The Transparent Museum
@thetransparentmuseum
I’m Isabel: 20 years old, from San Diego, California. I’m soon to be a third year at the University of Chicago, studying art history. Since I was very young, I’ve been an avid museum visitor, and currently I work as a student docent at the Smart Museum of Art in Chicago. Later on, I plan to pursue curatorial work. In addition to working on this blog project over the summer, I am interning in the curatorial department at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. A little background on why I have this blog and this project: a year ago, I saw a fantastic and provocative exhibition called Echoes of the Past: The Buddhist Cave Temples of Xiangtangshan. It had traveled to the San Diego Museum of Art from its starting point at my very own place of work, the Smart Museum. The exhibition showcased the beauty of these sixth century Chinese cave temples. What made this show especially unique was the innovative combination of real artifacts and technological reconstructions. I was captivated by the range of three-dimensional reconstructions, videos, and projections used. Most importantly, the technology continually functioned as an addition to, not a distraction from, the actual, present objects. Echoes of the Past sparked my curiosity about the role that technology is playing in art museums and raised many questions concerning how museums respond to technology. Today, as we frenetically switch between apps on our iPhones and functions on our computers, how do we reconcile this pace with the museum world, which has always insistently moved at its own speed? How can museums keep up with the fast-paced network of technology while always making sure that their collections and focus on the objects of art themselves remains the most important part of the museum experience? Technology has the power and responsibility of opening things up, of making the world increasingly transparent. The question, then, is what does it mean for a museum to be transparent? I applied for a Seidel Scholars Grant through the University of Chicago in order to pursue my interest in this topic. This is a relatively new program that funds students’ summer plans that are nonacademic but career related, generously allowing them the monetary flexibility to research and dive deeper into a project that is of practical interest to their future plans. I was lucky enough to receive the grant, so here I am. My goal for this project is to create a space online for conversation and exploration of technology in art museums for students, art historians, museum visitors, or anyone who has a passing interest in technology and art. I plan on researching current, past, and planned exhibitions. I also will be sitting down and interviewing museum staff members, to hear their unique perspectives on the use of technology within their institutions. I’ll be writing about my experiences here over the next few months while including my own thoughts on museum technology. My search will begin focusing on California and Chicago, but, as the weeks progress, I hope to expand my research to elsewhere in the United States. I welcome any and all suggestions of interesting technological happenings in the art world. I want this project to become an ongoing dialogue. I hope for this blog to become a place of reference, of combined resources for thinking about how the museum functions in the 21st century. I intend to use technology as my tool to open up museum technology to anyone who is interested. I’d love if you would follow me along.
