I thought this talk by Peter Weibel last spring was interesting in relation
to the the discussion about putting museum information on the Internet. He
points out that this defensive attitude is probably not a good one in terms
of the mission of the museum, which is to be a support system not just for
the objects but also for the world outside the physical museum. He's
talking about Art museums and the prospect that our concept of the art
object has in many ways already become "virtual" and less dependent on
physical manifestations. But I think there is something to consider in
terms of historical objects as well.

murph




From "The Virtual Museum, Beyond the White Cube: Art Any Time Any Place"
Virtual Museums on the Internet
Salzburg, Austria
Peter Weibel, Director, ZKM


The virtual museum therefore is a renewal of the support systems provided
by what we used to call a museum. Consequently, one could say that the
virtual museum on the Internet is in fact closer to the original idea of a
museum, or the classical definition of a museum. The museum, as perceived
by the Greeks, was a forum for discourse on collected information, an
archive, a research place, a place of knowledge, and ended up also being a
place for the production of knowledge. The post-modern problem of any
museum is its relation to the masses because today, each museum has to
legitimate itself by the number of its visitors. It has to stand as a
spectacle in order to attract as many people as possible. The problem of
the museum's relation to the masses is traditionally resolved by presenting
knowledge to the spectator as something sacred. When people walk through a
museum today, they often don't see art. They often have no idea what they
see and look at the art like tourists.

With the creation of the virtual museum, we can find better ways of
treating the masses. The masses are an accumulation of members, and each
member is an individual. In the case of the virtual museum, individuals can
enter the museum from any place at any time, stay as long as they want and
look at a piece as long as they want. The challenge for the museums of the
future is to follow the idea of the museum of modern art -- which is
founded on the spirit of modernism and dedicated to design, film,
architecture, sculpture, painting, typography, etc. -- and to make all of
these elements and programs available in the same space. This couldn't
possibly be done in the physical museum. When the modern museum defined
itself as a multimedia museum -- meaning that it devoted itself to showing
and collecting all fields of the arts -- the form of presentation lagged
behind. When a museum is in fact multidisciplinary, it has to include all
forms of science and technology and add a multifunctional and multicultural
variety to the traditional perception. The modern museum has mainly shown
the white cube of work from Europe and North America and has ignored many
other forms of art. We can now move beyond the white cube and show any art,
at any time and in any place. The virtual museum on the Net is up to now
the very best model for a multifunctional, multidisciplinary,
multicultural, multimedia museum.

The complete text: http://www.arch.at/museumvms/topics/frames_weibel.html





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Dept. of Art and Art Professions
School of Education, New York University
http://www.nyu.edu/education/art/visartsadmin/infosystems