Saturday 28 May 2016

Reading list, 28 May 2016

Artsy, in collaboration with multinational financial services company UBS, has partnered in series of short web documentaries on the art world, starting with auctions and followed by galleries, patrons and art fairs. Touting themselves as lively yet nuanced introductions to each topic (I will agree with the lively, at least) they are remarkable largely for the talent they've gotten in front of the camera - and the claim towards the end of the first clip that Modigliani's Nu couché, auctioned at the end of last year for a record $170M, "will never be seen on the market again".

The Brooklyn Museum has been having rocky time in its neighbourhood recently, with a number of protests around both exhibition and partnership choices and the announcement last week of voluntary staff buy-outs. The New York Times recently wrote up other upheavals in the museum - this time its re-installation of its Egyptian and American art galleries.

This sound remarkable: The Self-Taught Artist Who Casts Cardboard “Actors” in All His Films on Hyperallergic.

Saturday 21 May 2016

Reading list, 21 May 2016

A suitably hyperbolic account of The Rise and Fall of Ultimate Fighter Conor McGregor, by James Parker for The Atlantic.

Mallory Ortberg and Nicole Cliffe announce they are shutting down The Toast - this moment rang bells for me:
And having said that out loud, we both felt a FRISSON OF ENERGY, which took us by surprise, because we have loved making this site together so much. I honestly do not remember which of us was the first to say “well, revenue is sort-of getting back on track, but how long do we want to keep doing this anyway?” but I do remember what a relief it was that we both felt that the answer was “less than a year.”
bell hooks took a lot of flak on social media for her assessment of Beyonce's Lemonade. hooks is one of those figures and writers I know by osmosis rather than extensive reading, so it was fascinating to go back to this 1999 interview, resurfaced by the Washington Post for Women's History Month. This overview of some of the articles they re-published is also interesting.

Lana Lopesi continues her run of thoughtful essays with Safety In Numbers: Poly Twitter and Carving Out Digital Space for Pantograph Punch.

Curating for the Contemporary Pacific; 95 theses by Sean Mallon and the Pacific area curators at Te Papa along with Kolokesa Māhina-Tuai and Fulimalo Pereira at Tamaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum, Ane Tonga at Rotorua Museum Te Whare Taonga o Te Arawa and Leafa Janice Wilson from Waikato Museum Te Whare Taonga o Waikato.

Saturday 14 May 2016

Reading list, 14 May 2016

Perfume critic Luca Turin is blogging again.

Alphabettes is a 'showcase for work, commentary, and research on lettering, typography, and type design. ... here to support and promote the work of all women in our fields.'

Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History director Nina Simon marks five years in the job with a what I've learned post. I've really appreciated Nina's public sharing of the way her museum and her thinking has changed over her time there.

Shelley Bernstein is leaving Brooklyn Museum for the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Along with Nina and Seb Chan at ACMI Shelley has been one of the most influential people in the web/cultural world at large, and for me personally. Enormous amounts of good will and excitement going her way.

Speaking of moving on, I found Carole Robinson's piece for The Spinoff about her last day at 3News, published in the wake of  Mark Weldon's resignation, surprisingly affecting.

Two new reports out in Britain about arts attendance and perceptions and realities of the benefits of the arts:

Wednesday 11 May 2016

WCMT Draft Acquittal: Visitor Experience

The final large chapter for my acquittal for the funding I received from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust for my research trip around American museums last year! It struck me that rather than release it all as one big fat PDF I might try posting drafts of sections here, for any feedback that might be forthcoming. The first post looked at visible storage, the second at membership programmes, third focused on digital innovation.

I should emphasise that this really is a *draft* and changes to the final document are inevitable.

1.1 Introduction


I was fortunate on this research trip to spend time at some of the best encyclopedic art museums in the world. The quality and scope of American art collections is startling, and this applies not only in the major tourist destinations (New York, Washington, Los Angeles) but also to many cities whose arts institutions may not be internationally known brand names. In all the centres I visited the scale and quality of the encyclopedic museums was at times overwhelming: I spent an entire day, for example, working my way through the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and still felt like I was rushing through numerous galleries.

The flip side of this largesse was that many of the museums were somewhat repetitive. Galleries are devoted to ancient cultures, to American art history, to major moments in European art history. Art from Asian and indigenous cultures is largely presented as artefact: precious objects from the past, somewhat deadened in the museum context. Decorative art is weighted towards silversmithing and furniture. Intermixing of collections in long-term displays is still relatively rare. 'Blue chip' artists take up a lot of wall space, and after a few cities I found myself ticking off each museum's Ellsworth Kelly room, its Richard Serra sculpture, its Alexander Calder mobile.

I came to appreciate smaller, more tightly focused museums (I acknowledge that my itinerary consciously focused on larger art museums and, had I sought out experimental, contemporary or niche organisations instead, my experience would have been very different) and distinctive displays that spoke to the location I was in. In Baltimore, it was a small room at the BMA with a display of seven elaborate 19th century crazy quilts - an intimate, tactile experience unlike any other I had on my trip. At Mia in Minneapolis it was a room that brought together artworks from across continents and decades, united by an link to textiles, from a Robert Rauschenberg assemblage to a Yinka Shonibare sculpture to a beaded suitcase depicting a courtship story by a Lakota artist, tentatively identified as Ida Claymore.

At the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis I was struck by how closely the museum tracks with the needs and interests of its urban community. In Baltimore again, I was entranced by the store at the American Visionary Art Museum - a cornucopia of gifts, crafts, tchotkes and publications that in its diversity and generosity mirrored the ambitions of the museum. At Brooklyn Museum I was taken by their recently refurbished entrance gallery, which seeks to give the visitor an introduction to the whole museum in one space; at the BMA in Baltimore I saw a similar room under construction, and heard about their plans to open up an adjoining space to create a platform for community discussion.

As I travelled around the States, I read articles almost daily about the newly opened Broad Museum in Los Angeles. The Broad is a privately funded museum that eschews many of the trappings of the conventional art museum, including charged entry, reception desks, venue hire spaces and restaurants. Much was made of their Apple store-inspired approach to visitor hosting.

This section of my report details some of my standout moments of visitor experiences, and draws some conclusions on how museum's framing and retail spaces offer important opportunities to connect visitors to the museum's brand and objectives.


