Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog

I just re-read my article in CeROArt; not because I’m a total  narcissist, but because a friend of mine told me yesterday that there was lots of typos in it.  The article, “Collaborating in the Public’s Domain”, was published this Wednesday and is about the potential for conservators to find news to work together to preserve cultural property with the help of museum visitors.  Daniel Cull reviewed the article here.

I’m kind of surprised that Mr. Cull didn’t beat me up about the 10 or 20 typos in the article.  After thinking about this for a while I’ve come to realize that the typos don’t bother me.  Really they don’t.  I’m more interested in the ideas, the Content written with a big “C,” and feedback.

But, listen, I know typos really can irritate people.  A typo = unprofessional, unpolished, not quite perfect.   Typos are mistakes that could have been corrected if more time had been spent proofreading and copy editing.  Usually, though, we don’t like talking about mistakes, especially when it comes to art conservators – those of us that are given the responsibility of preserving and even occasional physically intervening with cultural property.  I feel pretty comfortable when I say, in general, museums also don’t like talking about mistakes; they don’t like talking about when art gets stolen, broken, damaged, or lost.  In every museum I’ve worked for, visited, or interned at I’ve witnessed people working diligently to reduce the potential for mistakes to happen.  Most that work in museums believe in the importance of art in a profound way. But mistakes still happen.  Muriel Verbeeck-Boutin, CeROArt’s editor in chief, discusses what it means for art conservators to make mistakes, and how we can change our minds by learning from them.  I don’t think she’s calling for an international movement to start talking about all the mistakes we make in museums, but a little more dialogue around this topic seems in order.  To that end, I’m glad that CeROArt decided to devote an entire issue to L’erreur, la faute, le faux.  And I’m glad they invited me to write an article in English, and not in French.

While my typos are one kind of problem, I have serious doubts that everyone is in agreement that this article even counts as a “real publication.” After all it’s in an online journal, it’s not a “real journal,” right?  CeROArt is one of only a few free, online journals (the other one that I think of is e-conservation ).

Are “professional publications” something that you have to hold in your hand and then stick on a shelf, or stick someplace different all together?  Is there a difference in legitimacy in the things that are actually printed and physical and the things that you read on your screen?  Is there a difference between the content you see in a catalogue, the Internet , and a gallery label?

Of course, I think my article is a legitimate publication, and that the topic is timely and important.  I’m not going to make a substantial effort to quantify the difference between print and screen publications.  That’s somebody else’s work.  Clearly, there is a difference between the two.  Not everything is better on the screen; I only read literature in books with real pages.  But I don’t really want to read data and information from a book anymore; I want that on a screen.  I need to acquire information quickly and efficiently, and I need to be able to compare it for my own purposes.

It’s fair to say that there are all sorts of new, legitimate “professional publications.” For example, conservators can list blog publications on a C.V., or list Flickr sets they’ve made around a conservation project.  The IMA conservation department has made some excellent Flickr projects that are as informative and timely as many print publications that I’ve read recently.  I even think doing work on a Wikipedia article can be a professional publication.  I certainly think it would be an important professional activity if a conservator played a major role in writing about the degradation of plastic on the Wikipedia article for Plastic?

But, if you’re reading this blog, I probably didn’t need to tell you any of this.  I’m guessing that it’s those that don’t look to the screen for information that disagree with me.  I guess the only way to get to them is to print this post out, give it to them and ask them to send me a letter in the mail about the topic.  (By the way, that would be totally amazing if it actually happened.)

So what about my typos?  Oh, yeah, those.  Actually, my typos point to one of the benefits of not publishing an article in print.  If I really, really wanted to I could find all the mistakes I made and then send them to CeROArt and they could fix them. I think I’d rather just move forward and let them be.

Finally, the real benefit of online publications is that they have the potential to be seen by everyone in the world, at any time of day they want.  That’s awfully cool.  If only CeROArt had a comment section, then there’d be potential for some feedback on their site.  But then wouldn’t it just be a blog?  Maybe we should collectively rename online journals and blogs to something more professional.  That way when they are printed out folks will know they are extra real.

• Tags: art blog, CeROArt, Conservation, digital publishing, e-conservation, ima, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Muriel Verbeeck-Boutin, Museum Blog, Richard McCoy
 

This entry was posted on Friday, April 24th, 2009 at 9:18 am and is filed under Conservation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.