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February 13, 2010
 

Learning from Rem

Posted by Steffen Böddeker 

There is a certain way museums publish their lectures online. This usually takes the form of a static video feed (2 alternating angles for museums with bigger budgets) showing the speaker on stage, with details of the slides inserted at more or less the right moments. Depending on the speaker’s skills this can be excruciating or palpable, and I am not sure how many of even the most dedicated fans will watch 45 minutes (or more) of this on a computer or iPod.

Some museum sites offer transcripts, a great benefit for those interested in browsing or studying the content for research purposes. See the CCA’s series of Mellon Lectures as a good example, where mp3 audio files are accompanied by downloadable illustrated transcripts (although the PDF files aren’t searchable on the site). As I've mentioned before, ArtBabble is doing a great service by annotating the videos and creating a searchable database, which saves you a lot of time if you are looking for specific references - but it doesn’t give you a workable text.
 
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I just came across the Lectures section on Rem Koolhaas’s website (via Abitare). Here is a different model that I haven’t seen commonly used on museum sites, although it could serve them well. The lectures are represented by a manageable selection of images followed by the transcript - no media. I like this because you can instantly see what each lecture is about, you can look at the reference images for as long as you like, and you can linger over the text (which can also be printed or saved). Published directly on the site, the text is also fully searchable.

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There are currently five lectures dating from 2002 through March 2009, four by Koolhaas and one by his partner Reinier de Graaf. The selection adresses broad topics such as “Sustainability: advancement vs. apocalypse” and “Lagos: infrastructure and improvisation”, as well as more specifically the firm’s work in Dubai and for the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Such a simple interface and format could very well serve museums that don't have the time or financial resources to capture, produce, and host audio/video content on their websites. The only challenge is to get the spearker's transcript...

Filed under  //   ArtBabble   CCA   Rem Koolhaas   architect website   lectures   media   museum website  

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February 11, 2010
 

Required Reading

Posted by Steffen Böddeker 

A small selection of LACMA catalogues has been digitized and made available in a very nice online interface called the Reading Room.
 
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On line now is the first Reading Room selection entitled “Southern California Art of the 1960s and 1970s”, which includes ten exhibition catalogues of art from Southern California published between 1963 and 1981. They range from publications documenting one-person shows such as Edward Kienholz (59 pages) and Billy Al Bengston (69 pages, designed by Ed Ruscha) to the exhaustive A Report on the Art and Technology Program of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1967–1971 (391 pages) and the slight Late Fifties at the Ferus (7 pages).

Once selected, a new window opens to display the scanned book. The menu allows you to view, zoom, and “leaf through” the books in different ways, as well as search for content (results give you the pages on which the search term is found), share (via email, facebook, twitter, delicious, google) and “take it to go” (download the PDF). That’s right: you can download out-of-print catalogues you probably should have read but couldn’t find in your local library or used bookstore. Time to catch up.
 
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By making this material so easily available, the museum is serving itself and the reader. The Reading Room is a testament to the institution’s historical role and curatorial ambition (presumably future selections will also include more recent titles), taking full advantage of online tools to better disseminate LACMA’s vision. The benefits to the rest of us are obvious.

What more can I say; there is a new requirement for all museums: Copy the LACMA Reading Room.

Also see this related video with curator Stephanie Barron (who organized The Museum as Site: Sixteen Project the catalogue for which is also part of the Reading Room selection). The short, simple video adds a valuable sense of the catalogue’s physicality that is absent in the flat page scans.

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Filed under  //   LACMA   catalogues   media   museum website   video  

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February 10, 2010
 

Going to Indiana

Posted by Steffen Böddeker 

Indianapolis is not exactly on the top of my list of places to visit for seeing art, and I suspect that I’m not the only one who would more likely book a trip to NYC. However, if you’re at the computer, as I am, in a place that is neither New York nor Indianapolis, I recommend a trip to the IMA’s new website over most NY museums’ sites. (The big exception here is the Brooklyn Museum, which is always a few steps ahead of the field in regards to online activity - more on this later.)

For quite a while now, the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) has been doing what the Whitney Museum failed to realize in its December 2009 website redesign (see earlier post here). While the IMA could easily have been pigeonholed as a regional attraction with limited nation-wide relevance, a powerful online presence gives it a national and international role regardless of its physical location. The museum built something online that wasn’t possible in real space - despite a nice facility on a large campus. (I actually had a chance of seeing this in person when the IMA was one of the host institutions for the 2009 Museums and the Web conference, where I co-presented this paper on the Canadian Centre for Architecture's website redesign.)