1.2 American Visionary Art Museum and Mia: Inspiring retail experiences


The Dowse's entrance is the hub of the museum: it leads through to the cafe, galleries, venue hire spaces, and hosts the store and the reception desk. Over the past 18 months we have been rethinking our approach to the store space in particular, from seeing it as a retail offer to seeing it as a prime location to connect with visitors and introduce them to The Dowse's brand values: a shift from consumer culture to participatory culture reflecting the wider shift in museum practice.

On my trip around the States I made a point of spending time in as many museum stores as possible. I observed not only stock and display methods, but how the staff interacted with customers.

I took a lot away from how stores like that at the BMA communicate the iconic nature of certain collection objects or areas through their merchandising: a single quilt or painting might be presented as magnets, pencils, notepads, embroidery kits, cards and more. I realised as I visited these stores that not only do they impress upon visitors the importance of certain works through the plethora of product based on them: they also give the visitor a subtle preview/reminder of the museum's displays. By exploring the exhibition and collection-related merchandise, you have an opportunity to recall the things you have seen in the museum, and consider (through making decisions on potential purchases) what you were really attracted to.

The stores also offer an opportunity for visitors to connect with a museum employee. In general, American museum gallery attendants are not encouraged to engage with visitors (see below). In contrast to the often silent (and bored) attendants in the galleries, and ticketing staff who were focused on processing visitors, store staff were chatty and inquisitive, commenting on accents, asking where you were from, asking about your visit, what you'd liked, helping you find something in the store you'd be interested in.

On my trip, two stores really stood out for the way they embodied the museum's brand statements and served as a visitor experience unto themselves: the store Mia in Minneapolis, and the Sideshow Shop, American Visionary Art Museum.

Independently owned, the Sideshow Shop effortlessly embodies the AVAM focus on "an innate personal vision that revels foremost in the creative act itself." The museum overall demonstrates the same respect towards artists and professional standards of any other museum, but all aspects of its design and presentation speak of visual abundance, pleasure in the act of creating, spontaneity and individuality.

When you purchase an entrance ticket at AVAM you automatically receive a $5 discount chit for the store, which whets your appetite. The store itself is divided into two halves. The first room consists of a overflowing and extremely stimulating array of giftware, tchotkes, jewellery, curiosity pieces and crafts, mingled with AVAM publications and merchandise.. It is a space to explore like a packed archaeological dig, and truly a place where you could find 'something for anyone'. The second half of the store is equally densely stocked, but more restrained, and offers an astounding array of books on outsider, visionary and folk artists, from monographs to exhibition catalogues. The quality of the selection underlines the seriousness with which the museum approaches promoting visionary artists.

I am not a person easily seduced by gewgaws and baubles, but even I found the joyfulness of the Sideshow Store infectious, and spent more there than I did in any other museum. It has become the first thing I tell people about in terms of the museum - not because it undercut the actual art, but because it complemented the art visit so well.

The store at Mia sits at the other end of the taste spectrum. The stock underlines the museum's brand as sophisticated, urbane and high quality. Brand-alignment is obvious and startegic. Part of a recently-renovated entrance way, the store spills out into the foyer space and sits opposite a large wall with pictograms that orient the visitor to the museum's numerous floors.

As stated on the museum's website, the store has very clear messaging and purpose:
Explore The Store at Mia offers a curated assortment of unique products from around the globe that celebrate the quality of the collection, while connecting life and art through the hands of the artist to support the Minneapolis Institute of Art. All proceeds benefit Mia. 
Connect
Enjoy an engaging experience where the art comes to life through artisan-crafted products in a range of styles and materials. Learn the stories behind the products while being inspired by the stunning displays.
That second paragraph in particular could easily be adapted to express the goals of any contemporary art installation.

I was particularly struck by Mia's product line relating to its 100th anniversary activities. Some were standard: a line of text-based t-shirts commissioned from American artists, a celebratory book. Others were far less predictable, like a collaboration with Minneapolis business Handsome Cycles to custom-paint a cycle range in designs inspired by iconic works from the collection.

The store also makes prominent use of collaborations and pop-ups. An exhibition about chef Ferran Adria and his restaurant El Bulli was complemented by a partnership with Etsy to promote artisanal linens, tableware, kitchen tools and food products, along with an extensive cookbook pop-up, all promoted under the 100th anniversary banner.

The shopping experience at both these museums was more than just retail. It was an opportunity to learn more about what the museum valued, what they aimed to provide for visitors, and how they perceived themselves.


1.3 American Swedish Institute, Minneapolis: A philosophy of hospitality


At the ASI I spent a day with the director of exhibitions, collections and programmes Scott Pollock, learning about how the organisation fits both into its geographic and cultural communities.

The ASI, comprising the historic Turnblad Mansion and the contemporary Nelson Cultural Center, acts as a gathering place for people to share experiences around themes of culture, migration, the environment and the arts, informed by enduring links to Sweden. Communities of Swedish and Nordic origin remain a core focus - for example, the ASI runs language programmes, offers traditional art workshops, and shows the work of Scandinavian artists.

At the same time the museum services a specific urban setting; an area largely populated by young professionals who have not yet started families and older professionals whose children have left home, and an immediate precinct populated with pre-school providers and elder-care and health-care facilities. Therefore the museum has a focus on programming with intergenerational appeal: their audience for their late night programmes, for example, starts with older adults in the first two hours, and then in the later hours attracts young people who are at the beginning of a night out.

What particularly struck me about my experience of the ASI however was their emphasis upon hospitality, which has a specifically Nordic emphasis (which resonated with New Zealand museum's adoption of the concept of manaakitanga). Hospitality is one of the museum's values, and it extends across their work. The museum cafe, FIKA, has a national reputation: it is named for the Swedish daily break, a social tradition involving coffee and treats that brings people together. The building has leased spaces for local universities and other organisations, bringing different public services into the complex. Regular workshops are run separate from the museum programming, offering another community gathering point.

The emphasis on food and coming together threads through the museum's offer, from its Christmas season displays of decorated tables to its Nordic Table Workshops. Children's language programmes include time for fika. Late night programming is built around music, food and drink.

