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.

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

The Royal Library in Copenhagen has expressed the wish to house controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad which were published in a Danish newspaper in September 2005 and created a wave of global protest in which more than 50 people were killed. “It would be natural for us to have them at the Royal Library,” Jytte Kjaergaard, a spokeswoman for the Copenhagen- based library, said by telephone today to Bloomberg. “We don’t perceive them as works of art. We don’t have any view on their substance or content. Our view is that they hold a place in our cultural heritage. The cartoons have become a part of Danish history.”

Critics state that the library risks opening old wounds, causing an unnecessary provocation towards the Muslim world. “We don’t need to be reminded of the cartoons. We need to forget about them and build bridges between people, rather than dig ditches,” said Kasem Said Ahmad, a spokesman for the Islamic Community in Denmark.

Der Spiegel writes that “according to Danish law, two copies of everything published in Denmark — from bestselling novels to local newspapers — have to be deposited at the Royal Library, making it the country’s most important repository.” The Danish institution is considered to be Scandinavia’s leading library, with rare treasures like Sören Kierkegaard’s manuscripts, one of 48 copies of the Gutenberg Bible known to exist and “Out of Africa” author Karen Blixen’s diaries.

The Danish Media Museum in Odense has also expressed an interest in the cartoons. “If the library acquires them, we would like to show them together with media reports about the publication and the protests against it,” says its director Ervin Nielsen in the Guardian.

The artists are willing to collaborate, writes the Times. “We have generally agreed that we want a museum to have the works, but everyone still has to take a final decision for himself,” Claus Seidel, one of the cartoonists and head of the Danish cartoonists’ association, said. “Nobody wants to make a lot of money, some of us are even willing to donate the works,” he said.”

Read the article in the Times (January 30, 3008)
Read the article in the Guardian (January 30, 2008)
Read the article in Der Spiegel (January 30, 2008)
Read the article at bloomberg.com (Junuary 30, 2008)
Visit the Web site of The Royal Library
See the timeline of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy on Wikipedia

Update February 1:
Read the article in the International Herald Tribune (January 30, 2008)
Read the article in the Art Newspaper (January 31, 2008)

“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