Adaptive Path Blog

In college, I spent a period of time working in the University of Arizona Art Museum as a gallery guide. I learned many valuable lessons there:

1. Do not do anything, anywhere in a museum that you would not do on camera, because you are.
2. There are art works that grow on you over time. Staring at a painting for hours on end makes a difference.
3. Traditional art museums are like churches to art.

It’s the museum-as-church phenomenon that impacts me the most. The rituals and protocols in a museum are well-defined. Do not touch the art. Don’t even really get close to the art. Speak quietly so you don’t echo. Don’t take pictures with a flash. Don’t use a pen anywhere in the galleries. There’s a lot of don’t goin’ on.

As a studio artist, I’m involved with the hands-on practice of art making…the sheer physical, emotional, intellectual and visceral effort it takes to create a piece. I get inspired by the excitement of experimenting, playing, seeing the work evolve, developing a visual language. My goals in art-making are first and foremost about the experience of art-making, and much less about the results.

In contrast, the sterile, hermetic, hands-off environments in traditional art museums seem bereft of any life or engagement. The artworks sit there, suspended in time, protected from poking and prodding, isolated from the environments in which they were made, and in many cases, the environments for which they were made. The white wall of a museum bears little resemblance to the original environment in which this work lived. How do these artworks impact people? Why is there so little context in a museum? How can people fully understand the impact, meaning and importance of works that they have not created themselves? What are the stories that bring these works to life? I grappled with these questions during my gallery guide stint in college, and I grapple with them now.

Reading the above, it sounds like I’m anti-museum, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. I highly regard museums as the keepers of cultural touch-stones: art, history, music and other works that define and connect people with their cultural heritage. The work that museums do to preserve great works and the education and perspective they provide are true gifts to society. I’m a great admirer of the staff, volunteers and patrons that keep these institutions vibrant and thriving. The new ways that are being explored to engage people from all kinds of backgrounds and experiences to deeply connect with art is inspiring.

So it was a great pleasure to have a long conversation with Peter Samis and Tana Johnson about exactly these questions. Peter and Tana work in the Interactive Educational Technologies team at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and their challenge is to bridge the gaps between visitors and art. They have a wonderful perspective on how technology plays into this challenge. As a result, SFMOMA and the IET team have received awards and wide recognition from sources as diverse as the American Association of Museums, the Webbys, Communication Arts, and I.D. Magazine.

You can read the entire interview here.

Members of the IET team are speaking at UX Week, on day three: Play and Immersion. They’ll be speaking about the designing contexts for connecting with art. If you’re interested in seeing the team up close and in person, you can register for UX Week using the code BLOG for 10% off.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 1:17 pm and is filed under Creativity, Events, Experience design, Plugs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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