The final day of the conference is on its way. This morning we had quite a rewarding demonstration of the n8 strategy, explaining our on and off line activities. It is interesting to see so many institutions working with all these interesting and intelligent tools, but not many working collectively in a city or region, like we do in Amsterdam. I would be keen to learn from other organisations that develop plans together. The collective of over 40 museums in Amsterdam have founded the n8 as an innovation platform for youth marketing, event organisation and new media development. Our annual Museum Night is by far the most known of the projects we do, but the Museum in MP3 portal is getting some good feedback, amongst others from the kind people at MoMA and ICA Boston. I would love to discuss this more in depth with attendees of MW2008.

The 12th edition of the annual Museums and the Web conference has started today. Keynote speaker Michael Geist, law professor at the University of Ottawa where he holds the Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law, had an interesting talk at the opening plenary, stressing the need for museums to take responsibility for shaping the future Web.

Like every year, the conference is as cluttered and complex as the topics it addresses. Chairman and MW evangelist David Bearman admits it himself, advising visitors to ‘browse’ the lectures instead of fanatically trying to absorb all of its contents. This mornings’s program consists of sessions entitled ‘Personalisation’, ‘Engaging Museum Audiences’ and ‘Theoretical Frameworks’. After lunch, themes are a.o. ‘Mobile Computing’, User-Generated Content’ and ‘What to do with New Media Art?’.

MW2008

In a public address Nicholas Penny, the new director of the National Gallery, said that the museum will no longer show blockbuster exhibitions and will focus on its duty to display art with which the public is unfamiliar rather than yet another parade of a famous artist’s greatest hits.

“The responsibility of a major gallery is to show people something they haven’t seen before,” he said. “A major national institution should be one that proves a constant attraction to the public. What is important is encouraging historical and visual curiosity in the general public.”

Read full article (The Times, February 27, 2008)

A rare post about ourselves, nevertheless one with a wink: the Dutch Bloggies Awards have longlisted museumlab.org in the category best News Blog. This is a surprising support at the end of our first year of existence online (this site started in April 2007).

A warm welcome to our new visitors.

“The announcement by the British government that it is putting £50m towards the costs of the new development of Tate Modern is one of the most significant moves in public cultural policy in recent years.”

But it is not enough, according to Sir Nicholas Serrota. In a letter in The Art Newspaper on 24 January, the director of Tate urges private donors, trusts, corporations and foundations to recognise the significance of the faith shown in Tate Modern 2.

“In 2000, an investment of £137m of public and private money created Tate Modern. In seven years, it has become the most popular museum of modern and contemporary art in the world, and the second leading free tourist attraction in Britain. What makes it unique among museums is that 50% of its visitors are under 35 years old.”

Read full letter (The Art Newspaper, 24 January 2008)

See also this article in the Guardian of 26 July 2006.

A computer generated image of the new building, from the south © Herzog & de Meuron / Hayes Davidson

Federal agents raided the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Thursday as part of a five-year inquiry into smuggled relics. (Photo: Nick Ut/Associated Press)

“Federal agents raided a Los Angeles gallery and four museums in Southern California on Thursday, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, as part of a five-year investigation into the smuggling of looted antiquities from Thailand, Myanmar, China and Native American sites.” (New York Times, January 25, 2008)

“They suspect the items were smuggled in from Thailand and China before being given to museums, allowing the donors to claim back tax. The scam involved smugglers putting “Made in Thailand” stickers on genuine antiques to get them through customs. The museums are co-operating but say they had no reason to be suspicious. No arrests have been made.” (BBC News, January 25, 2008)

Philippe de Montebello retires as director of the Metropolitan Museum

According to the Association of Art Museum Directors, a New York-based nonprofit representing more than 180 museum directors, 21 U.S. museums will be looking for successors of the postwar generation of directors. With diminishing federal and corporate funding, the job descriptions of the top position at museums might be intimidating curators at one side, where others leave for better paid jobs at auction houses.

“At the Met, Mr. Montebello’s successor will need to be able to wax rhapsodic with curators about hieroglyphics and Damien Hirst as well as manage a staff of 2,600, a $201 million operating budget and a $1 billion capital campaign.”

Read full article (Washington Post, January 10, 2008)

A former curator for the J. Paul Getty Museum was acquitted Tuesday of conspiring to acquire an ancient funerary wreath that Greek officials say was illegally removed from Greece about 15 years ago, judicial officials said.

The former curator, Marion True, 59, was not present at the hearing. But the ruling, issued unanimously by the three-member criminal appeals court, followed a motion of dismissal that her lawyer, Yannis Yannides, submitted at the start of the trial last week, citing the statute of limitations.

“The rule of law was applied,” said Yannides. “That’s all we wanted. That’s all we asked for.”

True, who is also on trial in Italy for trafficking in artifacts, faced up to 10 years in prison.

Greece first laid claim to the 2,500-year-old crown in the mid-1990s, but its precise site of excavation was not established for years.

Read full article

Charles Saatchi, the iconoclastic art collector, is in talks to open a gallery in the United Arab Emirates, in the latest sign of the booming desert region’s race to create a cultural hub in the Middle East.

Mr Saatchi told the FT he had turned down offers from the Gulf and venture capital groups to buy his Saatchi Online site, a social networking site for the art world. However, he is understood to have held talks with three potential partners in Dubai and elsewhere in the Gulf about investing in an Arabic-language version of Saatchi Online.

Read full article (Financial Times. November 17, 2007)

France, home to some of the world’s great art, is trying a six-month experiment. If museums are free, culture officials wonder, will they attract the kind of people who would usually rather watch television?

Starting Jan. 1, 14 French museums and monuments, most of them low-profile, will open to visitors free of charge for six months, Culture Minister Christine Albanel said Tuesday. Three are in Paris — Guimet, home to Asian art; Cluny, with a collection of medieval treasures; and Arts et Metiers, dedicated to scientific inventions. Their full-price tickets range from €6.50 ($9.27) to €7.50 ($10.70).

Conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy campaigned for free museums before his May election, and the idea has stirred debate in France’s culture world since then, with critics asking whether it’s merely a superficial way of addressing the profound, decades-old question of how to democratize culture.

Another underlying question is how France — proclaimed by its prime minister to be in “a state of bankruptcy” — could afford the measure.

Albanel, who has been skeptical in the past about free museums, said officials would study the experiment’s results and decide how to proceed.

Read full article (International Herald Tribune, October 23, 2007)