This emphasis on hospitality unities beautiful buildings and a quirky collections with various community and interest groups. As I spent time in Minneapolis, a highly diverse city that is proud of its waves of immigration, I saw how culture is valued and shared in the city, largely through food and performance.

1.5 Brooklyn Museum and Baltimore Museum of Art: Orienting the new visitor


As noted, encyclopaedic American museums can be huge and draining to visit if you are trying to do it all in one day. Gallery rolls out after gallery, and you move at speed, worrying that you're going to miss something. There is also a bewildering array of time periods, media and cultures. It is little wonder that museums are seen as intimidating or off putting for those who do not feel they have the requisite special knowledge.

The Brooklyn Museum has addressed this possible issue with its Connecting Cultures: A World in Brooklyn exhibition. From their website:
This innovative, cross-cultural installation was developed to create new ways of looking at art by making connections between cultures as well as objects. Located in our first-floor Great Hall, it provides for the first time a dynamic and welcoming introduction to our extensive collections, featuring pieces that represent peoples throughout time and around the world.
Located adjacent to the entry foyer, the exhibition cuts across time, place and culture to offer an overview of the museum's collection, the exhibition spaces and collection areas visitors will encounter, and introduces the museum's focus on encouraging visitors to consider issues of identity. The installation is richly designed, offers text and digital interpretation, and presents an intriguing range of collection objects. It offers both a strong short-visit option, and an ideal opportunity for new visitors to 'practice' visiting the museum. The quality of the installation also prefigures the museum's desire to renovate galleries on other floors.

While still under development at the time I visited, the Imagining Home display in the BMA's new Patricia and Mark Joseph Education Center operates in a similar manner to Brooklyn Museum's Connecting Cultures gallery. Curated on the universal theme of 'home' from the BMA's collection, the exhibition features objects from across the globe and throughout time. Interactive features include soundscapes that immerse visitors in the place objects were made, and videos depicting the stories of individuals and families who lived with a reproduction of one of the exhibition items for a month during the development of the show.

The new center is located in a recently added second entrance to the museum, which includes its store and cafe. Attendants are posted in the gallery during weekends and events, and a reading nook is also located in the space. The room next door to Imagining Home is a modestly-sized venue space, which hosts the monthly 'Open Hours' programme, launched alongside Imagining Home. The programme invites the public to propose and contribute to events in the room, ranging from a recipe swap-meet to a conversation about vacant housing in Baltimore.

The exhibition and venue space are complemented by Outpost, a facilitated 'mobile museum' which moves through the city and works in partnership with other organisations. It contains replicas of works from the BMA's collection and runs activities that lead participants through the same themes of home and identity that the Imagining Home exhibition is built on.

The effort by these two museums to provide a welcoming, accessible and high quality introductory experience for visitors was an inspiring part of my visit. A hidden benefit was the high level of cross-team collaboration that was evident in developing these exhibitions and accompanying offerings.

1.6 The Broad, Los Angeles: A 'new' model of visitor hosting


I consciously timed my visit to the States to take advantage of the newly opened Broad Museum in Los Angeles, which differed strongly from many of the other museums I visited.

The museum showcases the personal collection of Eli and Edthye Broad, and is funded by the couple: therefore, it has no public body stakeholders or governance board to satisfy. The museum is constructed without revenue-generating options such as venue hire or a cafe, has no central reception desk, and has only a small shop operation. It has only two floors of displays and can easily be visited within an hour; it shows American and international art from the past 50 years.

The museum was attracting swathes of media coverage in the lead-up to my visit, with news articles on everything from the building to the collection to the maintenance required to keep the glass facade clean. The museum's digital ticketing and audio guide systems received considerable attention, as did the approach to training gallery attendants. The service at The Broad is modelled on Apple stores, with visitors being served on the spot by roving attendants (to swipe entry tickets or to take payments for purchases) and with the idea of the Genius Bar being followed - that any visitor services staff should be able to answer questions about the museum and the art on display. All staff are equipped with a small iPad to help them answer visitor queries and tell them more about works on displays; they are fully trained on the works on display and receive incentives to demonstrate their knowledge of the collections.

In general, American museums maintain a separation between gallery attendants, whose chief role is to act as a layer of security for the works on display, and visitor services staff, who manage ticketing and take visitor questions. The Broad's approach to visitor staff was seen as singular; a representative media article reported:
it's the VSAs that may particularly grab museum professionals' attention. The Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Va., may be the only other art museum that has attempted to train staffers to fully fulfill the seemingly contradictory functions of keeping the art safe while making viewers feel comfortably at home with it. "This is leading-edge, and it's a very positive thing for the Broad," said Kathleen Brown, principal consultant for Lord Cultural Resources. (Boehm, 2015)
That same article sought out a dissenting view:
Stevan Layne, a veteran security consultant to museums and other cultural sites, is not persuaded that pleasant conversation and detailed knowledge about art should be in gallery attendants' job descriptions. To him, it's a way for museums to cut costs by folding separate security and visitor service functions into one. "I'm opposed to doing that," Layne said. "It can be a distraction from the primary mission" of protecting the art. (Boehm, 2015)
There is an element of labour relations at play here that I do not pretend to fully understand. I also suspect that this division of labour is not seen at smaller museums, galleries or historic houses, where staff have a tendency around the world to pitch in and guard their individual positions less tightly.

I was deeply struck, nonetheless, that this was seen as such a novelty. Not long after I returned from my trip, a similar article appeared in The Dallas Morning News, about a visitor host at the NAsher Sculpture Center, Patricia Ann Jackson. The reporter wrote:

Building an engaged public is one of our chief responsibilities, and we need all the help we can get. 
At the Nasher Sculpture Center, that help comes from an unlikely source, Patricia Ann Jackson, a native Dallasite who has worked as a guard at the museum for the last three years, mostly in the lower-level gallery, where she has gained a devoted following for her considerable charm and perspicacious, if idiosyncratic, commentary. (Lamster 2015)

Lamster noted that this change had been led by guards, not the museum administration. He then reported on changes that have been taking place at the nearby DMA since Maxwell Anderson (now departed) had taken over in 2013:
“When we went free to the public, we changed our philosophy from being a security model to a visitor-focused model,” says Barbee Barber, the museum’s director of staff and visitor experience. 
Barber’s very title, with the telling inclusion of the phrase “visitor experience,” suggests just how ingrained this shift has become. It is a change modeled not just in the guards’ behavior at the DMA, but in their uniforms, which were changed from traditional blue blazers with red ties to a more casual look of khaki pants and polo shirts. “It’s much less intimidating,” says Barber. (Lamster, 2015)
Nearly every staff member at the DMA I spoke to on my visit noted this change in policy, and clearly saw it as one of the most important recent developments at the museum.

