As one of the two photographers here at the IMA, I am responsible for capturing the IMA galleries in a similar fashion.  At times I capture galleries alive with its patrons.  At other times I document for posterity the space free of human distraction.  I, as those participating in my questionnaire, enjoy seeing the galleries in various degrees of these states – the sole visitor reflecting on a work of art, the mass of humanity flowing between its walls, the gallery alone asking us to reflect on the images presented, or the gallery free of any artwork or person and completely desolate.

Below are a few of those images and the responses from the photographers.  If you are interested in the photographs presented, please follow the gallery series on Flickr.

 Witold Riedel:
Witold Riedel is a creative director at one of the largest advertising networks in the world. He is responsible for a worldwide campaign, which “involves a good amount of travel.”

This image was included in the “Trapped In The White Cube” series. An excerpt from Witold’s responses to the questionnaire is below:

(via Flickr)

 What made you capture and share the image you created?

Are we talking about the picture of the nun and the dinosaur? Oh, it was just a very sweet moment at the Museum Mensch und Natur in Nymphenburg, in Munich. I had missed my flight to Moscow on that day and after visiting the BMW Welt, Nymphenburg felt like the perfect contrast. The room was very small, I had to be close to the nun to take the picture. I only had one chance to expose the photograph without disturbing the composition. I was lucky. I had set the exposure and aperture and the focus on my Leica correctly. I like that there are some parallels in the expression of the dinosaur and the nun. The picture is certainly not intended as cultural criticism. I have nothing against dinosaurs or the Catholic Church.

What type of museum objects do you enjoy the most?

I like to return to some not very loved paintings, just to discover that I have changed more than they have. And I also like to see that they are still there, in their own place. Or maybe in a new place.

I  used to stand next to the Mona Lisa at the Louvre sometimes and just look at the people coming to visit. I actually have two photo series about this on my old website. It was interesting how many visitors were not actually interested in the work, they were more interested in having a picture taken with the work. It really is about that connection sometimes. The Mona Lisa is now in a different place within the Louvre. It is now easier to take pictures with her. But it is much more difficult to see her. That might be one of the reasons why I prefer the not so loved paintings sometimes. Though they obviously must be incredibly special already, just to make it to the galleries. What percentage of the work never makes it out of storage? Some museums have created galleries that feel almost like open storage. I like that idea quite a bit.

XAM+ANNA:
XAM+ANNA are actually Massimiliano Matera and Annalisa Pilati, two aspiring architects, and a couple in life and work.  They live in Rome, which is its own “open-air museum.”

This image was included in the “Trapped In The White Cube” series and here’s an excerpt from XAM+ANNA’s responses to the questionnaire below:

(via Flickr)

What made you capture and share the image you created?

The photo creates a relation between the space and the visitors, with specific references from the art world (see works of contemporary artist such as Vito Acconci and Michelangelo Pistoletto, for example). For us, the link between spectator and artwork is fundamental and our research tends to show the reactions of the spectator, making him an integral part (then actor) of a new form of art, in which he’s the protagonist.

Vileinist:
Vileinist, a.k.a. Jonathan O’Reilly is a Faculty Researcher at University of Maryland lives in Washington D.C.

(via Flickr)

What made you capture and share the image you created?

It was an interesting piece of work. You can expect avant-garde art at the Hirshhorn Museum, but this was something quite unique. When I turned the corner into the room, I was taken aback by the visual display – swirling curves of light were dancing across the wall to a soundtrack of pure silence. There were no distractions in the room, just the projector and the wall. There was a lone person looking at the piece in a state of wonder. Her placement in the frame helped me create an image that helped to reflect my own feeling of awe. An image of the piece by itself would not have been as surreal. In general, I like to photograph humans not as primary subjects, but rather as accessories to accentuate proportions or my own feelings in a given setting.

I first became aware of Hanneorla around 2007 when I was looking for Flickr users that were photographing artworks on the grounds of the IMA.  The set made for the IMA has 61 images in it and most of the contemporary outdoor artworks are documented. Although the sheer number of photos is impressive, what also interested me is the way the photos were taken: many of the works are shown from multiple sides, demonstrating that Hanneorla is skilled at looking carefully at art.

