The Piazza Augusto Imperatore in Rome and its modern neighbor, the Ara Pacis Museum, at center, designed by Richard Meier. (Photo: Chris Warde-Jones for The New York Times)

The International Herald Tribune has a remarkable story on Rome’s new mayor who recently announced his intention to tear down a museum designed by U.S. architect Richard Meier. He was referring to the so-called Ara Pacis museum that was built to house the Ara Pacis, a 2,000-year-old Roman altar, and opened its doors in the ancient centre of the Italian capital in 2006. Consisting of a glass, marble and steel rectangular shaped structure, the museum was praised by many as a welcome addition to Rome’s more traditional architecture.

But at a news conference, as he outlined his plans for Rome, mayor Gianni Alemanno threatened that: “Meier’s building is a construction to be scrapped”. Alemanno, who last week became the first right-wing politician elected Rome mayor since Mussolini’s time, is among those critics who thought the classical Ara Pacis should never have been housed in such a modern structure.

And he’s is in good company. around the time of the opening in 2006, architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff of The New York Times wrote an almost hostile review of the building and its architect:

Mr. Meier’s building is a contemporary expression of what can happen when an architect fetishizes his own style out of a sense of self-aggrandizement. Absurdly overscale, it seems indifferent to the naked beauty of the dense and richly textured city around it.

And he even went as far as comparing Meier to Mussolini:

” While Mussolini’s architects can be faulted for trying to reshape the city’s history for their own propaganda aims — and to satisfy the egomaniacal drive of a despot — the museum reminds us that vanity is not unique to generals or politicians.”

Next year it will be exactly 100 years ago that Futurist leader Marinetti called for the destruction of the past as entombed in museums, and one century later his intellectual heirs in Italy might bring his words into action..

2 Columbus Circle (on the right), day view (Photo: New York Times)

The 1964 Gallery of Modern Art at 2 Columbus Circle is being transformed into a new space for the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD). Almost everything about the building has changed, but the original “lollipop” columns persist. The New York Times has put an interactive feature online, providing an animated overview of the building’s redesign. Moreover, on the MAD-website you can watch a video of the construction works.

Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) Floor plan: new vs. old situation (Photo: New York Times)

The Iraqi National Museum has reclaimed 701 artefacts that were stolen during looting in the aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. The news was covered by media from around the world:

Stolen treasures returned to Iraq’s museum (People’s Daily Online, 29 Apr 2008)

Treasures returned to Iraq museum (Kazinform, 28 Apr 2008)

Stolen treasures returned to Iraq’s museum (Sydney Morning Herald, 28 Apr 2008)

Iraqi museum receives 701 artifacts stolen during looting (Aljazeera.com, 27 Apr 2008)

Treasures returned to Iraq museum (BBC, 27 Apr 2008)

Iraqi National Museum receives 701 artifacts stolen in wake of Saddam Hussein’s ouster (International Herald Tribune, 27 Apr 2008)

Baghdad museum receives artifacts stolen from Iraq (Washington Post, 27 Apr 2008)

Read more Baghdad Museum news (The Baghdad Museum Project)

Tel Aviv’s new Bauhaus Museum is located in the White City, a collection of 1930s-era International Style buildings designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2003.

Tel Aviv’s “White City,” an unparalleled collection of 4,000 International Style buildings, now has a Bauhaus Museum to display Bauhaus-designed furnishings and related objects. The museum is appropriately located, in an International Style building. The first exhibition, which opened April 25, includes original furniture, graphics, lamps, and glass and ceramic ware, by Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer, Christian Bell, Wilhelm Wagenfeld, and others.

It was because of the “White City” that Tel Aviv was added to the list of 56 historical cities in the world in 2003, and became one of the few modern cities to be declared a world heritage site by UNESCO. The maverick architects and designers of the city could not have imagined that their application of the revolutionary Bauhaus style of architecture would eventually make Tel Aviv the largest open-air Bauhaus museum in the world.

It appears that the Bauhaus Museum in Tel Aviv has no website of its own, but the City of Tel Aviv-Jaffa maintains a website with a lot of good information and photos. Moreover, there is currently an exhibition on view about the White City, at the Architekturzentrum Wien (Austria). Read more about the museum on the website of Architectural Record.

