How the Google Art Project might revolutionize the physical museum experience

There were people who said the iPhone and iPad would fail. There’s even a wonderful article about how the Internet will fail from 1995. If the invention of the writing press had preceded the invention of the wheel, I’m sure we would still be reading naysayers elaborate bashing of easy transportation. Today I’m reading a lot of stuff about the Google Art Project not delivering.

Sure, not everything Google touches turns to gold (remember Google Wave?). However, like any future Apple iThing it’s silly to underestimate the impact a Google product will have on a sector. Their marketing budget, distribution channels and development budgets are simply no match for any well-intentioned alternative.

Let’s do a thought experiment and presume the Google Art Project will revolutionize the museum experience the way the iPad will change the publishing industry. Below are six complaints about the Google Art Project I’ve heard most often. What will happen if these become standard practice in our physical museums (which, as I hope to have proven by now, they very well might).

1. Navigation: The navigation in Google Art Project apparently sucks. In fact, it’s much like finding your way through an endless number of strangely connected galleries, but with the option of going to your desired gallery immediately. Beat that, big 19^th century building. Google Art Project will have your audience want to choose highly individual routes through your museum, jumping from room A to room Z back to K to see what they want to see. Just like on the computer. Read the rest of this entry »

Three possible designs for architecture of the museum of the future

Yesterday we presented the book Sketches for a National History Museum. However, flipping through the book and talking with the young architects involved, I realise it could also be called “Sketches for a Museum in the 21^st century”. Three young European architecture firms came up with three different possibilities for future museum architecture. Here’s how they envision the architecture of the museum of the future.

An enormous hall

An extremely spacious central hall makes me think immediately of Tate Modern. If you think that is cool architecture, however, 51N4E’s proposal might be your dream come true. Their design “Hall of History” consists of a ten-storeys-high wall with exposition spaces, overlooking an enormous hall where flexible expositions of all sizes can be organised. From the “wall” a visitor can look out at what happens in the “hall”, and vice versa.

I love how this design makes it possible to tell larger stories. Imagine the wall being a timeline of art history. From the hall you can get a sense of what influenced who etc. whereas in the spaces in the wall you can see individual art works from a certain period.

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What is good museum architecture?

In a couple of days we’ll present a book with sketches for future museums. The book “Sketches for a National Museum of History” explores possibilities for museum architecture. Kenneth Frampton and Hans Ibelings wrote essays, researchers at the Berlage Institute made design sketches, and three young European architecture firms, 51N4E, Baukuh and Monadnock, submitted plans to encourage thinking about a new museum architecture. I had a chance to look at the book and I must say it’s inspiring and the designs are daring and different from what you’d expect.

Yesterday we launched a small website to encourage thinking about good museum architecture. It focuses on six themes – connect, show, sense, open, move and site – and hopefully will spark some new ideas about good museum architecture. You’re free to add your ideas (don’t let the Dutch scare you, it’s a bilingual website!).

So, what is good museum architecture?

That, I’m afraid, is a question without an answer. Or, with many answers. The book explores how architecture can deal with certain characteristics of museums. For instance, how architecture influences the presentation of objects (“show”). The two examples below are from the book and show how a church and a museum built on top of a chapel show their objects. I like them both, but believe they’re very different in their architectonic approach.

Pastor van Ars Church (design Aldo van Eyck, photo m.by) and Kolumba (design Peter Zumthor, photo seier+seier).

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My twenty-ten in museums and culture – 642 words, flywheels and making change happen

Photo by RightBrainPhotography on Flickr (CC SA-NC-ND)

I think you’re great! Let me explain why.

There’s about a 50% change you’ve visited this blog before, so I think it’s safe to assume this is not the first post you read. That means you’re one of the people who helped to make this blog go from a couple of hundreds of visits a month to – recently – over 2,500. Cool! Over 7,000 unique visitors from more than 100 countries came to this blog in twenty-ten. Among you are quite some of the people whose work on innovation in the cultural sector I greatly admire. Thanks for joining.

The discussion about the future of culture and museums is happening on many blogs, forums and conferences. Mine is just a small one. The past year has given us many moments where the international community for cultural innovators came together. I think about the ash cloud unconference sessions after Museum and the Web, the comment section of Nina Simon’s ever great blog and events such as #followamuseum and #askacurator (thanks Jim!).

Jim Collins wrote one of the books that have shaped my vision on life and work, Good to Great. If you haven’t done so before, pick up a copy and memorize it. It’s gold. One of his points is ‘first who, then what’, another the flywheel.

What Mr. Collins proves is that if you get the right people together, and you make sure you work on something you really like, can be the best of the world in and earn a sustainable living while doing so, a flywheel will start turning. When you are persistent in doing that thing, the flywheel will get momentum. This momentum makes the impossible possible and will turn whatever you do from merely good, to great. Read the rest of this entry »

Are we in a race to the bottom?

Photo by Laura Thorne on Flickr.

Saturday I visited an exposition in a renowned and highly successful museum in Amsterdam. Although the exposition was beautifully composed and displayed unique artefacts, I left untouched by what I had seen. No word was uttered about the museum or exposition afterwards.

A week earlier I had visited a wonderfully designed museum elsewhere in the country. The furnishing was amazing. The interactives were perfect. I left not knowing the basic statistics about the topic the museum dealt with, or feeling the need to take action.

Maybe it’s museum fatigue. Maybe it’s something else.

I’ve been stung by the idea of a race to the bottom. Seth Godin writes about it nicely on his blog and in his recent book Linchpin. A race to the bottom occurs when you give up what you stand for (ethical values, high-quality products, originality) in order to get a bigger slice of whatever pie (market share, visitors, page views). Read the rest of this entry »