It was also around this time when Clay Shirky was getting a lot of attention for talking about how the Internet was ideally suited for us to spend our cognitive surplus doing something productive, rather than just watching television in the evening (Shirky estimates today this cognitive surplus is around a trillion hours a year for the adult population in the developed world).  Trying to harness but a sliver of a thumbnail of this surplus, we created the Wikipedia-and-Flickr-based project Wikiproject Public Art. While this continues to slowly grow, I’m always on the lookout for museum-based projects that tap into the cognitive surplus in a meaningful way.

So, to get to know the most productive art photographer in world better, I invited Hanneorla here for a discussion.

Richard McCoy: Will you tell me about your user name?

Hanneorla: We are a wife/husband team, so Hanneorla = wife (Hanne) + Orla (husband).  Original name, eh?

RM: What is your training as photographers?

HO: Well, we don’t have any. Our work has really been learning by doing all along.

We got our first digital camera in 2002 as a wedding present (a somewhat bulky Canon thingy) and were fascinated by the then-novel prospect that you could just shoot away, transfer, save, and view the images on a PC.  I remember taking our first digital pictures at a Gay Pride Parade in San Diego, standing on a chair in front of a café and trying to focus on the floats and (of course) the spectators.

Gay Pride Parade, Hillcrest, San Diego, California. Image: Hanneorla.

But we really got into photography when planning a trip to Santiago, Chile. Hanne was trying to find good images on the web of Santiago, but could only come up with old grainy ones.  We decided to take matters into our own finger-clicking hands, only to have our camera stolen on the last day in Santiago by a couple of very fast running teenagers. So from our debut as awesome globe-trotting photographers we don’t have a single shot!

RM: Can you talk about your favorite subject or photographic theme?

HO: We started out with a deep interest in modern architecture, especially skyscrapers and we still photograph those if they are spectacular enough.  Having been to places like Hong Kong, Singapore, and of course Shanghai, we have seen a few really breathtaking examples. Of course we also have images of a lot of boring bank buildings.

We have often been seen squatting on the pavement in front of a building pointing the camera towards the sky—and enduring people looking at us like we’re cuckoo.

UOB, Singapore. Image: Hanneorla.

RM: Do you remember when and why you first started uploading images to Flickr?

HO: That’s easy; it was in August of 2005. And why Flickr? Well, a friend found the site and thought it might be a good idea, so we checked it out and have been using it ever since.

RM: I really love the fact that you spend so much time creating detailed captions and descriptions for every single photo you upload, which makes your images tremendously useful to folks interested in the arts, and easy to find through search.  Can you talk about your methodology and purpose for this?

HO: That’s the hard and time-consuming part. Before we go anywhere, I (Hanne) spend many (really many!) hours researching the location, especially about sculptures (public and private), art museums, private galleries, and architecture.

I eventually collect the pictures and descriptions of all these objects in our own “guidebook,” so we know what to look for and where.  At this point, Orla usually groans when seeing this phonebook-sized guide book, or “to do list,” but usually ends up appreciating the research when we are on location!  But on many occasions, we have been out driving for hours and getting lost a lot before we find some measly piece of rusty iron that looked like a cutting-edge sculpture in our homemade guidebook!  After having gotten used to GPS technology we now find the artworks a lot faster. We often thank God (or whoever it is) in the sky for leading us in the right directions.

One thing that really irks us though (start of rant!): If you are a city, business, or person that commissions an outdoor sculpture or architectural masterpiece: maintain it and keep it clean!  In other words: TAKE CARE OF IT!  Many South American countries fail at this, as do several Southern European ones. For example, the absolutely magnificent Oscar Niemeyer-designed capital, Brasilia.  It’s a daring beauty in concrete.  A true wonder.  But it is dirty, unkempt, and really a disgrace. I think I’ll write to the new female president Dilma Rousseff and complain. Hey, they have enough money now, and certainly also well-deserved national pride. Asian countries are much better at this and they also have the courage to ask the most progressive artists (yeah, we know about Ai Weiwei and censorship), but modern Chinese art is a unique experience. And we cannot forget: The U.S. also generally has good maintenance of its outdoor artworks.  (Okay, end of our rant on that.)

