Museums and the Web 2011 – the web site picture

One of the highlights of the annual Museums and the Web conference is the Best of the Web awards. Museum web sites are submitted from all over the world and vetted by a panel of web developers, museum professionals and general tech heads. It is peers critically judging the work of their peers, and the awards are highly valued within the museum community.

So it was great to see Australia doing well with Museum Victoria taking out the award in the Audio Visual/ podcast category, and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) getting not only the award in the education category but also the best web site overall – quite an accolade.

More broadly what I came away with from the papers I heard on web site issues is the depth of thinking now going on in the museum world about how web sites are used and the opportunities they provide for creating a quite different experience from the museum visit. I would particularly highlight:

1. The work of the National Museum of Denmark in bringing art stories alive (including an innovative and embedded use of what conservators do and what they can contribute to art stories). Read the paper here.
2. What the Tate are up to in rethinking their web site as a result of a massive four year rebuild. The Tate has always been at the forefront of web site development being one of the first major art museums to place their entire collection of 60,000 artworks on line. They realised that the budgetary and cultural restrictions imposed on museum websites was holding them back from competing in terms of leveraging the power of relational databases in a way their commercial rivals do, and that their website displays artworks on line in the same paradigm as print publishing – namely as reproductions. No real surprises there but the conclusions they come to are worth reading.
3. And finally the Smithsonian. They are engaged on a collaborative project across the whole Institution to review their web strategy, which involves a series of staff workshops open to all staff . Each of the workshops includes a real-time transcription of the proceedings posted to a wiki, where it can be openly evaluated, sifted, weighed, and considered by all. The project has very clear goals namely to define the optimum role for the Smithsonian in the next 100 years by:

• Embracing new models of knowledge creation and dissemination
• Providing better access to knowledge for geographically and demographically diverse audiences
• Providing richer, more engaging means (storytelling) for different types of audiences to engage with our knowledge assets
• Creating opportunities for inter-disciplinary collaboration and learning
• Identifying new revenue sources to support the ever-growing programs

It is a great model for where the museum web site is going. Check it out here.

Julian Bickersteth
Managing Director
internationalconservationservices

Museum Directors – changing of the guard

No sooner have I cited the eminent scholar, Christopher Menz, Director of the Art Gallery of South Australia as an example of a scholar director, than he chooses not to renew his contract after 5 years at the helm. The reason Menz gives is that state funding is inadequate to run the Gallery at a professional level. John Mcdonald (the art journalist and formerly senior curator at the NGA) has picked this up and delivered a broadside at the general paucity of gallery funding in SMH today.

Whilst I am sure John has a good point, I am not buying into that discussion today. Of more interest are a couple of things:
1) The AGSA Chairman, Michael Abbott was clearly put out that Menz did not consult him before resigning and, reading between the lines, is not close to Menz. That may partly be because Menz directly criticizes the Premier, Mike Rann, for not recognising the need for more ongoing funding, and Abbott in his role as a QC is currently representing Rann in a defamation action against Channel 7. That is always going to be a problem for a state/national gallery if the director and chair are not in alignment. The excellent recently published book on the history of the National Gallery, London by Charles Saumarez Smith is a fascinating read about this very issue of director/trustee tension, particularly pertinent as Saumarez Smith resigned as director in 2008 as a result of clashes with his Trustees.
An example of where it works well is the Edmund Capon (director) and David Gonski (Chair) relationship at AGNSW.

2) In regards to his successor, there seems to be a current trend to recruit museum directors in our region from the UK. Just before Christmas Te Papa announced that their new director (after the tragic death last year of Seddon Bennington whilst hiking) is to be Michael Houlihan, Director General , National Museum of Wales. Almost at the same time the WA Museum announced that their new director is to be Alec Coles, Director of Tyne and Wear Museums in the UK. And I understand that the replacement for Craddock Morton at the National Museum is unlikely to be appointed until mid year and is likely to be from overseas.

Let me hasten to add I see nothing wrong with this. Some of our great directors have been from the same source, notably Edmund Capon (AGNSW) and Patrick Greene (Museum Victoria), and it is unlikely the Powerhouse Museum would ever have been built with out the forcefulness and personality of Lindsay Sharp ( who went onto the Royal Ontario Museum and the UK Science Museum).