Museums

Arianna Huffington posted an item about museums on her blog yesterday that held two surprises.

For one, although she is clearly a person interested in the arts, someone who once wrote a book about Picasso, it never occurred to me that she thought much about museums. Or, as she revealed, that she would be invited to speak to a group of “museum presidents and directors” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. But she is certainly a successful entrepreneur, and she was out in front of other media groups on new media. So there you are.

The second surprise, though, was more interesting. Huffington called herself “a complete evangelist for new media and for institutions adapting as fast as possible to changes new technologies are bringing to our world.”

And yet, she advised caution, saying that she was reticent about urging museums to expand audiences and enrich the museum experience via social media.

…the danger of social media becoming the point of social media — connection for connection’s sake, connection to no end — is one museums need to particularly guard against. Reducing the museum experience to more apps providing more data is just as laughable as reducing the experience of going to church down to parishioners tweeting: “At church, pastor just mentioned loaves and fishes, anyone have some sushi recs for later?” Or whipping out their iPad to quickly look up the fact that the Sermon on the Mount took place near the Sea of Galilee, which, following a link, I see is the lowest freshwater lake in the world… I should totally tweet that!

Huffington praised LACMA’s “reading room” and the Metropolitan Museum’s timeline of art history, among other tech initiatives. Then she said:

But if museums forget their DNA and get their heads turned by every new tech hottie that shimmies by they will undercut the point of their existence. Too much of the wrong kind of connection can actually disconnect us from an aesthetic experience.

I agree, and I hope museums approach technology not necessarily cautiously — for we are all allowed to make mistakes, so long as we are prepared to admit them and reverse them — but very thoughtfully, not willy-nilly.

Huffington made two other comments which I applaud. She very carefully phrased her description of museums as “institutions dedicated to what is often seen as elitist high art.” That indicates that she does not see “high” art as elitist, and neither do I.

Second, she talked about the “fourth” human instinct, beyond survival, sex and power, as one that “drives us to art and religion. That instinct is just as vital as the other three but we rarely give it the same kind of attention.”

Yes. That’s the instinct art museums should attempt not only to satisfy but also to highlight.

Here’s the link to Huffington’s post, which has more about her thinking.

 

Last week, the Morgan Library and Museum* inaugurated its Music Manuscripts Online web feature. It’s the early fruit of a project that began in 2007 to digitize more than 900 manuscripts, about 42,000 pages all told, and let scholars and the public see them from the comfort of, well, wherever there’s a computer.

The Morgan’s collection includes “works by J. S. Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Debussy, Fauré, Haydn, Liszt, Mahler, Massenet, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Puccini, Schubert, and Schumann, among many others.”

Only about 40 manuscripts are up now, but it’s a nice start. The zoom-in features allow very close inspection. The Morgan has provided a research guide. 

You can’t copy anything, though — the image here, of Beethoven’s violin and piano sonata in G major, is from the home page. I’m sure rights are an issue.

The Julliard School has also digitized its manuscript collection, 138 items including the late engraver’s proof of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, with hundreds of his markings. Here’s the list of composers in its collection. Like the Morgan, the Juilliard’s music archive lets users zoom in, but not copy.

Some of these manuscripts are works of art, in themselves: they allow people to see creativity in the making. A composer I know told me that he wouldn’t find them very useful, and he certainly didn’t see what the public would do with them — but I hope he’s wrong. Technology is funny that way: it may not prompt the behavior people expect, but frequently it proves useful in an unforeseen way.

Here’s an idea to speed that along, though it may be caught up in rights issues: offer recordings of the music along side the markings on the page.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Morgan Library and Museum