RM: According to your Flickr stats, you’ve taken and uploaded 41,491 items.  This is beyond impressive.  Can you talk about why you like photographing art and museums?

HO: Allow me to quote from the Flickr profile:  “I am fascinated by contemporary visual art, cutting-edge sculpture, modern architecture, and futuristic designs.  To me the power of art is that it creates concepts and ’becomings’ intellectually and aesthetically. I’m always searching for the shock and delight of the new.”

About our ridiculously high number of photos: Well, it almost looks like a neurotic obsession, doesn’t it?  But it’s driven by pure delight and excitement.  Case in point: after having walked, and in the end crawled, for many miles in Valencia, Spain, we were suddenly dancing, footloose and fancy free, when we saw the contours of Santiago Calatrava’s City of Arts and Sciences.

Here are some more numbers: this week we passed 7,100,000 view counts of our images on Flickr. Boy, that’s more people than live in our own country of Denmark!

Hemisférico, Museo de las Ciencias Príncipe Felipe, Ciudad de las Artes y Ciencias, arquitecto Santiago Calatrava 1998 y 2000, Valencia, Spain. Image: Hanneorla.

RM: Will you talk a little more about the division of labor in your documentation work?  Who takes the photos, who uploads the images and who writes about them?  Do you each do a little of this or does one person?

HO: Well, Hanne is the slave. She does all the hard work pre and post. I play the Nietzschean part of the mastermentality while really being the slave. When we started out I usually said, “Why are you taking pictures of THAT, I already photographed it.” And she (very sensibly) replied, “Yeah, but sometimes your images are better than mine, and (most often) mine are better than yours”. So we both take pictures of the same pieces of art and then select the best shots to put up on Flickr.

RM: What if there were, say, 25 Hanneorlas out there documenting art and museums?  That would mean right now there would be approximately 1 million images about art and museums.

HO: That’s a great idea. Google Art Project is trying something, and they are to be commended for their efforts, but so far they have only about 12 museums.  It’s a good start. I guess we are trying to create a global, virtual universe of art. Presumptuous? Yes, of course! But we’re doing the best we can. We just need the 24 other Hanneorlas.

(Another rant!) Why, oh, why is it that so many museums around the globe are stuck in the digital Stone Age? Why don’t they allow visitors to take photos of their art? Instead they have these clueless bosses and guards clumsily preventing excited people (the Hanneorlas of the world) from sharing and spreading the pleasure of art!  We will drive MORE PEOPLE to visit your museums and boost your ticket sales and reputation by wetting the appetite of the more than 7 million people who have looked at our pictures from YOUR museum on our Flickr site. (Yes, we’re exaggerating a bit, but a LOT of people will get to know your museum—think about it).  We just don’t get it!

RM: Do you think it possible for there to be a kind of crowd-sourced documentation project in which all of the world’s art is documented by individuals?

HO: Oh, yes. Let’s just corral a couple of dozen Hanneorlas.

RM: Okay, this is a cruel question, but what would happen if Flickr suddenly went away and your account ceased to exist (as rumors have suggested might happen)?

HO: OMG! You mean a virtual Armageddon? Well, we have about 80% of our Flickr pictures on DVDs, so we might survive.

RM: Another tough question: Out of all of your photos can you come up with a top 10?

HO: Any of our many photos of the works of Claes Oldenburg, Fernando Bottero, Santiago Calatrava, Oscar Niemeyer, photorealistic painters, Chinese sculpture, and Tom Otterness. Plus a few more hundreds.

Claes Oldenburg 1976 "Clothespin," Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Image: Hanneorla.

RM: Care to say where you are going next?

HO: We’re already packing. We’re off to Paris, France. And probably thousands more photos.  And the hard part we forgot to mention: The demanding work after we get home. We have to do a lot of organizing, indexing, and captioning of the pictures which takes up an enormous amount of time. We are always two or three trips behind. Let’s see, there are Sao Paulo, Brazil, Dallas, Texas, and Iowa plus a few other states to do.  We need another holiday!

