Marketing Yourself
This post on The Museum of the Future has some great suggestions for young artists who want to get their name and their work out into the world. The same principles can easily apply to you and your work as you set out into the …
Month: January 2011
Museums in the News – The Roundup is Sick of Winter
Welcome to the coldest and snowiest Museum in the News roundup yet! The biggest news of the week has been the partial looting and continued danger at the Egyptian National Museum in Cairo. We’ve talked about it already here and here. Today brings a video …
Update on the Egyptian National Museum
The Egyptian National Museum is still not entirely safe, unfortunately. Turns out that it’s right next door to the national headquarters for Egypt’s ruling party, the focus of much of the protesters’ ire. Said building is still on fire, and firefighters worry that if the building is destabilized because of the fire, it will collapse…right onto the museum.
There was some looting in the museum as well before the army arrived, according to this AP report.
Hyperallergic is monitoring Al Jazeera, and has posted these heartbreaking pictures of looting damage, in which the museum appears to be in far worse shape than the AP report would indicate.
There are also pictures of a really wonderful thing that happened, though, as described in the AP article:
Before the army arrived, young Egyptians — some armed with truncheons grabbed off the police — created a human chain at the museum’s front gate to prevent looters from making off with any of its priceless artifacts.
Edit: The History Blog also has more information about the museum, including some terrific quotes from the Egyptians who helped form that living chain.
Museums and Wikipedia
Nina Simon’s recent post at Museum 2.0 about museums using Wikipedia reminds me that I had meant to post about a recent interview with Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikipedia Foundation. Gardner, who spoke on NPR’s On the Media last weekend, addressed some of …
Egyptian National Museum in danger
Breaking news from Cairo, where government protesters have been filling the streets for several days now: fires are breaking out near the Egyptian National Museum. The whole country is in a communications lockdown, so reporting is very much in flux. Reuters has confirmed however that …
Stories Behind the Paintings at the Sukiennice Museum
Krakow’s newly renovated Sukiennice Museum of 19th-century Polish art has a splashy video showing off the interactive campaign they did to publicize their 2010 reopening. In an attempt to make the art “come to life,” they recorded audio and video recreations of stories behind the artists, subjects, or patrons or a few of their most important paintings. One part of the project involved augmented reality, where visitors could view the video and painting at the same time through a smartphone app.
From this clip, it looks like the project was more about attention-getting marketing than an interpretation strategy. It’s no substitute for close observation of the paintings themselves, but it would be interesting to hear audience feedback about whether discovering the stories behind these few paintings piqued their curiosity in looking more closely at other work in the museum. Better to be drawn in by bells and whistles than not go to a museum at all?