As a New Zealand museum director though, I remain surprised and discomfited this division of labour - and the glaring fact that the silent figures in American museum galleries tend to be black, as made painfully obvious in American artist Fred Wilson's 1991 sculpture Guarded View, which consists of four headless black mannequins dressed in the uniforms of leading New York art museums.

Few New Zealand art museums can afford to have visitor attendants stationed in every gallery, and fewer still employ security guards in tandem with their own staff. Visitor staff in New Zealand tend to be encouraged to think of themselves as customer service representatives, art communicators and ambassadors for the institution. Te Papa has set the trend here in recent decades, with their strong focus on training their visitor hosts, and employing a diverse staff in terms of age, ethnicity, language skills and backgrounds, to reflect the diversity of the museum's offerings and its visitors. This was certainly an area where I was proud - and somewhat relieved - to come from Aotearoa New Zealand.

1.7 Conclusion


The ideas and information I took from this aspect of my trip have been the ones that I have most quickly introduced into our daily work at The Dowse.

My observations of museum stores reinforced work we were already doing, and has given us an even stronger framework for our experiments with using our store as a site of engagement with visitors beyond just the retail experience. ASI's emphasis on hospitality fits well with New Zealand culture, especially when thinking about Māori and Pacific communities. While The Dowse is not of a size that warrants an 'introductory' gallery, the spaces at the BMA and Brooklyn Museum were extremely relevant in thinking about how a permanent collection feature could be built into The Dowse's offer.

The larger learning I took from this aspect of my visit was about the need for a museum to communicate its personality through all channels available to it - and to create personable and idiosyncratic experiences that don't necessary require huge budget, but do require a strong sense of what makes your museum stand apart from others.

1.8 Further information


American Crazy Quilts, Baltimore Museum of Art https://artbma.org/exhibitions/crazy-quilts

Room G374, Mia http://collections.artsmia.org/search/room:%22G374%22

Mia store http://new.artsmia.org/shop/

Sideshow Shop, American Visionary Art Museum http://www.sideshowbaltimore.com/new/index.html

American Swedish Institute - Vision, Mission and Values http://www.asimn.org/about-us/mission

Connecting Cultures: A world in Brooklyn, Brooklyn Museum https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/connecting_cultures

Imagining Home, Baltimore Museum of Art https://artbma.org/exhibitions/imagining-home

Open Hours, Baltimore Museum of Art https://artbma.org/events/series/open.hours.html

Outpost, Baltimore Museum of Art https://artbma.org/events/series/outpost.html

Rebekah Kirkman, 'Radical Feeling: Katie Bachler talks about how art and activism intersect at the BMA Outpost', City Paper, 3 February 2016 http://www.citypaper.com/arts/visualart/bcp-020316-ae-bma-outpost-20160203-story.html

Robin Pogrebin, 'At the Helm of a Philanthropist’s New Los Angeles Museum', New York Times, 12 April 2015 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/13/arts/design/at-the-helm-of-a-philanthropists-new-los-angeles-museum.html

Gideon Brower, 'How The Broad trains its staff may change your experience of the art', The Frame, 17 September 2015 http://www.scpr.org/programs/the-frame/2015/09/16/44498/how-the-broad-trains-its-staff-may-change-your-exp/

Mike Boehm, 'The Broad doesn't want museum guards between you and the art', Los Angeles Times, 17 September 2015 http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-broad-museum-logistics-20150912-story.html

Mark Lamster, 'At the Nasher, guard perfects the art of friendliness', The Dallas Morning News, 13 November 2015, http://www.dallasnews.com/lifestyles/arts/columnists/mark-lamster/20151113-at-the-nasher-guard-perfects-the-art-of-friendliness.ece

Fred Wilson, Guarded View, 1991. Collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art. http://collection.whitney.org/object/11433

Saturday 7 May 2016

Reading list, 7 May 2016

This week's must-read, courtesy of @klimtypefoundry - 'How designer Willem Sandberg championed the rebellious type' on the late graphic designer & Stedelijk director's first UK retrospective.

Double-dose: What does a female artist have to do to get a major solo show? from The Art Newspaper and Women in the visual arts: “Leadership is not a gender neutral space” from a-n.

The National Endowment for the Humanities in America is launching a new grant programme aimed at intensive projects that foster public debate and discussion through museums.

Brooklyn Museum gets some extensive coverage in the New York Times as their Ask app project comes to fruition and starts changing things at the museum.

SFMOMA gets two write-ups in Wired, one a quite lush interactive about their new building and the other on its new audio tour ("art" and "not so art" options enabled).

Maria Sol Escobar - known as Marisol - died on April 30th: here's a fascinating 2014 article by Sebastian Smee on this artist who I shamefully knew nothing about.

Louis Kahn's Kimball Art Museum is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Now his massive concrete cylinder at the Yale Center for British Art has entered my bucket list.

Thursday 5 May 2016

WCMT Acquittal Draft: Digital Innovation

The campaign to complete my acquittal for the funding I received from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust for my research trip around American museums last year continues. It struck me that rather than release it all as one big fat PDF I might try posting drafts of sections here, for any feedback that might be forthcoming. The first post looked at visible storage, the second at membership programmes. This third is focused on digital innovation.

I should emphasise that this really is a *draft* and changes to the final document are inevitable.

1.1 Introduction


In 2016 the Museums and the Web conference - the major annual international event for museum professionals, academics, consultants and vendors working in the digital facet of museum operations - celebrated its 20th anniversary. While coverage of digital innovation in museums often still has a breathless tone (It's not your grandfather's museum) for practitioners, this is now a well established field with a distinct whakapapa of milestone projects and leading thinkers.

Every interaction with a museum I had on my trip was mediated in some way by digital technology, whether that was reserving my online entrance ticket for The Broad, downloading the National Gallery of Art's app in advance of my visit, using Mia's exploratory touchscreen interface in their galleries, or simply searching online to figure out transport options prior to my visit.