The IMA has been a leader in museum transparency, and its website is a key tool for this. It details works sold and bought, energy used, financial statements, staff cuts, etc. Its New Media team has been among the leaders in pushing what museums can do online, and has also integrated this nicely throughout the institution. The Davis Lab is a great model for putting the online world back into the building itself, while founding ArtBabble is an excellent example of investing in new tools to go beyond regional limitations. Creating this platform, along with its growing network of institutional partners, allowed the IMA to offer its resources to a wide audience and therefore position itself in a way that it would be impossible with on-site activities alone.

I would have written positively about the IMA’s online activities a few months (even years) ago as well, but would have stopped short of endorsing its web interface. The homepage especially was maddening with its many unmoored boxes of mini-menus. My favorite thing about the new design is the very straightforward, top-of-screen menu that NEVER CHANGES wherever you are. Well, almost never changes. The otherwise genius Dashbord still has its 1990s interface, all videos are hosted on the "drawn" 1980s  ArtBabble interface, and the blog for some (probably technical?) reason also doesn’t have the menu although the page is otherwise integrated and there would be space. And the navigation menu would be worth writing about in itself, because it is like a little website. From (nearly) every page, it gives you the interactive calendar, access to collection search, directions based on your zip code, etc.

Among the highlights is the Calendar, a great dynamic tool that breaks down the museum’s many activities in a simple graphic timeline with text and images below; exhibitions are integrated but clearly distinguished from one-time events. The Collection Search is great but not perfect (see IMA blog entry here) The Magazine is found alongside the Blog under the Interact menu, and indeed it is there for you to browse.

One complaint: Too much space is given to boring images used for decoration. Why do museum websites insist on doing this? I admit to having been responsible for this myself, but that was nearly 10 years ago and by now there must be room for a new model. Especially on the homepage, this leads to a serious lack of hierarchies: a giant image of the building or garden followed by lots of homogenized information. On all other pages, it is also just wallpaper eating up the best screen room.

A question: Why does an art museum have, in third place, a menu for ART? Here, again, I miss some hierarchy. Tell us what this place is really about. The stream is nice in the middle of the homepage, but what about the art?

A comment: Seriously, ArtBabble is an amazing tool/resource with (currently) 22 international collaborators/contributors, and the IMA put that together. My highest compliments for that. The content is excellent, and the way videos are annotated and searchable raises the bar for everyone trying just to keep up posting their lectures on the web. The trouble is that all IMA videos are hosted on this very different interface, where users are dropped from the main site without warning. Regular ArtBabble users will understand what happened, but a casual visitor to the website looking to watch a video advertised on the homepage will either be confused about where the IMA went, or excited by the forward motion of browsing other media.

And a final compliment, among the others already noted above: I’m surprised I like the logo as much as I do, and it may have something to do with the relief at seeing the “Its My Art” tagline gone. Apparently this new design was already introduced in print material a while back, but is only now online. The logo cleverly lets you know right off the bat that Indianapolis is a place - in Indiana. This is especially good branding for people like me, who are just passing through online.

Filed under  //   ArtBabble   CCA   IMA   MW   media   museum website   online collections   video  

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February 9, 2010
 

Visiting NY Studios

Posted by Steffen Böddeker 

Who doesn’t want to snoop around some New York artists’ studios? I do, and I thank P.S.1 for making it possible. Studio Visit, according to its description, offers virtual presentations of artists’ studios by inviting emerging artists working in the five boroughs and greater New York area to upload video or still images of their studios and work. Their submissions stay live on the site for at least one month. As I write, there are 568 entries to browse.

There have been other museum or gallery sites that allow artists to upload images of their work. An early one is Saatchi Online, a colossal and commercial enterprise aimed at connecting artists with buyers. The database is so large, the presentation so random, and the interface so ugly that it is difficult to navigate with purpose. An interesting parallel in the architecture field is the young Architizer (in Beta), which allows architects to upload and geotag their projects. The result is a map-based database (entries can also be searched by other criteria) with lots of material that is of interest not only to other architects or potential clients, but to anyone with some curiosity about what is going on in their (or any) city.

