Jonathan Alger

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 [...]

Nearly as remarkable as the Shanghai 2010 World Expo: the Shanghai 2010 World Expo “Online Expo”. Nearly as remarkable as that (and entertainingly bizarre): the Shanghai 2010 World Expo “Online Expo” Official Preview Video:

“Ceaseless World Expo!”

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 [...]

Why do I like the “obscure Brooklyn depot” or “fascinating gallery of extraordinary objects and materials” called The Index Ltd so much? First, I can’t explain what it is very well, which usually portends great things. Second, the online version has a Swiss domain extension for reasons initially mysterious.
But don’t just take my word for [...]

I do think about other things besides the Cooper-Hewitt. I just don’t blog about them, apparently. The Cooper-Hewitt’s recently-opened Triennial exhibit, “Why Design Now?” has me, well, thinking. My favorite project thus far, for a dozen reasons: the “Posterwall for the 21st Century” installation at the Graphic Design Museum in the Netherlands.
Created by design group [...]

Must-see: an enlightening and (very) information-packed discussion of social media and web strategy. By Sebastian Chan – charismatic director of apparently everything technological at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia – speaking at the Smithsonian (archived at the Smithsonian 2.0 video collection)

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

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 [...]

A bumper crop: 57 new developments (1-13 March). (Previous list. All past lists.)

Congo hopes a new museum can heal a nation’s scars.
McSweeney’s imagines museum work: “Natural Museum of History Interoffice Smackdown.”
Smart museum idea in here somewhere: brilliant IKEA subway display in Paris.
Mixed Reactions to News of Dale Chihuly Museum Planned for Base of Space Needle.
Swiss [...]

Artist-illustrator Lisa Congdon’s charmingly obsessive A Collection a Day 2010 blog intends to post a daily photograph of a different little collection of items owned by the artist. One suspects Ms. Congdon must have a lot of closets. Above: vintage flash cards. Via Swiss Miss.

There were 32 new developments:

In multimedia exhibition, Asian Art Museum captures Shanghai’s vibrancy, present and past.
Vital 5 Productions’ Portland Art Museum Unauthorized Tour.
Museum of Advertising Icons opens 2010 (follow Mr. Bubble).
Museum Attendance Rises Despite (due to?) Recession. 40% are up “significantly,” esp. science museums.
New exhibit: the art of DreamWorks (Madagascar, Monsters vs. Aliens, Shrek).
African Burial [...]

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 [...]

20 new developments:

Chatroulette, the bizarre new video social web craze.
“How It Is”, the iPHone app version of the Miroslaw Balka exhibit at Tate Modern: intriguing, but hard to “use”.
Design Competition for the Freedom and Unity Memorial in Berlin.
Museum of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences put on indefinite hold.
Conference in Ireland: “Exhibitions-from Ideas [...]

Atlas Obscura: a wonderful, strange, distractingly interesting website about unique places. Many are museums: in fact the site has so many, they must be subcategorized (medical museums, wonder cabinets). Above: the Sand Museum of Nima, Japan.

The Guggenheim has put all 200 proposals online from the “Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum” project. (For this year’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of Wright’s building, “scores of artists and architects” were invited to propose their own ideas for the “catalytic” and famously photogenic central void. Above: Studio Arne Quinze.) Past [...]