Richard B. Gruelle, The Canal-Morning Effect, 1894 (detail).

So far, I’ve tried to be engaging. My blog posts were all a stab at that and I think I’ve done well. Largely, I’ve written on how you don’t need a degree to enjoy art. However, one can’t deny that knowing background information surrounding a piece does enhance its story. When you don’t know anything about the work or the artist the only context you have is the nail it’s hanging on. Personally, I feel this should be enough and museums spend countless hours developing ways to make “you are in a museum” the only context one needs – but it is nice to know more. So. I’ve posted a handful of images from our permanent collection on the IMA’s Flickr account. I cropped the images into detail shots and gave a little background information. One of the best things about my internship is that I get to learn a lot “fun facts” about our works, so I shared a few. My goal was to provide context, be engaged and (as always) have a little fun with art.

We’ve liked checking out your photos, and would love to keep this group up and running (though hopefully not with any more photos of ice storms…), so please!  Keep ‘em coming!

Florida State University research scientist, Michael Davidson, combined alcohol and microphotography to come up with the imagery you see below – a microscopic print of chablis.

What started as nerdy slides has turned into quite a little business called Bevshots Microart. The images are made by first crystallizing the drink of choice on a lab slide. Using a standard light microscope with an attached camera, the light source is polarized and passed through the crystal, which creates the bright array of colors. What I love about this is the relationship between a favorite drink versus a favorite image. I might be drawn to the aesthetics of one drink while my actual tastes appeal to something else. It’s also a fun gift idea for a relative who considers themselves a connoisseur of one type of alcohol. For this reason, my grandma Beverly might just receive the print below as she considers herself a connoisseur of vodka (no need to point out that her specialty is cheap vodka).

There’s even an iPhone app so you can explore the drinks while sipping them at your favorite bar.

With the ever changing and improving world of technology, Bevshots is just one example of the rising interest in digital art. A few weeks along, former IMA blogger Noelle Pulliam sent me an article on David Hockney’s instant iPad art. The artist began creating works on his iPad to send to friends and within weeks there was more than a nice little collection.

While the images, like the flowers above, are really nice, I can’t help but wonder if I would miss the texture that comes with paint on a canvas. There was also an immediate problem Hockney faced with how to display his work. The solution, as you can see in the video, was a series if iPads along an exhibition wall.

I’m sure there are many who would argue against the artistic value of iPad art and most certainly the artistic value of Bevshots. However, Hockney’s description of capturing an early morning sunrise more effectively with his iPad than he could with a pencil and paper is very intriguing.

While this method would certainly save a lot of time and cleanup hassle for artists like Hockney, digital art is also commonly practiced by many who are not making a career as artists. Kris Arnold pointed out his post, Making fake HDR images in Adobe Lightroom, that the new iPhones will produce stunning HDR images and I know several friends who are snapping very nice photos with their phones. Plus, there are all sorts of camera apps you can download to easily modify and stylize your photos. A professional photographer and friend of mine even joked the other day that she might start specializing in iPhone photography because she was so happy with a photo she captured using her phone.

Have any of you captured a really great photo on your phone or created your own iPad masterpiece? Upload your digital masterpieces to our Digital Art Flickr group.

Artworks that are displayed outdoors face different risks than those that are kept inside. The pigeon, for example, is a dangerous bird to bronze sculptures; the acids in guano can actually corrode a bronze patina in a fairly short time. Another risk public artworks face is that we simply stop caring. When we stop noticing the artworks that surround us, their significance and cultural context is lost.

(via Flickr user travelbex)

Enter Wikipedia Saves Public Art (WSPA) which we created as part of our Fall IUPUI Museum Studies class (you might remember our student, Elizabeth Basile, blogged about her personal experience with the project back in December). The logic of this project is to put information about public artworks into Wikipedia so that people won’t forget or stop caring about them. Yes, there’s a lot of guano in Wikipedia, but with its millions of viewers a day and openness to participation, it’s a vital resource for the cultural sector.

