A new book from the same source as New Exhibition Design 01 & 02, but now looking back, is now available for pre-order. Just pre-ordered mine. Due in January. (If you don’t have the first two, get them while you’re at it. Quite indispensable recent surveys.)
UPDATE, 30 Dec 2011: Just heard that the release date has been pushed back to March. Sigh.
From Archdaily, this photo (make sure you look twice at it) and more on the constantly-award-winning Morris Arboretum Tree Adventure at UPenn:
Morris Arboretum’s Tree Adventure exhibit Out on a Limb, designed by Metcalfe Architecture & Design, was the 2010 AIA Philadelphia Design Excellence Gold Medal Winner, 2010 AIA Pennsylvania Architectural Excellence Award, 2010 “Best of Philly” Award, and the 2010 American Association of Museums Excellence in Exhibition Design Award. Suspended 50 feet above the forest floor this network of walkways (450-feet in length) provides a bird’s eye view of the forest, complete with a giant Bird’s Nest, Squirrel Scramble rope, and many vista platforms.
Originally seen on Notcot.org.
Mm, pretty: the new MoMA abstract expressionism iPad app.
Exactly what I’m supposed to do with it, I’m not quite sure. Is it a really big handheld guide for my next museum visit, or do I sit on my porch and use it, but not see the real art? If it’s the former, both my hands are already full of the little hands of my co-visitors. If it’s the latter, I’ll go for a coffee table book (bigger pictures, higher resolution).
All that said, it’s beautiful anyway, so why not.
Best. Thing. Ever. When was the last time that crochet made you cry?
Via Science Gallery and the National Museum of Natural History.
Brilliant. I’ve been trying to convince someone to do this for years. And bravo, Mr. de Guzman.
“From close up, the headquarters of the senior curator of art at the Oakland Museum of California mostly looks the same. de Guzman’s laptop and phone occupy their usual spots on his glass-topped desk. The walls are covered with sketches and paintings. But instead of sitting behind a closed door in the museum’s administrative wing, de Guzman is on display to the public as he works at his desk alongside the art displays.”
Via the Bay Citizen.
After years of quietly enjoying my ever-growing collection of books on exhibit design, museum planning and interactive spaces, I have finally come up with a way to share my bookshelf with everyone. I hereby announce the Exhibit Designer’s Bookshelf (beta), courtesy of Shelfari.
Click the link at the very top of this page, or here, and enjoy. More fancy features to come, this is just a start.
Many thanks to Jessica Griscti, bibliographer extraordinaire, for helping to make this happen.
Suggestions? Missing books? Useful? Not useful? Comments open below.
A great, simple video of what everyone involved in interactive installation projects knows, but sometimes can’t articulate. By the Environmental Health Clinic at NYU, led by Australia-born conceptual artist Natalie Jeremijenko. Don’t let the name confuse you, it is a provocative design studio camouflaged as a university health think-tank, also apparently sometimes called the “x Design Project”. You figure out the rest.
Liberally excerpted from the Vimeo blurb (see here for more of the blurb, which is great, and more videos, which are also great):
This video illustrates that if you hold constant the institutional context (in this case a contemporary museum), and the information presented (in this case the curatorial information); and you only vary the technological interface, you can reveal the Structures of Participation around the differing interfaces—same info, same context, but very different experience. Because of the tight coupling, it can be very difficult to make sense of what is actually changing as we change our socio-technical system. In the first case (a) the traditional public display of text on museum wall, which, because of the social convention of quiet-while-some-one-is-reading, you can be standing next to someone, but not talk to them and never hear anything of what they are thinking. Secondly, the technological shift we have all witnessed in contemporary museums as the curatorial information is presented as an audio tour, as a privatized audio environment via headset (or similar). This has the effect of synchronizing people temporally, but precludes local discussion–you can’t hear what anyone nearby is saying. In the third case the curatorial information is presented via a deliberately triggered (pull) small located speaker (the Located Sound Speaker or LSSn). This creates a shared audio context for a small group, momentarily synchronizing people spatially and temporally, and providing an opportunity for local comments and discussion.
More on the exploits of Ms. Jeremijenko in this article and YouTube video from GOOD Magazine.
In case you missed it, Robin Pogrebin’s Brooklyn Museum article in the New York Times yesterday (“Brooklyn Museum’s Populism Hasn’t Lured Crowds”), has created quite a stir. The article itself is very much worth reading, if you are someone interested in successful visitor experiences of whatever kind. Just don’t expect pat answers, the jury is still out. Perhaps indefinitely.
One of the better responses I’ve seen thus far has been from the most mysterious, anonymous, hardworking museum twitterer around, @museumnerd, who posted this reply.
So what do you think?
I promise you my best 140 characters on accessibility, architecture, education, exhibit design, graphic design, installation art, interaction design, museums, online exhibits, philanthropy, technology, video, and wayfinding. www.twitter.com/jonathanalger
Narrative Space, a conference hosted by the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester in the UK, starts today, despite the volcanic ash cloud. It is an “international conference exploring the interpretive potential of museum architecture and design.” (Sounds great, sad I can’t go!)
Full program (big PDF) here.
The remarkable site Artbabble won “Best Overall” honors in the Best of the Web competition last week at the Museums and the Web conference in Denver. Originally launched in April of last year by the Indianapolis Museum of Art and six partners, the site is has become “one of the premier destinations for art video online”. It’s eminently worth seeing, not only for its implications about how the web changes what museums do, but also for the innovative video-navigation core features.
From the Best of the Web writeup:
Broadening the interactive experience even further, a section for comments allows visitors to share observations and suggest links of their own. Comments can also be embedded directly into the video timeline as well, letting users comment on elements at a particular point in time. Full text transcriptions of videos drive closed captioning features for video playback and because they are rendered to the video page, search engines can index the spoken text for video content. Users can easily skip deep into a long format video picking and choosing only the content that interests them.
A bumper crop: 57 new developments (1-13 March). (Previous list. All past lists.)
My fellow designer parents know that all the well-designed, expensive, eco-friendly, perfectly color-coded Scandinavian brain toys in the world can’t hold a candle to any plastic toy that’s loud and blinks. But perhaps MoMA’s new Shape Lab, an interactive space for children that opened last month, can give us all a helping hand. (It’s rumored to be free, that won’t hurt either.) Via Kidcity.
There were 32 new developments:
Thanks to a kind twinvitation* from Nancy Proctor, the Head of New Media at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, I have just done a review of the provocative new iPhone app “How It Is” from Tate Modern. The full review is available at the Museum Mobile Wiki site.
The app is a companion piece for Polish artist Miroslav Balka’s current installation of the same name, on view in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, and it is part of what I argue is a more or less continuous suite of experiences that includes the artwork itself, an “exploration” web site, and the app. So long as you follow the advice I stumbled on, and make sure to experience the app in a dark room with headphones on, you may agree with my conclusions: that this is a great, perhaps even revolutionary, new museum mobile project.
* An invitation made through Twitter?
My Shelfari bookshelf: the latest on exhibit design, museum planning, and interactive space.
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