One of the frequently expressed concerns regarding the introduction of digital technology into gallery displays is that touchscreens or interactives will distract the visitor from the unique selling point of museums: the actual object. Equally, current thinking in digital teams is around how technology can be used to enhance social experiences at museums, rather than isolate the user. The phrase 'heads-up experiences' has emerged to described the use of technology to promote close looking and social visiting, as opposed to 'heads-down', implying a visit spent looking at screens and not objects.

Another theme in conversations about the layering of digital experiences into the museum is discussion of the 'visitor journey', divided at a high level into pre-visit (researching the museum, its collections and exhibitions, identifying programmes and items of interest) on site (experiencing the museum, from ticketing all the way through to the gift shop) and post-visit (follow-up research or visiting an web-enabled record of your visit).

The O, the digital visitor guide to MONA (the Museum of Old and New Art) in Hobart, launched in 2011, has become an exemplar of heads-up technology and innovative post-visit experience that promotes unusually high levels of follow-up engagement by visitors. As part of the ticketing process, every visitor is given an iPod Touch on entry to the museum, which is loaded with the O software (an iOS app developed by Art Processors). The O takes the place of interpretation at the museum (which, famously, does not have labels for the artworks on display). As the visitor moves around the museum they can see images and details for works 'near them' on the O and choose which to access more information around. Following MONA's pointedly irreverent tone, visitors are offered choices of 'Art Wank' (curatorial descriptions), 'Ideas' (talking points, quotes, provocative statements), 'Media' (short interviews with artists) and 'Gonzo' (the voice of the museum's founder, collector David Walsh).

Using the O, visitors can 'Love' or 'Hate' artworks on display, and see how other visitors ranked the same objects. In addition, by entering their email address the visitor can retrieve the details of their visit after leaving the museum by logging into MONA's website, at which time they can see a visualisation of the paths they took through the museum and retrieve the information about artworks. It is notable that MONA has not put its collection online for general web visitors: only by logging in, following a physical visit, can a person explore the collection and the information and interviews aggregated in the O. As Seb Chan has noted, this is the prerogative of a museum that is privately owned and operated, but does not fit with the public mandate of most art museums. (Chan, 2011) On the other hand, this does make the post-visit experience an exclusive one, which is of a piece with MONA's branding of itself as an art pilgrimage experience.

In this report, I am focusing on two flagship projects, the Cooper Hewitt's 'Pen' (the signature development of their recent three-year overhaul of the museum's building, visitor experience and technology platform) and the Brooklyn Museum's 'Ask app', an in-gallery app that enables real-time conversations between visitors and staff. Both museums are in New York, both projects were funded through the philanthropic programme Bloomberg Connects, and both were lead by practitioners who have strong track records of digital innovation, and whose profuse analysis and publishing on their work over the past ten or more years has formed a significant portion of the shared body of knowledge built by digital museum professionals. At the same time, the Pen and the Ask app also emerge from very specific museum missions and philosophies around visitor experience.

In this section I also reflect on ideas about brand-building through digital activities, and my experience of a dissonance between an online and physical visit as expressed through my long-term online relationship with the Walker Art Center.

1.2 Ask app - Brooklyn Museum 


Background and objectives

The goal of the Ask app and associated work programme is to 'create a dynamic and responsive museum that fosters dialogue and sparks conversation between staff and all Museum visitors'. (Bernstein 2014)

The Ask app is designed to encourage visitors to ask questions about what they're looking at. Available on both iOS and Android platforms, people download the app, which is locked until they are on the museum premises.

On entering the museum the app 'wakes up'. Visitors can then submit questions using an interface that is familiar for people who text or use chat or messaging services, including uploading images. Specially trained staff receive and answer the questions: enquiries and answers are added to a database which complements existing documentation of the collections, and shared regularly with curators, to build a staff-wide understanding of what is piquing visitors' curiosity, or what they may not be getting from existing signage and interpretation.

The team working on the Ask app have three goals:
  • Fostering a personal connection with visitors and creating opportunities to talk about art 
  • Encouraging visitors to look more closely at art, and explore more art as a result 
  • Use data gained through the app to inform decisions about how art is displayed, thus using visitor data to drive institutional change. 
The Ask app is part of a larger project reviewing the visitor experience of the Brooklyn Museum, including a redesign of their entry lobby and visitor reception to improve visitor flow and quickly orient visitors to the museum.

My experience of the Ask App

Unlike the Cooper Hewitt, where every visitor is given one of the pens as part of their museum entry, and the Dallas Museum of Art Friends programme, where roving ground floor visitor staff promote the programme to people as they enter the museum, the Ask app is built into the entry or ticketing process at Brooklyn Museum. Visitors must either already be aware of the app (through word of mouth or the website) or notice small signage placed around the museum. Staff are aware of this limitation, and see it significantly influencing the current low uptake (about 2% of visitors were using the app at the time of my visit).

To begin with on my visit, using the Ask app did not come naturally. Your first use requires you to think up a question that is not already answered by your pre-existing knowledge, or by the very good interpretation already provided in the galleries.

My first question was a slightly frustrating experience. I had a very specific question about a particular Gerrit Rietveld chair that was part of a design display. I wanted to know who would have access to buy it. What I was trying to understand was ‘Was this chair sold on the general market or did you have to know the designer to get one?’. The answer the Ask team sent me though, in a series of small chunks, gave me context about the chair, the fact that the general public wasn’t interested in avant garde design, and only in the fourth message told me that actually no, only the artist’s acquaintances acquired the chairs.

However, I was intrigued by how quickly the app grew on me. I found that I was generating more questions in response to the answers I was receiving, and this questioning behaviour persisted as I moved from gallery to gallery. I also felt like I struck up a rapport with the Ask responder, who expressed their own enjoyment of artworks I was sending through, and mentioned works by the same artist in other museums. At one point I found myself sending through observations rather than questions: I almost felt like I was visiting with a friend and having discussions in the galleries, rather than having a solitary experience.

On some occasions the time lag between my question and a response meant that the answer came through after I was finished with the part of the museum I had asked the question in. This was particularly the case when I asked a questions about whether a sculpture in a lobby space was allowed to be touched: the reply arrived ten minutes after I had moved on from the lobby, and therefore well after the use case was closed. As there is very little seating in the museum's galleries, it was difficult to find a place to pause my visit and wait for an answer.

