tough Times [Alice Rawsthorn, IHT]
Rawsthorn focuses on the design community's ability to concentrate on "service" or "social" design intended to address worldwide concerns, including poverty, global warming, technology infrastructures, sustainability, and economic caution in general. (Rawsthorn has also covered the decline of design-art and other opportunities and consequences for designers in crunch times in earlier articles.)

Designing Through the Recession [Michael Beirut, Design Observer]
Beirut offers a veteran designer's perspective on what happens in creative fields during a downturn--and what designers can do to work through it.

And on the architecture front...

It Was Fun Till the Money Ran Out [Nicolai Ouroussoff, NYT]
Ouroussoff notes that starchitecture, design-art's cousin, must fade away in these tough economic times: until now, "serious architecture was beginning to look like a service for the rich, like private jets and spa treatments," but wary developers unwilling to invest in new project leaves architects to tackle social problems like schools, highways and public housing.

A Letter to the New York Times [Cameron Sinclair and Kate Stohr, Architecture for Humanity]
The co-founders of Architecture for Humanity posted a rebuttal to Ouroussoff's article noting that architects are indeed already working on projects addressing the social issues above--we just don't recognize their names (yet). He says that starchitects are probably least suited for this kind of work, since their overwhelming buildings lack the sensitivity to environmental consequences and energy issues that characterize the challenges ahead.

All interesting reads.

Filed under  //   design career   design field   design-art   economy   recession  

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