The Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies announces the next G. Brown Goode Smithsonian Education Lecture, Wednesday, March 11, 2009, 2:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. EST.  The lecture will be web cast live, available at http://museumstudies.si.edu/webcast_031109.html.

Dr. Maxwell Anderson, the Melvin & Bren Simon Director and CEO of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, will speak on:  “Through the Looking Glass: Museums and Internet-Based Transparency”.

As museums adapt to the potential of social computing, the old-school website focused on facilitating physical access and rudimentary collections information is fast becoming a necessary but insufficient front door for museums online.  By opening museums to public participation, and by revealing operational details that are normally kept confidential, museums have the potential to animate strategic planning, anticipate outcomes-based inquiries from governance authorities and funders, engage a new generation of users, mollify a prying press, and encourage philanthropy.  This presentation will present some ways in which the Indianapolis Museum of Art is striving to open itself in unexpected ways to the general public.

The G. Brown Goode Smithsonian Education Lecture series, named after the Smithsonian’s earliest proponent of museums as educational institutions, helps Smithsonian and other museum staffs keep abreast of emerging developments pertaining to many aspects of their work.  The series features programs that bring together academic researchers and museum practitioners to examine the roles museums play in developing the skills necessary for success in the 21^st century.  All Goode lectures are web cast and archived for viewing at http://museumstudies.si.edu