The Digital Future of Museums

The Digital Future of Museums
Author: Keir Winesmith
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2020-02-19
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0429958307

The Digital Future of Museums: Conversations and Provocations argues that museums today can neither ignore the importance of digital technologies when engaging their communities, nor fail to address the broader social, economic and cultural changes that shape their digital offerings. Through moderated conversations with respected and inf luential museum practitioners, thinkers and experts in related fields, this book explores the role of digital technology in contemporary museum practice within Europe, the U.S., Australasia and Asia. It offers provocations and reflections about effective practice that will help prepare today’s museums for tomorrow, culminating in a set of competing possible visions for the future of the museum sector. The Digital Future of Museums is essential reading for museum studies students and those who teach or write about the museum sector. It will also be of interest to those who work in, for, and with museums, as well as practitioners working in galleries, archives and libraries.

Museums and Digital Culture

Museums and Digital Culture
Author: Tula Giannini
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 589
Release: 2019-05-06
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3319974572

This book explores how digital culture is transforming museums in the 21st century. Offering a corpus of new evidence for readers to explore, the authors trace the digital evolution of the museum and that of their audiences, now fully immersed in digital life, from the Internet to home and work. In a world where life in code and digits has redefined human information behavior and dominates daily activity and communication, ubiquitous use of digital tools and technology is radically changing the social contexts and purposes of museum exhibitions and collections, the work of museum professionals and the expectations of visitors, real and virtual. Moving beyond their walls, with local and global communities, museums are evolving into highly dynamic, socially aware and relevant institutions as their connections to the global digital ecosystem are strengthened. As they adopt a visitor-centered model and design visitor experiences, their priorities shift to engage audiences, convey digital collections, and tell stories through exhibitions. This is all part of crafting a dynamic and innovative museum identity of the future, made whole by seamless integration with digital culture, digital thinking, aesthetics, seeing and hearing, where visitors are welcomed participants. The international and interdisciplinary chapter contributors include digital artists, academics, and museum professionals. In themed parts the chapters present varied evidence-based research and case studies on museum theory, philosophy, collections, exhibitions, libraries, digital art and digital future, to bring new insights and perspectives, designed to inspire readers. Enjoy the journey!

András Szántó. The Future of the Museum

András Szántó. The Future of the Museum
Author: András Szánto
Publisher: Hatje Cantz Verlag
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2020-11-18
Genre: Art
ISBN: 3775748296

As museums worldwide shuttered in 2020 because of the coronavirus, New York-based cultural strategist András Szántó conducted a series of interviews with an international group of museum leaders. In a moment when economic, political, and cultural shifts are signaling the start of a new era, the directors speak candidly about the historical limitations and untapped potential of art museums. Each of the twenty-eight conversations in this book explores a particular topic of relevance to art institutions today and tomorrow. What emerges from the series of in-depth conversations is a composite portrait of a generation of museum leaders working to make institutions more open, democratic, inclusive, experimental and experiential, technologically savvy, culturally polyphonic, attuned to the needs of their visitors and communities, and concerned with addressing the defining issues of the societies around them. The dialogues offer glimpses of how museums around the globe are undergoing an accelerated phase of reappraisal and reinvention. Conversation Partners: Marion Ackermann, Cecilia Alemani, Anton Belov, Meriem Berrada, Daniel Birnbaum, Thomas P. Campbell, Tania Coen-Uzzielli, Rhana Devenport, María Mercedes González, Max Hollein, Sandra Jackson-Dumont, Mami Kataoka, Brian Kennedy, Koyo Kouoh, Sonia Lawson, Adam Levine, Victoria Noorthoorn, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Anne Pasternak, Adriano Pedrosa, Suhanya Raffel, Axel Rüger, Katrina Sedgwick, Franklin Sirmans, Eugene Tan, Philip Tinari, Marc-Olivier Wahler, Marie-Cécile Zinsou

The Future of Museums

The Future of Museums
Author: Gerald Bast
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2018-10-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3319939556

