Robert Rauschenberg, White Painting, 1951. House paint on canvas, 72 x 72 in, four panels.

Robert Rauschenberg, the irrepressibly prolific American artist who time and again reshaped art in the 20th century, died Monday night.

“A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Mr. Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked.”

He was 82.

Read more (New York Times, May 13, 2008)

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

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.

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?

The n8 has a new viral feature that can crawl the Web: Now in Amsterdam. It is a little agenda built in flash with an overview of exhibitions in the Amsterdam museums. The embed function is still in beta, and will be published for the first time on this blog.Let me know if it works and what you think.

Update:
It seems to be working fine in Firefox 2, however IE7 is not showing it. Has anyone got the same problem?

Second update:
Bug has been fixed, courtesy of David (Grrr Amsterdam)

Museums and the Web is an annual conference that deals with “the social, cultural, design, technological, economic, and organizational issues of culture, science and heritage on-line.” It is an inspiring four day event held in North America. This time it will take place in Montreal, from 9-12 April 2008.

Next year’s programme has just been published online. Amongst its participants are delegates from museums worldwide, such as the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Tate Modern in London, and MoMA in New York. MuseumLab editor Juha van ´t Zelfde will also be present, for a second consecutive year. He is scheduled to give a presentation in the Technology - Mobile Computing session, on the findings and results of the Amsterdam Museum Night.

Museums and the Web is organized by Archimuse. See who attended the conference in 2007.