Before we started WSPA, there were only a handful of articles in Wikipedia about public art in Indianapolis—not so good for a city that brags about having more monuments than any city other than Washington, DC. Through our efforts, there are now 57 articles (and more each week) about local public artworks on Wikipedia. Since we started WSPA, our articles have been viewed more than 66,000 times. Now we are thinking big about how WSPA can truly become a global project and how to get more people to make articles about public art in their own town.

Recently, we’ve had a lot of help from Lori Byrd Phillips (an IUPUI Museum Studies graduate student) and Sarah Stierch (a soon-to-be George Washington University Graduate student, who runs her own blog, Sarah – Your Favorite Museum Intern. Together, we’ve begun developing “The Process” to help Wikipedians and public art advocates translate information contained in public databases into Wikipedia articles. For example, did you know that volunteers working through Heritage Preservation’s Save Outdoor Sculpture! surveyed Indianapolis in 1992-1994 and found 205 sculptures? Information about all of them is available online through the Smithsonian’s public database.

Thanks to Magnus for making the application that allowed us to make this chart

But a lot has happened in Indy’s world of public art since the early 1990s. That’s why actually going out and visiting the artworks is important—to verify the information contained in the Smithsonian’s database, to make note of any changes, and to use the tools of 2010 to research and share information about those changes. In addition to finding artworks surveyed by the SOS! folks, you can research new artworks that have been installed across the city. We’re grateful to have our laptops, cell phones, and Web-based tools that have allowed us to create these cool things:

Here’s the Flickr map that we are using to plot the location of the more than 500 images we’ve taken of public art in Indianapolis. By mapping them in Flickr we also resolve their GPS coordinates.

Here’s the Google map that we’re using to plot the original 205 SOS! entries from the Smithsonian database. While the Flickr map is a lot easier to use, we are also experimenting with Google Maps because its satellite maps are so much better.

And here are two Gowalla trips we’ve made for Indianapolis:

IUPUI Public Art Collection Highlights Tour.

Top 10 Public Artworks in Indianapolis.

Gowalla is an iPhone-based app that has a lot of potential for helping to geo-locate and photo document public artworks. Look, for example, at the number of people that have checked in and taken a photograph at the Texas Rangers Monument in Austin.

These tools have helped us locate, document, and share information about hundreds of public artworks in just a few weeks. With this information we will continue making Wikipedia articles about public art in Indianapolis. As mobile technology spreads (particularly GPS-based technologies), opportunities to care for public art will also grow.

Wikipedia Saves Public Art. Logo designed in 2009 by Michael Mikulay.

With all of this in mind, we’re excited about travelling to Denver next Tuesday to participate in the one-day workshop, Wikimedia@MW2010. Perhaps we’ll have a chance to discuss how WSPA is an effective tool for documenting collections of public art that are not well known beyond their distinct local context. Also in Denver, we’ll be joining Rob Stein to listen to Max Anderson and Samuel J. Klein (Wikimedia Board of Directors) give the keynote presentations and then work through important issues and ideas raised by other participants. Our experiences with WSPA have given us a few ideas for the cultural sector that we’d like to share in advance of Wikimedia@MW2010:

* In the spirit of the Encyclopédie and in particular the Descriptions des Arts et Métiers, Wikipedia can become the central hub of information about the materials, tools, and techniques artists have used and are currently using in their practices. Likewise, Wikipedia can become the central hub of information for the materials, tools, and techniques art conservators use in their work. An ideal article about a public artwork would include a material and technical description that was linked to corresponding and accurate information within Wikipedia.

* Public art today is often made using “current technology,” which presents an entire new set of issues. For example, Jaume Plensa’s Crown Fountain in Chicago is comprised of thousands of LEDs. Many technologies used in art quickly become outdated or difficult to update after a few short years. What if we could develop a similar “Conservation Status” for technologies like what exists for endangered animal species like the Bengal Tiger?

* Cultural institutions and public repositories should be encouraged to share their out-of-copyright images of art and put them in Wikimedia Commons.

* Finally, wouldn’t it be cool if the article about Art21 and all of its seasons was as thoroughly detailed and researched as iCarly’s?