This book explores―at the macro, meso and micro levels and in terms of qualitative as well as quantitative studies―the current and future role of museums for art and society. Given the dynamic developments in art and society, museums need to change in order to remain (and in some ways, regain) relevance. This relevance is in the sense of a power to influence. Additionally museums have challenges that arise in the production of art through the use of permanent and rapidly changing technologies. This book examines how museums deal with the increasing importance of performance art and social interactive art, artistic disciplines which refuse to use classical or digital artistic media in their artistic processes. The book also observes how museums are adapting in the digital age. It addresses such questions as, “How to keep museums in contact with recipients of art in a world in which the patterns of communication and perception have changed dramatically,” and also “Can the art museum, as a real place, be a counterpart in a virtualized and digitalized society or will museums need to virtualize and even globalize themselves virtually?” Chapters also cover topics such as the merits of digital technologies in museums and how visitors perceive these changes and innovations. When you go back to the etymological origin, the Mouseion of Alexandria, it was a place where – supported by the knowledge stored there – art and science were developed: a place of interdisciplinary research and networking, as you would call it today. The word from the Ancient Hellenic language for museum (ΜΟΥΣΕΙΟΝ) means the “house of the muses”: where the arts and sciences find their berth and cradle. With the “Wunderkammer,” the museum was re-invented as a place for amazing for purpose of representation of dynastic power, followed by the establishment of museums as a demonstration of bourgeois self-consciousness. In the twentieth century, the ideal of the museum as an institution for education received a strong boost, before the museum as a tourism infrastructure became more and more the institutional, economic and political role-model. This book is interested in discovering what is next for museums and how these developments will affect art and society. Each of the chapters are written by academics in the field, but also by curators and directors of major museums and art institutions.

Museums in a Digital Age

Museums in a Digital Age
Author: Ross Parry
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 488
Release: 2013-01-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1135666318

The influence of digital media on the cultural heritage sector has been pervasive and profound. Today museums are reliant on new technology to manage their collections. They collect digital as well as material things. New media is embedded within their exhibition spaces. And their activity online is as important as their physical presence on site. However, ‘digital heritage’ (as an area of practice and as a subject of study) does not exist in one single place. Its evidence base is complex, diverse and distributed, and its content is available through multiple channels, on varied media, in myriad locations, and different genres of writing. It is this diaspora of material and practice that this Reader is intended to address. With over forty chapters (by some fifty authors and co-authors), from around the world, spanning over twenty years of museum practice and research, this volume acts as an aggregator drawing selectively from a notoriously distributed network of content. Divided into seven parts (on information, space, access, interpretation, objects, production and futures), the book presents a series of cross-sections through the body of digital heritage literature, each revealing how a different aspect of curatorship and museum provision has been informed, shaped or challenged by computing. Museums in a Digital Age is a provocative and inspiring guide for any student or practitioner of digital heritage.

Museum Object Lessons for the Digital Age

Museum Object Lessons for the Digital Age
Author: Haidy Geismar
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 166
Release: 2018-05-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1787352838

Museum Object Lessons for the Digital Age explores the nature of digital objects in museums, asking us to question our assumptions about the material, social and political foundations of digital practices. Through four wide-ranging chapters, each focused on a single object – a box, pen, effigy and cloak – this short, accessible book explores the legacies of earlier museum practices of collection, older forms of media (from dioramas to photography), and theories of how knowledge is produced in museums on a wide range of digital projects. Swooping from Ethnographic to Decorative Arts Collections, from the Google Art Project to bespoke digital experiments, Haidy Geismar explores the object lessons contained in digital form and asks what they can tell us about both the past and the future. Drawing on the author’s extensive experience working with collections across the world, Geismar argues for an understanding of digital media as material, rather than immaterial, and advocates for a more nuanced, ethnographic and historicised view of museum digitisation projects than those usually adopted in the celebratory accounts of new media in museums. By locating the digital as part of a longer history of material engagements, transformations and processes of translation, this book broadens our understanding of the reality effects that digital technologies create, and of how digital media can be mobilised in different parts of the world to very different effects.

