Exploring ideas and engaging in conversation

Month: December 2010 (Page 1 of 4)

More museum blogs!

First things first: if you’re not reading Museum 2.0, you should be.

Next, check out Nina Simon’s recent post, Six Museum-Related Blogs You Might Not Know About That Are Really Good. One of the blogs is local – Thinking about Exhibits is written by Ed Rodley, an exhibit developer at Boston’s Museum of Science.

This is a fantastic collection of thoughtful writing. Go check it out. In the meantime, all these blogs have been added to the blogroll on our sidebar. (Look right, then scroll down.)

What do you say we aim to make that list the next time she does it?

Censorship and Museums

We’ve linked to several news items in the past few weeks covering the removal of artwork at the National Gallery of Art and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.

Both museums have removed artwork from their galleries, either after public protest or the anticipation of public protest. Both are receiving praise and condemnation for those actions. Recently, the Washington Post called for Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough to step down in light of the scandal.

We’ve recently been made aware of a great blog, Hyperallergic, that covers exactly these issues: sensitive artwork, protests, and questions of censorship. Hyperallergic has a good series of posts covering the issues with the National Gallery and the LA MOCA. Check out the links below, and then spend more time reading the rest of this interesting, thought-provoking blog.

For the National Gallery issue, you’ll want to follow the tags for David Wojnarowicz, National Portrait Gallery, and Hide/Seek.

For the LA MOCA, check out Blu, Jeffrey Deitch, and LA MOCA.

Museums in the News – The Weird Museum Roundup

Welcome to the fifth Museums in the News roundup.

Canadian Museum Backs Smithsonian Protest (National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC)

Disney gets weird (proposed movie based on a Disney theme park attraction called “Museum of the Weird”)

How much was street artist Blu paid for whitewashed MOCA mural? (Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California)

Mastodon to be moved, gently and in pieces (Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio)

Immerse yourself in barbed wire at Devil’s Rope Museum (Devil’s Rope Museum, McLean, Texas)

Behind the scenes at the museum (Charleston Museum, Charleston, South Carolina)

Lemieux lends memorabilia to museum for Winter Classic (Heinz History Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)

New license plates to benefit museum (Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum, Las Cruces, New Mexico)

Can a video game collection be a museum?

Namco Museum Megamix is a new compilation of classic video and arcade games. All well and good – companies try to re-release and cash in on their older products in the name of nostalgia all the time. (King’s Quest, anyone?)

Namco is calling this release a “museum.” Maybe they’re trying to give Super Pac-Man a veneer of high culture. Maybe they just wanted to be alliterative.

Maybe they’re doing a very interesting, very creative, very groundbreaking thing and expanding the definition of a museum far beyond what I personally have ever seen before.

What do you think? Is this a museum?

Connecting to Collections: A Call to Action

The IMLS is running a series of free webinars about caring for collections.

Per their description:

Using the content of the Connecting to Collections Bookshelf, Forums, and Workshops, these highly interactive webinars will connect you with experts and colleagues to discuss issues of common concern.  The series has a dual focus:  four webinars will help you learn how to conduct outreach to the media, the public, and funders on behalf of collections, and two webinars will help you derive maximum benefit from the Connecting to Collections Bookshelf.

Past webinars will be archived so you can view them on your own time.

Check it out!

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