What WSPA really needs, though, is for more people to make articles about public art in Wikipedia. Why not try it? If you need some inspiration, check out the “Template”, “Showcase,”, and “Open tasks”. And be sure to use the “talk pages” to leave feedback, questions, or ideas so we can all work together to make the project better.

Everything we know about Wikipedia and the other digital tools discussed above, we’ve learned by using our computers to experiment and engage in dialogue with more experienced contributors. (Wikipedia even gives “newbies” a sandbox to play in!) If you care about cultural heritage, you’ll find many kindred spirits in Wikipedia. That’s why we’d like to see you on Wikipedia, where we can work together and maybe even enjoy some Wiki Love. In an effort to bring some of the energy from Wikimedia@MW2010 directly back to Indianapolis, we’ve invited Liam Wyatt (Vice President, Wikimedia Australia) to give a public lecture at the Herron School of Art and Design on April 19 at 1:30 p.m. in the Basile Auditorium.

Something that could easily be over looked about the IMA’s web presence is the amount of social media the museum is creating on a weekly basis.

So in the process of the redesign, the IMA Stream was invented.  What is the IMA Stream? You might ask.  Well the idea behind the stream was to create a single consolidated “stream” of all the content that is being produced by the museum.  The stream contains up to the minute updates from Flickr, Twitter, the IMA Blog, press releases, YouTube, Del.icio.us, and Artbabble.  This allows visitors to quickly browse thru the latest internet offerings from the museum in one convenient spot.

The system was made possible utilizing a common internet standard known as RSS.  In a nutshell, RSS is a standard for sharing and syndicating content across the internet. Leveraging the power of RSS feeds we are able to programmatically aggregate all of our content from multiple sites into a single feed which is what you see when you visit the IMA website.

Even though the show has only been over for a few days now, I thought it would be interesting and a little fun to recap some of the online stuff that happened around European Design.

As for interesting, turns out the European Design exhibition website was relatively successful in terms of traffic and Google PageRank. According to Google Analytics, through the run of the show, the site welcomed nearly 30k unique vistors and beat out our last two special exhibitions, Power and Glory and To Live Forever over similar time periods. For a young site with a short span of marketing relevance, European Design was able to muster a PR of 5 before the show ended. This is a little hard to believe but we also managed to keep the site’s bounce rate below 20%. That’s awesome. Good work.

As for fun, who remembers the European Design Facebook caption contest? I know I completely forgot about it until my trusted Facebook associate, Emily, reminded me about all the good ideas she’s had and how that was one of them. Below is a notable example.

It looks like that flower is "sponge worthy"... - Jake on Facebook

As for more fun, we also started up a Flickr group that fed into the EuroDesign exhibition site. Not only did group members get to see their designs streaming through our site but we also gave away a few tickets and some cool prizes like exhibition catalogs and Design Center gift certificates. Check out the Flickr group.

While I’m a little sad to see European Design leave, I’m super excited about what new interesting and fun online stuff is going to show up for Sacred Spain. While I’m not going to make any promises, expect some Facebook activity. And since it’s all the rage, my guess is that Twitter may make an appearance. As always, if you’ve got any ideas or suggestions, let me get ‘em in the comments.

But it’s not only individuals using these sites. Here at the IMA, as most of you know, we embrace social media as a useful tool in reaching our audiences and fulfilling our mission. And we’re not the only ones – LACMA, SFMoMa, and Walker Art Center are just a couple of our peers actively engaging online audiences. Even the Art Institution of Chicago recently announced here, that they’ll soon be launching a Twitter account.

But as museums and museum employees continue to grow their online activity – both personal and institutional – we’re faced with the challenge of exploring policies and guidelines online activity. Should there be employee policies in place for personal use of such sites? Should museums implement a clearly detailed policy for institutional use of such sites? And if so, what would either one of these policies look like and what purposes would they serve?

In researching the topic, I can tell you for sure that there are several people asking these questions, and I can also tell you that nobody really seems to know the answers.

So what are some of the issues to think about? Well, there are a lot of them. Museum 3.0 suggests the following issues are all important in considering your strategy to online networking: technical concerns, how to archive online museum activity, implementation planning, policy development, training, and a how/why to guide for media sites.