The Ask app-branded question prompts placed on objects throughout the museum were a weak point in the experience. These are designed to prompt curiosity about the app amongst those who have not downloaded it, and use amongst those who have. The signage is large and more flamboyantly designed than the regular object labels used throughout the museum, but unfortunately the level and tone of the questions used feels babyish in comparison to the traditional object labels they were juxtaposed with. The analogy I would draw is to the interpretation technique of placing information panels targeted adults and children in the same exhibition: the traditional labels felt like the adult version, whereas the Ask labels felt like the kiddie prompt - in strong opposition to the target market of repeat visitors who are becoming more and more engaged with the museum's offerings.

Another distinctive feature of the Ask app is that when you leave the museum, the content of your conversation disappears from the app, which is effectively wiped clean and rendered inactive until your next visit. This is a feature that divides opinion amongst practitioners I have spoken to. On my visit I did not notice that this happened, and when it was brought to my attention, it felt natural to me: like any conversation had in a museum, you couldn't take it with you. Others who I talked about the app with wanted to be able to refer back to their conversations, or share them with other people, and were frustrated that (a) they could not do so and (b) they weren't aware of this until it was too late. While I was unconcerned with losing my conversation, I do think that having it disappear without warning violates an unwritten rule of internet good faith, that the content you create on a site should remain available to you unless you are explicitly told otherwise.

From an initially stiff beginning, by the end of my visit I found that my engagement with the museum had been deepened by the experience of using the Ask app. It was not so much that I learned new information I may not have been able to search out for myself, had I been sufficiently curious: it was because the inquiring part of my brain was lit up by using the app, and I found myself generating an unusual number of questions.

1.3 The Pen - Cooper Hewitt Design Museum


Background and objectives

The Cooper Hewitt reopened in late 2014 after a major renovation of its heritage building, and a rebranding exercise. Alongside the physical redevelopment, the museum rebuilt its technology and digital offers to support its new take on its role as a design museum, rapidly digitising their collection, integrating new ticketing and customer relationship management software, building a new digital interface for their collection, and launching new digital experiences for on-site visitors, specifically a series of interactive tables, the Immersion Room, and the 'Pen'.

After initially investigating using a version of MONA's O platform, the Cooper Hewitt decided to create their own experience. The museum's key concepts for integrating media and technology into the visitor experience were:
  • Give visitors explicit permission to play 
  • Make interactive experiences social and multi-player and allow people to learn by watching 
  • Ensure a ‘look up’ experience 
  • Be ubiquitous, a ‘default’ operating mode for the institution 
  • Work in conjunction with the web and offer a “persistence of visit”
Working with a number of hardware, software and design companies, the Cooper Hewitt created a range of experiences, from the Immersion Room (where visitors digitally explore the museum's large wallpaper collection then design their own wallpapers, which are digitally projected into the room they are standing in) to a Process Lab (a hands-on exploratory space) to interactive tables that allow for collection browsing and simple design exercises.

Uniting all these experiences is the Pen, a piece of custom-made hardware shaped somewhat like a stylus that allows the visitor to interact with the different digital experiences of the museum, and 'collect' information about the items that are on display. All the visitor's interactions are available to them after their visit via a personalised URL; the museum is concurrently collecting and analysing data from the Pen to better understand visitor behaviour (e.g. length of stay, under-visited galleries, items that are frequently or infrequently 'collected').

My experience of the Pen

Unlike the DMA Friends, where the programme is promoted but not a requirement for free entry, and the Ask app, which depends on visitors self-initiating a download, the Pen is given to every visitor at the Cooper Hewitt as part of the ticketing project. Every visitor receives a well-honed patter that takes the staff member about 40 seconds to deliver, explaining how they can use the pen during and after their visit. You can see in this piece of visitor experience design the observations Chan made in 2011 of MONA:
"I was very impressed by the ‘technology concierge’ skills of the ticketing staff – they run you through the basics of the App and the hardware as they sell you your ticket and set you off on your way. Sitting beside the cash register is a graphic clearly explaining each of the main interface screens of the O as well. I’ve never seen this level of ‘scaffolding’ happen in other museums and the deftness with which visitors are set off on their way quickly is a testament to their staff training (and acceptance amongst these staff of the value of the O itself)." (Chan, 2011; emphasis the author's)
I loved the Pen as an object. It is like an oversized, enjoyably rubbery crayon in the hand, with sufficient weight to feel useful, not flimsy. The act of pressing the pen to labels brought an pleasant tactile and physical element to my visit which is usually lacking in galleries. I also enjoyed using a device that was unique to the building I was in, rather than borrowing an iPod or using my own phone. It brought a level of specialness to the experience, and subtly emphasised the museum's entire ethos: the history of human innovation and adaption as expressed through design.

The pen became pesky when I was trying juggle using it, using my phone to take photos, and using my notebook and pen to make notes about my visit - especially as the museum is very small, and has little seating or break-out space.

As I moved through the Making Design exhibitions on the second floor, the fundamental underlying changes to the way the museum approaches objects became clear to me. Making Design is a rotating collection exhibition, using groupings of collection items to explore five key elements of design: line, form, texture, pattern, and color. Some of these are straightforward (such as a grouping of blue objects) but others were more complex. I was particularly struck by a pairing in one case of an early 20th century bracelet and a early 21st century piece of medical technology used in shoulder reconstruction surgery. The two objects seem very unrelated, but when I read the label, another layer was revealed to me. The labels includes the tags assigned into the collection database to each item. In the case of the implant, the first two words as aesthetic descriptors: ‘lace-like’, ‘snowflake’. Suddenly, a piece of medical technology was being presented simultaneously for its use value, and for its aesthetic qualities. This was eloquently but subtly suggested by the display, by the interpretation, and by the Cooper Hewitt's emphasis on actively making sense of objects as part of our visit.

During my visit I came to perceive the Pen as the most recent point on a design continuum that stretched from the beautiful historic home the museum is housed in, out through its collections, and right up into the contemporary visitor experience. This moment crystallised for me in the first floor collection galleries. I was standing in the mansion's original library, handcarved from teak in the 19th century: through the door of the gallery I could see an Issey Miyake dress from around the turn of the century on display. Between me and the dress were two young women, using the Pen on one of the interactive tables. In that moment I experienced design across the centuries: design history in action.

