The spiderweb shaped Living Roof on top of California Academy of Sciences in bloom.

This fall, after eight years and almost half a billion dollars, architect Renzo Piano will complete the greenest museum ever built—the new California Academy of Sciences, in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park—housing its aquarium, planetarium, and natural-history museum under a two-and-a-half-acre “living roof.”

Long section of the museum design © Rpbw

Piano’s museum has made extensive use of technology in the service of the institution’s green mandate and promises to set a new standard for ‘green museums’. Vanity Fair’s Matt Tyrnauer writes about its genesis.

Overview © Rpbw

The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam has just released its collection widget 3.0. Web Man Peter Gorgels alerted me of their new application, and we are more than happy to show you the fully functional Rijkswidget 3.0.

It is an interesting and clever feature that shows a daily piece of the vast collection of the Rijksmuseum. The widget can be embedded in blogs, Hyves, Facebook and MySpace. It is elegantly designed, and can be blown up; however it would have been nice if you could flip endlessly through the collections, instead of having to wait for tomorrow. Maybe an idea for 4.0?

Update:
This is actually the small version, to be placed in sidebars. This is what we will do for a month, to see how it works. Let us know what you think of this initiative of our friends at the Rijksmuseum.

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 Art Institute of Chicago’s new Modern Wing will include museum gardens and plantings that will increase green space on the city block by 21,075 square feet.

Forget Corinthian columns: Today’s museums have features like green roofs – such as on the new wing at the Institute of Fine Arts in Chicago – or goats as part of the maintenance team, as at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, the first facility in the US to qualify for LEED certification on an existing building.

“I cannot count the number of institutions that are doing serious green stuff. That’s how huge it is,” says Sarah Brophy, coauthor of “The Green Museum,” to be published later this spring. “[Green measures] are going to become as natural and automatic as full accessibility and inclusivity,” Brophy says. “Within a year, the public is going to be asking all museums about their environmentally sustainable behavior. They’re going to want to see evidence. That will push all museums. There’s a pretty substantial learning curve, but the entire population is going to be going through it, and museums will be part of that group.”

Read article (the Christian Science Monitor. April 9, 2008)
Read about museums that are ‘going green’
Read an extensive case study of the Grand Rapids Art Museum, dubbed “The Temple of Green” (GreenSource).

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

Both editors of MuseumLab are currently attending the Musee 2.0 symposium at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Speakers include (a.o.) Peter Weibel (director ZKM, Karlsruhe), John Stack (director, Tate Online, London) and Alain Depocas (director Fondation Daniel Langlois, Montreal). You can watch their presentations via a live feed on their website.

 Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands, during a guided tour of CORPUS, which opened to the public on March 20th 2008.

Ever wanted to take a stroll through the human body? A new museum in the Netherlands lets you do just that. CORPUS (Latin for ‘body’) is a new museum on the outskirts of the Hague in the Netherlands that is both a science education centre and an amusement park. It offers a ‘journey through the human body’ during which the visitor can see, feel and hear how the human body works and what roles healthy food, healthy life and plenty of exercise plays.

The museum attraction offers a variety of information and provides education and entertainment with this journey as well as a vast number of permanent and variable exhibitions. This concept has been realised in a 35-meter high transparent building, which incorporates an awkward looking seated human figure that reaches 35meters high.

The makers of the museum attraction are hoping that a combination amusement park and health education museum will encourage kids to take better care of their own bodies. Questions as ‘Why do I have to sleep?’, ‘what happens when I sneeze’, ‘how does my hair grow’ are answered in CORPUS by means of tangible, visible and audible conceptions. They have used the latest technology in the field of imagery, sound and 3D effects to present and explain all aspects of the medical aspects of the human body.

The awkward looking body/building that houses CORPUS is situated along the A44 highway between Amsterdam and The Hague in The Netherlands.

Click here for more information and images from WTOL
Read an article (Building, March 27, 2008)
Go to CORPUS website