The National Trust for Historic Preservation is live-blogging their analysis of President Obama’s proposed budget for next year. They’ll be updating throughout the day as they discuss areas of the budget that relate to historic preservation and public funding for the arts. If you want …
Welcome to our weekly museums in the news roundup! Restoration work begins on damaged Egyptian artifacts (Egyptian National Museum, Cairo, Egypt) Philly museum makes replicas for China mummies (University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) Followed by: China, Philly museum resolve dispute …
A few days ago we announced the NEMA spring workshop lined up, with special mini-workshops aimed directly at young and emerging museum professionals. Here’s more information on those workshops, the fun networking events taking place afterward, and how you can register. All information is courtesy of NEMA’s workshops page.
The NEMA Young and Emerging Museum Professionals (YEPs) PAG understands that new and emerging museum professionals have limited budgets to attend workshops, and frequently are unable to miss work for professional development and/or networking events. To break down these barriers faced by those with less than ten years in the field, and those who wish to network with new and emerging professionals, the YEP PAG Chairs have planned a series of workshops that break the mold. Learn, Laugh, Love brings together numerous individuals from various professional positions and levels of seniority, both of local and national stature, to encourage those who are just entering the field, especially career changers, students, and those who are seeking to further their current position, in three informal learning situations, where networking at peer to peer and peer to mentor level are key components. Register for all three and save!
All workshops will be held at Historic New England’s Otis House Auditorium.
LEARN: How to Interview “Big Wig” Speed Dating Style (March 23, 2011)
There’s no better way to learn but trial and error. Using the speed dating format, participants will have the opportunity to “interview” with seasoned museum professionals, including Directors, Curators, Educators, Board of Trustee members, and other senior ranking individuals. Each seasoned professional will be armed with a mixture of “favorite” interview questions collected from those who hire in the museum field; workshop participants will rotate between professionals, thus opening the door to meet and learn from those who have immense advice to share on the interviewing process, making the best first impression, and creating a lasting mark with interviewers that leads to a new position.LAUGH: How to Break into a Tricky Field in a Tough Economy (April 20, 2011)
Sometimes laughter is the best medicine, but how does an emerging museum professional break into a tricky field when museums are facing budget cuts and staff reductions? What does a museum want from a new hire? What skills are needed to be successful in the museum field in 2011? Should you go back to school, attend workshops, and learn how to post to Facebook? When is a job a great fit, and when should you run away if it isn’t perfect? These questions and more will be discussed, with an emphasis on making your current skills and abilities appealing to employers. Hear stories from seasoned professionals on starting off in the field, surviving layoffs, and transitioning to new positions. Translating job descriptions into inspiring cover letters and highlighting key resume accomplishments will also be discussed.LOVE: How to Build Your Resume through Internships, Articles, Conferences, and Presentations (May 11, 2011)
Climbing the museum ladder is definitely labor intensive, but it is a labor of love. Learn how to build your resume by gaining experience beyond traditional nine to five positions. Publishing, presenting, and volunteering are ways to uncover unknown or new museum positions, make contacts, and build a strong resume (and a strong museum professional!). Discover the strategic steps you can take to make yourself more appealing to future employers, and find the best route to positioning yourself for promotions and opportunities throughout the field.Directions to the Otis House will be emailed with your registration confirmation two weeks prior to the workshop.
Questions? Call NEMA, 781-641-0013.
After each event, the YEPs are holding a fun networking event at a local eatery. Here’s the list:
LEARN Networking Event, Wednesday, March 23
8:00 p.m., The Liberty Hotel
LAUGH Networking Event, Wednesday, April 20
8:00 p.m., The Red Hat
LOVE Networking Event, Wednesday, May 11
8:00 p.m. The Fours
You can register for the YEP events on the NEMA workshop website, and you can RSVP for the networking events on the YEPS Facebook page. (Or just click on the links for the events themselves to RSVP individually.)
Going with our specialization theme, here’s one for the aspiring exhibit designers out there: the National Association for Museum Exhibition. NAME is actually sort of part of AAM; it describes itself as “one of the Standing Professional Committees of the American Association of Museums.” For more from …
There are some really great workshops coming up this spring, and if you’re a NEMA member, they’re only $40 each. Scroll down to check out a series of workshops sponsored by the NEMA Young Emerging Professionals – $15 each, 6-8pm, and focused on interviewing and …
Google Art Project: Accessibility and Close Looking
Google Art Project, which launched on February 1, is touted as Google Street View indoors. Art Project presents gallery views from 17 major international institutions—from the Met and MoMA to the Hermitage to Tate Britain—which let visitors explore a 360-degree panorama of almost 400 different rooms throughout the museums. Google plans to include more institutions and more works of art as the project evolves.
In addition to gallery views, each participating institution selected one signature to present in remarkably high resolution. These works, presented in “gigapixel” detail, bring paintings like Chris Ofili’s “No Woman No Cry” at Tate Britain to the screen with 7-billion-pixel resolution—allowing viewers to pan and zoom in closer than any museum guard would ever permit. It’s an approach that pairs well with art critic and historian James Elkin’s recently launched series on close and careful observation at the Huffington Post. Elkin’s first column focused on a Mondrian at the Art Institute of Chicago and encourages readers to look at brush strokes where colors meet and other extremely minute details. Art Project’s gigapixel images are excellent practice grounds for that level of exploration.
Some museum traditionalists, including Alastair Sook at The Telegraph, seem to suggest that Google wants to replace a museum experience with an online one. But just as photographic reproductions didn’t eliminate the lure of the authentic object, there is no reason to believe that digital reproductions will do so either. Presumably the many museums that have put their collections online in the last decade don’t believe that either.
Amit Sood, the head developer on Art Project, puts it this way in the Google Blog:
[We] got together to think about how we might use our technology to help museums make their art more accessible—not just to regular museum-goers or those fortunate to have great galleries on their doorsteps, but to a whole new set of people who might otherwise never get to see the real thing up close.
Eliza Murphy, writing for the Atlantic, validates that goal. She remembers an art history professor who often reminded his students that they couldn’t possibly understand a work of art until they saw it in person and writes, “Thank you, Google Art Project, for saving us all from pretentious museum buffs worldwide. Just because I have not yet had the privilege of visiting all of the best art-holding institutions, does not mean that I am any less of an enthusiast than those that are older and better traveled.”
Decide for yourself at googleartproject.com.