The topmost floor of the Cooper Hewitt was given over to a touring exhibition showcasing the work of Heatherwick Studios. The integration of the Pen into an exhibition sourced from outside the museum, not made up of objects existing in its collection database, is still an issue being worked through by the Cooper Hewitt. The show is displayed as a series of modules or pods devoted to individual projects: the integration of the pen is limited to panels attached to the walls around the galleries where you could ‘collect’ the various displays. This breaks the user experience pattern set by the rest of the museum, and given that the panels are modest to the point of invisibility, in these spaces I didn’t see anyone else except me - dutiful expert visitor - using their Pen.

I was also disappointed by the design interactives on the ground floor tables. On the tables you can design certain objects (lamps, chairs, etc) by selecting the form and materials and then sketching lines. I chose a lamp and concrete and with two intersecting lines made an elegant form. Compared to the intelligence and empathy with which the work of designers is displayed throughout the museum, I felt this particular interactive undersold the true complexity of the design process.

The very last place I visited was the hands-on design exploration studio on the ground floor of the museum, tucked through a doorway after the tables that I used above. On walking into the room I realised my haptic needs had already been met on my visit. I didn't want to twist cellophane and hessian around wire armatures to make lightshades because I'd already done things like that. I assume however that the room is extremely well-suited to group use and education visits: the exhibition galleries themselves would quickly feel crowded if visitors were sharing the space with school groups.

I also have to admit to being one of those people who never visited their URL after their visit. I flirted with the idea of doing it for the sake of completeness, but I decided to to stay true to my visitor inclinations. Instead, my online relationship with the Cooper Hewitt continues not through a formal 'post-visit' experience, but by what I think of as the 'micro-touches' I have established with the museum. I follow the Labs blog and Twitter account, and several staff and ex-staff on social media. Physically visiting the museum has given greater depth to this sustained digital interaction.

1.4 Innovation and sustainability


Traditionally, a museum’s brand has been built on buildings, collections, 'rockstar' staff, and exhibition programmes.

Today, digital is definitely the newest way of branding an institution. This can be seen in increasing amounts of media coverage for digital strategies and philanthropic support for digital initiatives. And unlike buildings, exhibitions programmes, and collections, a new digital brand can be forged relatively rapidly.

I felt that each of the museums whose technology efforts I focused on made a strong brand statement through the values and objectives that drove their projects. The DMA’s digital brand is about a commitment to inclusion – widening their audience beyond the country club that previously felt at home in the museum. Cooper Hewitt's brand says that design is an integral part of being human, and each of us has a designer inside us. The Brooklyn Museum’s brand says that people are intelligent and curious about art and warrant personal responses to their curiosity. All these brand statements are being communicated out through messages to members, funders, stakeholders, residents, and the general public.

I have come to feel however that there is a distinct danger though of your digital brand being, or becoming, disassociated from your physical experience.

My clearest experience of this was visiting the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. In 2012 then Walker Senior New Media Developer Nate Solas was invited to keynote at the annual National Digital Forum conference on the museum's recently redeveloped website, which was being held up as an international exemplar at the time. The Walker’s website redevelopment was carried out with a philosophy of unusual generosity and external focus, and with the aim of supporting the local art community as well as positioning the museum internationally. This was exemplified by the homepage of the website becoming a newshub for art stories from all over the world, connecting their audience in with the global and local arts world. This reinforced the brand of the Walker, as a node in the international art media environment. I found their way of thinking inspirational, and have tried to follow it in the way we behave online at The Dowse.

Alongside the web redevelopment ran the Open Field programme, where a large undeveloped grass area in front of the museum, intended for a building extension that hadn’t been realised, was turned into a community-focused performance and activity space, hosting everything from yoga classes to internet cat video festivals.

The conjunction of the newsy, outward-looking website and the innovative, welcoming Open Field programme (which attracted significant internet attention) created a really strong brand awareness for the Walker with me. I felt very connected to the museum, despite never having visited. This left me with very high expectations when I finally visited the museum.

The Walker has famously innovative architecture and a blue-chip art collection. The wayfinding and graphic design throughout the museum was slick and sharp. But as a visitor to the physical museum, I experienced none of the generosity and freshness I felt online. And the biggest surprise was that Open Field programme had been stopped, most of the staff involved had moved on, and the physical space was literally being dug up, to be turned into a sculpture garden. Many of the staff who led both the Open Field programming and the digital development have moved on to other museums, or to the private sector.

One of the greatest attractions of the web is the speed of change and the emphasis on experimentation. Museums are known for 'being in it for the long haul' and thus having a sometimes glacial pace of change, a persona that can be in conflict with the joyous nature of change in web development. My visit to the Walker left me thinking about how we need to think about how we make enduring digital change, where the values of our work can be sustained, even if the forms it takes are constantly evolving.

1.5 Conclusion


Shelley Bernstein and Seb Chan have both been inspirations to me in my museum career, and I count myself fortunate to have known and learned from them both for nearly ten years now. The museum sector is extremely lucky to have two such innovative, proactive and dedicated professionals, who are committed not only to creating the very best experiences within and for their own institutions, but sharing their knowledge freely with the whole community.

The digital projects at Brooklyn Museum and the Cooper Hewitt, though very different in their outcomes, are the same in their intent: encouraging visitors to actively make sense of what they are looking at, by asking questions and organising objects.

What unites the Ask app and the Pen is a focus on the on-site, 'eyes-up' experience. Moving past the bogeyman of digital technology being a distraction from the museum object, the focus is now on giving the visitor reason to look more closely, for longer.

My overall assessment is that the focus of digital technology in American museums at the current time is 'on-site' over 'online': this can also be detected and new and recently renovated museums like The Broad in Los Angeles and SFMOMA in San Francisco, where audio tours and location-aware 'eyes-up' digital experiences have been heavily promoted as part of the opening media push.

