The Brooklyn Museum used online crowdsourcing to a exciting end, in the conception and delivery of their Click! photography exhibition, in a process which invited the museum’s visitors, the online community, and the general public to participate in the exhibition process.
It began with an open call—artists were asked to electronically submit a work of photography that responds to the exhibition’s theme, “Changing Faces of Brooklyn,” along with an artist statement.
After the conclusion of the open call, an online forum opened for audience evaluation of all submissions (all works were posted as anonymous). As part of the evaluation, each visitor answered a series of questions about his/her knowledge of art and perceived expertise.
Click! culminated in an exhibition at the Museum, where the artworks were installed according to their relative ranking from the juried process.
The results are, of course, online, where the public can engage with discussions and analysis of the work, and the entire process.
Those of you who were at the Arts Council’s New Media, New Audience? conference last November may remember a speaker from the Royal Shakespeare Company. He spoke of the RSC’s strategy of using the internet to reach out to new audiences, many of which the RSC felt would never actually make it to their venue.
Their site is indeed a fantastic resource for anyone interested in Shakespeare, or theatre in general. You could, for example, watch insightful footage of a rehearsal of the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. There is no direct ’sell’ involved with this, i.e. they’re not selling tickets to Romeo and Juliet. In monetary terms it may be hard to see a financial return from this kind of web activity. However, this degree of online endeavour clearly reinforces the RSC’s brand internationally, and it’s claim to be the world’s leading authority on the works of Shakespeare.
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The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is taking things a step further, and are now ‘the first museum on the European Continent to have developed an iPhone application’.
The app, called “Yours, Vincent” is a little work of art in itself. Free to download from iTunes, it incorporates a selection of beautifully produced short films, interviews and images to bring the user through selected accounts from Vincent van Gogh’s letters, and related paintings.
The app was developed to go along with the exhibit “Van Gogh’s Letters: The Artist Speaks” which opened earlier this month, and runs to January 3, 2010 at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
For those unable to make it to Amsterdam, all of the letters are also available to view online at www.vangoghletters.org.
The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston runs a ‘Teen Night’ which combines art, socialising and a sense of shared ownership of the event.
It started out with one wild (alcohol free) party with music, dancing and general socialising. Gallery staff were on hand to answer questions about the art, but the primary goal seems to have been to get young people in the door.
It has evolved into a quarterly event that is conceived, promoted, and run by teens, employing short programs inspired by the collection. There have also been classes on video, weblogging, podcasting, digital photography, video boot camp, design graphics, t-shirt design, a DJ school, and an in-school writing program.
Started with a small group of teenagers in 2005, ICA is now drawing 300 to 450 young people per event and hitting its goal of engaging 2,500 teens annually, up from 700 in 2005.
Many will be familiar with TED – the ‘ideas’ conference which takes place annually in Long Beach, California. For those unfamiliar, the TED site is well worth a look – with hundreds of presentations on every kind of subject from becoming a buddha to the future of the electric car, there is, as the saying goes, something for everyone.
The TED site says; “We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world“, so in this context it’s great to see a lot of interesting arts material to be found here. Some examples;
A talk by Brazilian visual artist Vik Muniz, (readers may have seen a solo exhibition of his work in IMMA some years back)
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an inspiring look at classical music and ‘one-buttock’ piano playing….
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Finally, poetry like I’ve never heard it performed before;
With thanks to Declan Doherty for the current banner photograph, of 'Walk the Plank' pyrotechnics company at Cosán Glas, Machaire Raghartaigh, presented by Saothar Ealaíne as part of Earagail Arts Festival 2007
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