Here is a blatant quote from Mike Ellis‘ electronicmuseum.org.uk, but since he has such a simple and straightforward conclusion of MW2008 I wanted to copy it entirely.

Ellis just spent 7 years working as Head of Web for the National Museum of Science and Industry, UK, which comprises the Science Museum in London, Media Museum in Bradford and Railway Museum in York. He now calls himself a «Solutions Architect», working for the Professional Services Group at Eduserv.

Please visit his site, he is an authority on many things, and might even come from the future.

This is Mike’s «direction of travel gut feel for what actually went on during the week:

• We’re doing some very cool stuff using some great new approaches and technologies.
• We’re starting to see the benefits of open access to our content, both in terms of Creative Commons and programmatic access via API’s or syndication.
• We’re - at last - worrying less and doing more.
• We’re beginning to see the benefits of community, not just the coolness.
• Finally: we’re up for collaborating and sharing in more open and positive ways than ever before.»

The keynote speaker of last week’s Museums and the Web in Montreal Michael Geist is looking back at the conference with a critical article in the Toronto Star. In short, Geist summons Canada’s museums to remove fees and contractual barriers to Canadian heritage.

«The dozens of presentations at the conference highlighted the remarkable transformation in how museums display their collections and interact with the public.»

He goes on to say that «(m)any museums are using online video, social networks and interactive multimedia to pull content from diverse places to create «virtual museums.» So, the museum community has emerged as a leading voice for the development of legal frameworks to facilitate digitization and avoid restrictions that could hamper cultural innovation.»

Yet, according to Geist, who holds the Canada research chair in Internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa faculty of law, «some fear the advocacy and actions of museums in embracing the Internet are not consistent, particularly in their policies on works for which copyright has expired.»

According to documents obtained by Geist under the Access to Information Act, the National Gallery of Canada appears to be treating public-domain works as a profit centre.

«(T)he gallery often added hundreds of dollars to the total cost of fulfilling a request, despite the fact that the images were in the public domain. In fact, the permission costs for such works were actually higher than those for works still subject to copyright. The gallery reasoned that the copyright holder would apply additional charges.»

Read his full article (Toronto Star, April 15, 2008)
Visit Michael Geist’s homepage

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.

Day two of MW2008 began at 8 am this morning, with the ‘Birds of a Feather’ breakfast. Our self-created table ‘Enhanced Museum Events’ inspired an interesting dialogue with Jonathan Bowen, who is presenting Wiki Software and Facilities for Museums in the midday session. Before that, I visited talks about Web 2.0 Metrics by the ever enthusing Seb Chan, and Web 2.0 tools by David Greenfield from the Loyola Marymount Universit.

The afternoon schedule brings a much anticipated and needed discussion on openness, by ’solutions architect’ Mike Ellis and Brian Kelly. Hopefully there will be time for lunch and more in-between-the-lines-discussions about the Semantic Web, public-private-ventures and enhancing actual museum visits by means of ultranew media.

Due to rather unfortunate circumstances I have not been able to send in my paper to MW2008; however the organisation has been kind enough to give us a slot at the demonstrations on Saturday. If you are interested to hear about the Amsterdam Museum Night, physical museum events and interactive media, social networking in the context of a museum festival and other ‘interreality’ examples, join us tomorrow at 9.30 am at booth 16.

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

During a discussion with Vincent de Keijzer from the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Niels Huijbregts of XS4ALL, and Nir Nussbaum and Marijn Koolen of the Informatics Institute of the University of Amsterdam, the idea rose to create a platform of museum professionals working in the field of opening up museums through new media and technology. In the spirit of this idea the platform should be open too, accessible for anyone with an interest in this field.

A working title that was coined is The ‹Open Museum Network›. This network should bridge the information gap between audiences and museums, and will focus on pragmatic experiments with new applications, projects and otherwise simple and elegant solutions to make museums more accessible and audiences better equipped. Topics of interest are such imaginative examples of the ‹Wikimuseum› (Powerhouse Museum), the ‹Flickr-exhibition› (Tate Modern) and the ‹Open Source Activities› (n8).

A work in progress, however an acute one, looking at the many international projects on the horizon. Would anyone reading this from abroad be interested in joining the discussion?