Like Architizer, Studio Visit allows (requires?) artists to geotag their studio to create a map of artistic activity in the New York area. It also encourages them to upload photos of the building exterior alongside studio interior, and 5 artworks. The building/studio views makes for fun viewing, although some artists take full advantage of these image spaces to place additional artworks. I can’t blame them, especially since it has pride of place at the top of the screen.

What makes the P.S.1 project successful is its (seemingly) unmediated interaction with the artists. It is a generous gesture (who doesn't want to show at P.S.1, even online?). It seems that anything goes - even institutional critique is fair game, such as Brainstormers’ entry (see also www.brainstormersreport.net). And the limited timeframe will keep the database in check. Too many entries would render it useless, and it is a relief for users and increases each artist’s traffic.

The interface is simple in just the right way, as is the entry-form. My only complaint is that there is no search. Browsing by last name is ok if you do it once, but requires a few too many clicks if I know who I’m looking for or want to check a few names.

Can this platform not be duplicated by other institutions for artists in other cities? I would like to see Studio Visit Mumbai, Studio Visit Mexico City, ...

Filed under  //   Architizer   P.S.1   geotagging   museum website   online art  

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November 29, 2009
 

New Whitney Museum Website

Posted by el tercer brazo 

by Steffen Boddeker

The Whitney Museum of American Art recently launched its new website. The Whitney famously struggles to distinguish itself on the highly competitive Manhattan landscape against institutions like the Met, MoMA, and Guggenheim – a group that now also includes the coming-from-behind New Museum. The New Museum initially put itself on the cultural landscape by filling a vacuum with its original programs and exhibitions, and was able to galvanize its presence with the opening of its own building in 2007. The Whitney’s self-described problems with its 1966 Marcel Breuer building are well known, as are its various attempts to add on or branch out over the years via Michael Graves (an outrageous proposal for sure, but was it so bad that there is no image record online and Graves himself buries the only reference deep inside a PDF download on his website?), Rem Koolhaas in 2001, and the more recently rejected expansion effort by Renzo Piano and his follow-up proposal for a new Downtown location). In the context of this inability to gain ground in the physical real estate of Manhattan, the opportunity to expand online by launching a new website is all the more tempting.  With a genuine investment – of not only time and money, but ideas, daring, innovation – this kind of a project can actually help the institution overcome the limitations of its physical place. At stake is the opportunity to clarify the identity of the institution, create a viable new space for it, and serve a new and growing audience in ways the building itself can’t.

How the Whitney missed this opportunity has been discussed quite a bit, and at times in great detail, elsewhere. The design of the site is deeply flawed, in ways that are particularly well outlined in posts on Perry Garvin’s PLOG and on Vincent Roman’s Permanently Uncached. As they point out, the good news is that many of the navigation and design issues are fixable. That poor design can slip past the guards is possible, but what about the attitude behind it?

The content itself holds great promise. The media and collection objects online are good, and many of the past exhibitions are nicely documented. But content itself is not enough, it has to be delivered in a thoughtful way. If the website should rise to the level of a true venue, the user needs more. Even though the site offers nice, timely collecting and sharing features, the overall structure feels old in its segregated, hierarchical organization. This is not a question of how a menu is designed, but how a menu is conceived – if it is necessary at all.

As Edward Tufte notes in his comment about the site, “why are museum websites hierarchical and concealing instead of flat and revealing?” The challenge for the museum is to invent a site that functions as its own place, rather than a mirror of the museum’s internal organization or even its physical place.

One particular aspect I find telling of the larger issues at hand is the changing background color on the homepage. Switching from white to black to indicate day versus night in New York is relevant to the Whitney’s online audience at best in a purely romantic sense. This intervention is an artist’s project, and I should admit that I like the notion of putting art right at the front door – physical as well as virtual. But there is a need to have a clear identity of your place before installing such a project. The problem is not so much the idea of changing the background on a certain cycle, but what triggers that change. This gesture could have been worth associating with something more relevant to either the museum or its users, ideally both. The opening versus closing hours of the galleries come to mind, or, even better, the color shift might reflect when the website is active – with programming, blogging, publishing content, responding to emails, etc. When the Whitney team goes offline, the screen inverts to black. I assume this would cut back drastically on the dark hours and result not only in increased legibility but a more flattering reflection on what I know must be a significant effort behind the project. By giving the gesture some meaning, taking it from decoration to communication, the site would better serve the Whitney in building a connection with its audience.

Filed under  //   museum website   online art   whitney  

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