Curating the Future

Curating the Future
Author: Jennifer Newell
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 603
Release: 2016-08-12
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1317217950

Curating the Future: Museums, Communities and Climate Change explores the way museums tackle the broad global issue of climate change. It explores the power of real objects and collections to stir hearts and minds, to engage communities affected by change. Museums work through exhibitions, events, and specific collection projects to reach different communities in different ways. The book emphasises the moral responsibilities of museums to address climate change, not just by communicating science but also by enabling people already affected by changes to find their own ways of living with global warming. There are museums of natural history, of art and of social history. The focus of this book is the museum communities, like those in the Pacific, who have to find new ways to express their culture in a new place. The book considers how collections in museums might help future generations stay in touch with their culture, even where they have left their place. It asks what should the people of the present be collecting for museums in a climate-changed future? The book is rich with practical museum experience and detailed projects, as well as critical and philosophical analyses about where a museum can intervene to speak to this great conundrum of our times. Curating the Future is essential reading for all those working in museums and grappling with how to talk about climate change. It also has academic applications in courses of museology and museum studies, cultural studies, heritage studies, digital humanities, design, anthropology, and environmental humanities.

Museums 101

Museums 101
Author: Mark Walhimer
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2015-05-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1442230193

Looking for an A-Z, one-stop, comprehensive book on museums? Wish you were able to have one of the world’s leading museum consultants spend a couple of days with you, talking you through how to start a museum, how museums work, how to set up an exhibit, and more? If so, Museums 101 is the answer to your wishes. In one short volume, Mark Walhimer covers: • Essential Background, such as what is a museum, a quick history of museums, and 10 steps to starting a museum • Operational Basics, such as branding, marketing, strategic planning, governance, accessibility, and day-to-day operations • What goes on behind the scenes in a museum, ranging from finances to fundraising to art handling, exhibit management, and research • The Visitor Experience, planning a museum, designing exhibits for visitors, programming, and exhibit evaluation. Features that even the most experienced museum professionals will find useful include a community outreach checklist, a fundraising checklist, a questionnaire for people considering starting a new museum, and an exhaustive, well-organized list of online resources for museum operations. The book’s contents were overseen by a six-member international advisory board. Valuable appendixes you’ll use every day include a museum toolbox full of useful forms, checklists, and worksheets, and a glossary of essential museum-related terms. In addition to the printed book, Museums 101 also features a companion website exclusively for readers of the book. The website— museums101.com—features: • links to essential online resources in the museum world, • downloadable sample documents, • a glossary, • a bibliography of sources for further reading, and • photographs of more than 75 museums of all types. Museums 101 Advisory Board • Jim DeMersman, Executive Director, Museum on Main, Pleasanton, California, United States of America • David L. Godfrey, C.P.A., Allison & Godfrey, Certified Public Accountants, Norwalk, Connecticut, United States of America • Van A. Romans, President, Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, Fort Worth, Texas, and Board of Trustees, American Alliance of Museums, United States of America • Sergey Solovyev, Ph.D., Department of Greek & Roman Antiquities, The State Hermitage Museum, Russia • Alison Spence, Exhibitions and Loans Registrar, National Museum of Australia, Canberra ACT, Australia • Audrey Vermette, Director of Programs and Public Affairs, Canadian Museums Association, Ontario, Canada

The Routledge International Handbook of New Digital Practices in Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums and Heritage Sites

The Routledge International Handbook of New Digital Practices in Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums and Heritage Sites
Author: Hannah Lewi
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 563
Release: 2019-10-29
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0429015291

The Routledge International Handbook of New Digital Practices in Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums and Heritage Sites presents a fascinating picture of the ways in which today's cultural institutions are undergoing a transformation through innovative applications of digital technology. With a strong focus on digital design practice, the volume captures the vital discourse between curators, exhibition designers, historians, heritage practitioners, technologists and interaction designers from around the world. Contributors interrogate how their projects are extending the traditional reach and engagement of institutions through digital designs that reconfigure the interplay between collections, public knowledge and civic society. Bringing together the experiences of some of today’s most innovative cultural institutions and thinkers, the Handbook provides refreshingly new ideas and directions for the exciting digital challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. As such, it should be essential reading for academics, students, designers and professionals interested in the production of culture in the post-digital age.