It’s been a good year for meeting colleagues from other museums around the US. I’ve been lucky to spend quality time with technology staff from the Seattle Art Museum, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, MoMA and most recently, the Brooklyn Museum. This is separate from conferences – these have been actual site visits to some of the best art museums around. It’s an added bonus that all of these museums are doing great things for visitors and technology.

In preparation for an Egyptian exhibition, To Live Forever, arriving in Indianapolis next July, a small entourage of IMA staff traveled to the Brooklyn Museum to meet with some of their staff. We spent an entire afternoon shooting in-gallery video interviews with the curator and several conservators in their lab. It was an odd but incredible experience shooting video inches away from the mummy of Demetris and the painted shroud of Neferhotep (that’s text I stole from curator, Edward Bleiberg’s blog entry). It’s an amazing opportunity to gain this type of access because ultimately, this is content we will deliver to our visitors. How many get to see a behind-the-scenes look at a mummy getting a facelift? Well, you will.

Part of our preparation for the Brooklyn visit, involved a call to Shelley Bernstein, the Manager of Information Systems at the museum. Hopefully some of you have seen the Brooklyn site, or are aware of some of their innovative work. If you’re not, let me quickly share a few of their impressive projects: their museum-wide blog, the Brooklyn Museum group on flickr, ArtShare on Facebook, video competitions held at the museum, as well their involvement in Twitter and YouTube….you get the picture. Sometimes you get so caught up in your own work and projects, you forget to stop and appreciate what’s happening around you. This is certainly the case with Brooklyn, and I was pleasantly surprised when Shelley answered the phone and responded, “The IMA? I know you guys!” Well, we certainly already knew what they had done and we were excited to meet with her face to face.

Unfortunately I did not spend as much time with Shelley and her team as anticipated, but I still left feeling inspired by what they have accomplished. I think this is a culmination of what has been a busy year at IMA and exposure to so many creative, innovative individuals and organizations around the country. As the IMA continues its own exploration with technology, it will always be intriguing to discover what other museums are producing.

What are some of the IMA technology projects being considered next? Find out in the next blog. How’s that for a cliffhanger?