Museums

Here are some posts about museums. Enjoy!

A series of icons in a grid depicting actions one might take on a computer, with a magenta and grey color overlay.

Knight Digital Maturity Model

John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, 2024

An framework for assessing the digital capacity of arts organizations.
A person holds and operates a tablet computer with their right hand. The image is overlaid with a strong magenta filter.

Knight Art + Tech Expansion Fund

John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, 2021 - 2025

$8M open call program to provide technology for arts practitioners.
Painting of male and female cafe-goers dressed in late 1800s attire.

Drinking About Museums

Koven J. Smith Consulting, 2011 - 2022

A worldwide network of meetups for museum professionals.
A series of icons in a grid depicting actions one might take on a computer, with a magenta and grey color overlay.

Research Report: Digital Transformation

John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, 2021

An assessment of grants supporting digital staff in museums.
A person holds and operates a tablet computer with their right hand. The image is overlaid with a strong magenta filter.

Ignite MCN

Museum Computer Network, 2012 - 2019

Annual series of talks by museum professionals.
Close-up image of the control panel for a vintage analog synth, with rows of physical buttons, dials, and quarter-inch phono jacks.

At what cost?

February 12, 2019

Is the increased use of commercial digital solutions proving to have unintended consequences for the museum sector?
A pamphlet titled People. The pamphlet is one of eight found in a portfolio titled Soul City. The pamphlet is printed using blue and black ink. The front features six images. The images are of two people in front of a blackboard, a girl hugging a woman, a man taking a picture, a baby, a man’s face and a boy holding a football. The pamphlet describes how the community plans to improve the quality of life for residents.

Take care of your people

December 16, 2018

We’re not doing enough to take care of museum workers.
Visitors pose in a pool of oversize sprinkles at the Museum of Ice Cream in w:San Francisco.

On selfie museums and empty calories

November 12, 2018

A few words on the emerging phenomenon of so-called experience museums and the their implications for the work we do.
Exterior of TWA Flight Center at JFK Airport in New York City, New York.

Museum technology at cruising altitude

May 16, 2018

Some further thoughts after MW18 on the contraction of the musetech sector and what that might mean for the immediate future of our work.

Is the museum technology sector shrinking?

April 19, 2018

As more and more people leave the field, some thoughts about where musetech is now and where it might be going.
This quiet scene between a channel of water shows the famous Mt. Fuji in the background. A man in the foreground carries a group of passengers away from the auspicious mountain.

The conference backchannel and the ‘right on’

April 18, 2018

Thinking about how discourse has changed on social media as the result of a few design decisions, and how that’s changed the musetech conference backchannel.

Ephemera Mobile App

Blanton Museum of Art, 2017

A location-based app that tells a different story every time you visit.

Art Primers

Blanton Museum of Art, 2017 - 2018

A novel, context-first approach to online collections.

Come as You Are: Art of the 1990s Cassette Mixtapes

Blanton Museum of Art, 2016

Crowdsourced playlists for an exhibition, played on vintage cassette walkmans.

Blanton Site Redesign

Blanton Museum of Art, 2016

Complete migration, re-design, and re-architecting of blantonmuseum.org.

The Crusader Bible: A Gothic Masterpiece AR Translations

Blanton Museum of Art, 2015

Augmented Reality translations of text in illustrations from the Crusader Bible.

Witness Voices

Blanton Museum of Art, 2015

Real-time cross-platform aggregation of visitor responses to an exhibition.
The site of the Calvary, a shrine built in 1628 at the top of a cliff overlooking the medieval town of Honfleur, was popular in the nineteenth century among tourists, pilgrims, and people offering prayers for men at sea. Corot painted this work during a trip to Normandy, probably in 1830.

More on relevance

March 2, 2015

Some further thoughts on ‘relevance’ and why chasing it is trouble for museums.

Net Neutrality and the museum community

July 15, 2014

Copy of the text I sent to the FCC about the dangers posed by the proposed 2014 net neutrality regulations to the museum community.
Early photograph of eight men perched on supporting cables on the Brooklyn Bridge during its construction.

The museum as skeuomorph

July 1, 2014

Examining the idea of skeuomorphism and how it (unfortunately) applies to a lot of museum thinking.