Technological innovations at world-renowned museums

While adopting technology, challenge for art institutions is not to get caught up in fleeting fads like tweeting. A few including The Metropolitan Museum of Art have done it gradually, starting with its elaborate online timeline of art history almost a decade ago. The handy feature has only grown in popularity, drawing over six million visitors in 2010. The entire website is now undergoing a total revamp to be unveiled publicly at the end of this summer.

Terming what is happening on in the new user-friendly museum technology ‘a frenzy of enhanced creativity, the director of MOMA, Mr. Campbell states” “Every generation ought to find the right mode of communication. If it helps open doors, then it’s a good thing.’’ The new technology developers feel there is nothing like ‘too much information’.

When the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco decided to take its famed Matisse work ‘Woman With a Hat’ off the wall for a conservation studio, an image was posted on Facebook of the frame’s being removed. People thus could see what was happening behind the scenes, according to its digital engagement associate, IanPadgham.

He added:‘It’s obviously about off-the-cuff transparency.” When the museum official was in Paris last December, he managed to track down certain locations where artists represented in its collection had worked. He could find the spot where Man Ray snapped St. Sulpice’s picture. He took a photo from that vantage point and put it up on the networking site along with a web link to the original work. The post was ‘`liked’ by quite a few people and received enthusiastic response asking for more.

The website of Metropolitan Museum of Art now hosts a new attraction, broadly known as: ‘We want people to feel ownership of this museum.” Behind-the-scene staffers like an educator and a media producer can discuss their favorite artworks in the museum collection as part of ‘Connections’. It's a fine balance between scholarly and personal voices, notes the museum’s chief officer of digital media, Erin Coburn.