In terms of post-visit experience, I have yet to follow any of the prompts given to me, be that the Cooper Hewitt's URL or the regular promotional emails from the DMA. Instead, I continue to follow the museums through 'micro-touches': Twitter and Instagram accounts, blog posts, conference presentations. My personal situation is so niche - a museum professional located in a country physically distant from the large centres of museum discourse and thus heavily internet-aware of international museum activity - that I do not view this as useful data. My extrapolation though is a reinforced awareness of the need for museums to be consistent in all the messaging they put out into the public realm - from apps to bus shelter posters, magazine ads to Facebook posts.

While there is steady innovation in this space, and it is exciting to see such an emphasis on enhancing the visitor's experience and their ability to connect to the works on display, there also seems to have been a shift in focus from 'global' to 'local', and a reduction in sector-wide, collaborative endeavours. It may be that as a sector we have figured out collaborative platforms, APIs, metadata sharing and so on, but I also wonder if increasingly walled garden nature of the contemporary internet (the design especially of social media sites to keep you within the application, rather than roaming the open web) and the bedding-in of digital practice as business as usual rather than experimental is seeing art museums displaying a less collaborative, more internally-focused approach to digital development than in the past decade.

1.6 Further information


Ask App

For more information on the Brooklyn Museum's Ask App project see their online documentation at BKM TECH https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/community/blogosphere/ and especially entries tagged "BloombergConnects" https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/community/blogosphere/tag/bloombergconnects/

Shelley Bernstein, 'Visitor Powered Technology to Create a Responsive Museum' BKM Tech, 9 September 2014,  https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/community/blogosphere/2014/09/09/responsive_museum/

See also:

Nina Simon, 'ASKing about art at Brooklyn Museum: Interview with Shelley Bernstein and Sara Devine'. Museums 2.0, 24 June 2015 http://museumtwo.blogspot.co.nz/2015/06/asking-about-art-at-brooklyn-museum.html

Shelley Bernstein, 'Visitor Experience as a Catalyst for Institutional Change', presentation at Webstock, Wellington, February 2015 http://www.webstock.org.nz/talks/visitor-experience-as-a-catalyst-for-institutional-change/

Shelley Bernstein, 'Exploring Ask at Brooklyn Museum', presentation at MuseumsNext, Indianapolis, September 2015 https://vimeo.com/141390210 

Daniel McDermon, 'Who’s in Charge at the Brooklyn Museum? It Could Be You', New York Times, 29 April 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/30/arts/design/at-the-brooklyn-museum-with-a-chatty-curator-in-your-pocket.html

Cooper Hewitt Pen

For an overview of the Cooper Hewitt's in-gallery digital experiences see their The New Cooper Hewitt Experience page http://www.cooperhewitt.org/new-experience/

For more information on the Cooper Hewitt's Pen and digital transformation see their online documentation on the Cooper Hewitt Labs site http://labs.cooperhewitt.org/ , and especially entries tagged "CH3.0" http://labs.cooperhewitt.org/category/ch-3-0/

See also

Jessica Lustig, 'Mr Moggridge has mad ambition', Fast Company, 14 September 2011 http://www.fastcompany.com/1777623/masters-of-design-2011/mister-moggridge-has-mad-ambition

Allan Chochinov, 'Caroline Baumann on Renovation and Innovation at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Set to Reopen in Ten Days', Core 77, 3 December 2014 http://www.core77.com/posts/27870/caroline-baumann-on-renovation-and-innovation-at-the-cooper-hewitt-smithsonian-design-museum-set-to-reopen-in-ten-days-27870

Robinson Meyer, 'The Museum of the Future Is Here', The Atlantic, 20 January 2015 http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/01/how-to-build-the-museum-of-the-future/384646/

Sean O'Kane, 'The Smithsonian's design museum just got some high-tech upgrades', The Verge, 11 March 2015 http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/11/8182051/smithsonian-cooper-hewitt-design-museum-reopening-pen-4k

Seb Chan and Aaron Cope, Strategies against architecture: interactive media and transformative technology at Cooper Hewitt, paper given at Museums and the Web conference, Chicago, April 2015 http://mw2015.museumsandtheweb.com/paper/strategies-against-architecture-interactive-media-and-transformative-technology-at-cooper-hewitt/

Seb Chan, 'Farewell Cooper Hewitt, Next Stop Melbourne', Fresh + New(er), 21 August 2015, http://www.freshandnew.org/2015/08/farewell-cooper-hewitt-stop-melbourne/

On MONA's 'O' and the post-visit experience

MONA website http://www.mona.net.au/

Seb Chan, 'Experiencing The O at MONA', Fresh and New, 27 October 2011 http://www.freshandnew.org/2011/10/experiencing-the-o-at-mona-a-review/

Nancy Proctor, 'Love, Hate or Punt? Opinions and prevarications about MONA and its O', Curator Journal, 23 December 2011 http://www.curatorjournal.org/love-hate-or-punt-opinions-and-prevarications-about-mona-and-its-o/

Ed Rodley, 'Australia: MONA’s “The O” post-visit website', Thinking About Museums, 31 August 2012 https://exhibitdev.wordpress.com/2012/08/31/australia-monas-the-o-post-visit-website/

Lynda Kelly, 'Visitors, apps, post-visit experiences and a re-think of digital engagement, part 1', #musdigi, 8 October 2015 https://musdigi.wordpress.com/2015/10/08/visitors-apps-post-visit-experiences-and-a-re-think-of-digital-engagement-part-1/

Lynda Kelly, 'Visitors, apps, post-visit experiences and a re-think of digital engagement, part 2', #musdigi, 8 October 2015 https://musdigi.wordpress.com/2015/10/08/visitors-apps-post-visit-experiences-and-a-re-think-of-digital-engagement-part-2/

Sam Brenner, 'Iterating the post-visit experience', Cooper Hewitt Labs, 3 November 2015 http://labs.cooperhewitt.org/2015/iterating-the-post-visit-experience/

On the Walker Art Center

Website http://www.walkerart.org/

Robin Dowden and Nate Solas keynote at MuseumNext, 2012: video https://vimeo.com/44162636 and slides http://www.slideshare.net/MuseumNext/walker-13384889

Seb Chan, 'The museum website as newspaper', Fresh+New(er), 3 December 2011 http://www.freshandnew.org/2011/12/museum-website-newspaper-interview-walker-art-center/

Open Field programme http://www.walkerart.org/openfield/