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Time magazine’s armored truck from the Balkans, pockmarked with bullet holes, has been hoisted into place. The laptop used by Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter murdered in Pakistan in 2002, has arrived. So has the vest that Bob Woodruff of ABC was wearing last year when he was wounded by a roadside bomb in Iraq.

These stark reminders of the hazards of newsgathering will be displayed at the new Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue, scheduled to open on Oct. 15. Cranes still hover over its steel-and-glass structure, but workers have now installed the facade’s showstopper — a 50-ton, 74-foot-high marble engraved with the First Amendment — and are preparing the exhibitions.

Slowly, the Newseum — a bigger, more dramatic, higher-tech reinvention of of the former Newseum in Arlington, Va. — is taking shape. More than six years in the making and costing $435 million, it may be one of the world’s most expensive museums now under construction. It is certainly among the most prominent, perched on the last buildable site on the presidential inaugural parade route between the Capitol and the White House.

Read full article (New York Times, May 8, 2007)

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Students from Brown University have started a new experiment in Second Life: OSMOSA. This Open Source Museum of Open Source Art seems to be the ultimate mashup, and might also be the start of utter chaos.

The boundaries of SL notwithstanding, there seem to be no limitations to this project. Anyone can add, edit or delete parts of the art and architecture.

It is an interesting social experiment, and hopefully also an artistic and institutional one.

From their blog:

“The Open Source Museum of Open Source Art. “Open source” means that the museum is entirely in the public domain. Anyone can add, modify, or remove art from OSMOSA. Likewise, anyone can add, modify, or remove elements of the OSMOSA building. Our goal is to reimagine definitions of art, artist, curator, museum, culture, and open source. This project is underway in a virtual reality called Second Life (located at Eson 30, 235, 63).”

And right away an interesting (albeit small) discussion followed in the commentary box.

Visit the OSMOSA website