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The organisation of the Amsterdam Museumnacht (’n8′) will launch its newest project on July 16: nachtgeluiden - museum in mp3. These are audio files made by students, artists, curators, random and famous Amsterdam citizens, that you can listen to on the website, download or subscribe to as a podcast. With these mp3s n8 tries to take away barriers from experiencing the museums in Amsterdam, and to open new ways of adding stories to the public realm.

Anyone can join in, and add his or her story, but the first mp3s have been made by museum staff, artists and students. They are the start of a growing database, managed by n8, that is collectively updated by the Amsterdam museums. The platform has been developed and designed by Grrr Amsterdam.

nachtgeluiden - museum in mp3
homepage of n8

From Artforum:

French Prime Minister François Fillon has announced that France will experiment with free admission to certain state museums in Paris and beyond, measuring the effects over the course of an unspecified trial period. In an editorial for Le Figaro, Emmanuel Fessy questions the policy, which has already been adopted—with notable success—in Great Britain. “What if free museums were not actually a good idea?” asks Fessy. The Louvre welcomes 7.6 million visitors every year—two thirds of whom are foreigners—and collects €40 million ($54.5 million) from the sale of tickets to its permanent collections alone. Apart from lost revenues, free museums “will only increase the pernicious sentiment of no-cost culture,” writes Fessy, “a sentiment already fed by the development of the Internet and the explosion of music and film piracy.”

Read full article (Artforum, July 10, 2007)
Read editorial in Le Figaro (July 5, 2007)