Museum 2.0 blogger Nina Simon discusses what might be included in a social media handbook. Her list includes things like rules on what should or should not be shared, how get a new initiative approved by your manager, what is considered appropriate for internal and external distribution, and a reference guide to social sites that would include recommendations, stylesheets, etc.

While I think these are all important items to consider, I can’t help but wonder if some topics should just be covered in ongoing discussions instead of binding them into a manual. Why? Well, by the time a policy or manual was organized, there’s a pretty good chance that the certain components (like a ‘how to guide’) would already be obsolete. In other words, the web changes so much that consistent updating might become a daunting task.

Three seemingly stagnant issues that I see as most important in policy making or strategic planning for social media include: information release, content quality & content control.

Information Release – A problem might arise here when someone inadvertently releases sensitive information about the museum. An example of this might be tweeting in excitement that a new acquisition has just arrived to the dock (which might jeopardize the safety of the work), or announcing an event on your facebook page before it’s been announced by your museum. This issue is one that might arise more frequently when an organization’s employee is using a personal account that wouldn’t be filtered by a colleague. The question to be asked here is: should museums tell their employees what they can and can’t discuss on their personal sites?

The release of certain information can also be a problem even on an institutionally controlled site. For example: Let’s say Daniel, our New Media Director, comes back from Spain next week and blogs about something regarding an artist in an upcoming exhibition that he interviewed. Let’s also say that the curatorial department was waiting to release that information for whatever reason – we might have ourselves one unhappy curator, or even worse, maybe an unhappy artist. (With effective communication amongst departments, this issue should not be as difficult to manage as the issue of personal Facebook, blog or Twitter accounts).

Content Control – With so many departments/individuals managing various sites and social network accounts for the institution, who’s the gatekeeper of information? For example, if multiple writers are contributing to a blog (as is the case here at the IMA) how do you filter or should you filter content? Is there someone that gets final say on what goes up where?

Content Quality – Because it’s so easy to post things on the internet and incredibly cost efficient how does an institution refrain from overloading their audiences? Even worse, how do we keep from putting up information (that might not be very good or insightful) just because we can? Here is a short post by Matt Yglesias that suggests that while non profits are increasingly enjoying the captivity of online audiences, the quality of information on the web is a growing problem.

Like most everyone I have come across, I do not have answers to all of these questions nor do I have a suggested policy or manual. But I will leave you with some additional links that I have found useful in the discussion of social media and museums.

IMA’s Blog Guidelines – which is posted directly on our blog.

Powerhouse Museum’s 2007 Blog Policy

BBC’s social media policy – this is a good example of a fairly extensive policy.

Brooklyn Museum’s Shelley Bernstein discussed various ways to use social media sites in Where Do We Go From Here? at the 2008 Museums & the Web conference. I would be shocked if the topic of social media policies were not discussed at M&W 2009, which is here in Indy, next week.

And finally – On the lighter side, this article entitled The 14 Types of Twitter Personalities might help you pinpoint some possible problems or areas of concern for your workplace.

Public Service Announcement – Conficker Computer Worm – A worm named “Conficker” is supposedly scheduled to do something devious on April 1. As your Pharmacist, I suggest checking into this bug. If you think you’re infected or want to protect yourself, Microsoft has set up this site to help you.

15 Major Brands Rebrand – What is it about a Global Economic Downturn (GED) that causes a flurry of rebranding? I could be wrong but I would guess that Ford isn’t going to suddenly see a major shift in sales because they’ve decided to drop “ord” from their mark. However, maybe dropping the “ord” is simply a clever cost saving measure. More on Ford here.

the Galactica – A “curated” blog that showcases artistic finds on Flickr. While I’m not sure about the credentials of the curator, I am sure that I like what he/she is finding.

Ghost in the Machine – Speaking of Flickr. Check out this amazing set of images created through the careful alignment of magnetically coated plastic tape. Inspiration includes the likes of Robert Smith, Ian Curtis, and Hendrix.

Monday Music – “Goro Goro Nyang” by Futomomo Satisfaction. Tubas, bikinis, and a guitar that weeps. Check it out.Futomomo Satisfaction