Free the Information (in Museums and Schools)
The museum wants the site to transform how the public interacts with an institution that can sometimes seem forbidding and monolithic.
“The notion of opening up the museum’s singular voice is really the driving thought behind this,” said Allegra Burnette, creative director of digital media for the museum, who has been working on the redesign for a year and a half. She added, “We’re opening the doors, though not necessarily throwing them open.”
The site, which she and other MoMA officials stress is a work in progress, will now include what its designers call a “social bar” at the bottom, which when clicked will expand to show images and other information that users can “collect” and share after registering for a free account at the Web site (moma.org). A user could build a portfolio of Walker Evans photographs or Elizabeth Murray paintings and send them to friends, Ms. Burnette said. The site will also eventually make it easy for users both casual and scholarly to trace lines of interest, digging up more information about works from publications and curators, she added.
Put aside all the social networking / Web 2.0 features MoMA is adding to its site, and it’s really about giving viewers more functionality and control over how they interact with the museum’s collection. MoMA and other museums realize that they will need to stop treating their audience as passive consumers of information.
First Google Map Discovered – Created in 1652
I enjoy looking at historic maps and other visual displays of information. I was browsing online images from the National Gallery of Art’s current exhibit “Pride of Place: Dutch Cityscapes of the Golden Age” and was startled to see “A Bird’s-Eye View of Amsterdam” painted (around 1652), by Jan Micker.
Micker’s work certainly parallels the Google Map satellite view. Especially noteworthy are his realistic depiction of details, shadows of clouds and the large key with drop shadow in the lower right corner. Not bad considering he lacked an aerial perspective. He was inspired by a similar work (minus shadows) from 1538 by Cornelis Anthonisz.
Below is a current Google Map of Amsterdam for comparison.
Note: the Google maps faces north. Micker’s view faces south.
Click map to enlarge or go to Google map of Amsterdam