The NEW On the Cusp

Back at the IMA, there’s lots going on, including an experiment with a motion activated bird cam in 100 Acres, our Art and Nature park.  We’ve been working with our Grounds and Horticulture staff for the past couple of months, trying to capture some of the wildlife on our campus.  In the upcoming year, we will see the construction of a visitor center and countless installations of site specific art.  We’ll be documenting all of this, as well as much of the natural environment.  Hopefully wildlife interacting with art.  In the meantime, enjoy the video below, which includes several shots, of – you guessed it, woodpeckers.

The Facebook/Twitter call to arms went surprisingly well and I got some ridiculous, funny, relevant and interesting suggestions.  Here are a few,  including…

• how about a commentary about Kanye West and his supposed status as an artist…
• how about “what is an online exhibition” we don’t talk about it but we should because physical ones are not always possible
• post ideas: what consistently surprises you at IMA / what’s your long-term plan / How have visitors responded / best project

So here are some of my responses.

how about a commentary about Kanye West and his supposed status as an artist…?

I’m not messing with Kanye.

how about “what is an online exhibition” we don’t talk about it but we should because physical ones are not always possible?

Online exhibitions are projects that make sense but aren’t often implemented.  The superb Vogel 50/50 program is an incredible concept and this site will become a great example of an online exhibition (it’s still under development by the National Gallery of Art) – but will beautifully pull together much of the 2,500 works of art from 50 States.  Tradtionally, the IMA focuses on physical installations of exhibitions.  New Media’s role in this is to provide interpretation online – working closely with curatorial, marketing, education and more.  Our focus is always on the story telling.   The curator is primarily focused on the actual installation.  But, there is room for more collaboration and new types of exhibitions to emerge, especially on the web.  Brooklyn Museum’s Click! should be a sign of things to come across the art museum field.  The possibilites at the IMA are endless, ranging from a traditional online exhibition of art not available in galleries, art too fragile too install, and other factors.  I’m most excited about the possibility of one day developing from scratch an online exhibition in complete collaboration with curator and artist.  We’ll see …but surely, the future of the online visitor/museum experience online will include more web-focused exhibition.  Right?

Vogel 50/50 site

what consistently surprises you at IMA / what’s your long-term plan / How have visitors responded / best project?

I most surprised that we keep coming up with ideas and that we have the freedom to implement them.

The long-term plan is to be brilliant at developing digital projects and content.  It’s hard to have a long-term plan in this field though, things change quickly and it’s a big mistake to assume that our visitors will buy into our plan.  Agility is essential.

The visitors that interact with us online have been overwhelmingly positive.  We want to interact more and hear from everyone – even if it’s not positive.

My top (3), favorite projects I’ve been lucky enought to work on at the IMA have to be – Roman Art from the Louvre Webisodes, Nature Holds My Camera: The Video Art of Sam Easterson, and ArtBabble.  Having said that, I could also easily create a Top-100 list.

Speaking of ArtBabble, check out the new section called Goodies, and have a little fun.

I’m signing off, but I would love to hear your input on anything in this post – online exhibitions, IMA projects, woodpeckers, ArtBabble Goodies, even Kanye.

The end of the Roman Art exhibit started the year for us.  As usual, visitors waited till the last weekend to come see the show.  The line looped completely through all the first floor galleries.  We kept the visitors occupied and relatively happy while they waited two hours to see the show.

We also started the festivities with storms that blew trees down on the property, taking power lines and fencing with them.  When power goes down for any length of time, the conservators and registrars get fidgety, so we had to deal with notifications and, you know, darkness.  This incident was the first of several we experienced throughout the year, including a generator malfunction that resulted in twenty-foot flames shooting from the dock exhaust pipe like an F-18 launch from the Ronald Reagan.

We survived the Summer Nights film series, including our first midnight showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.  Numerous organizers were concerned because the movie was starting as the opening party for the Egyptian exhibit was ending.  A challenge, but we got through it with flying colors.  Emails from moviegoers said what a great time they had and “can we do it again next year?”

Our officers responded to numerous medical emergencies throughout the year.  Though trained in basic first aid, they didn’t do much in the way of bandaging folks up.  The majority of incidents seemed to be of the low sugar/ill feeling variety.  When it really hit the fan we called in EMTs to do the serious work, but our officers were great at staying professional and tending to the victims.

Some other accomplishments this year included hiring and training two (or three, I lost track) new officer classes, training new control room officers, getting everyone through verbal de-escalation training, and finally figuring out the Red Cross on-line First Aid/CPR course.  Doing on-line training cut way down on our overtime by allowing officers to work at their own pace instead of having to come in on a day off.

Speaking of training, with the help of the Nugget Factory and numerous staff members, PSD was able to create its first in-house training video.  The video shows several scenarios of visitor interactions and illustrates the proper way for our security officers to behave.  Our actor-officers had a great time filming the video and their performances have provided hours of entertainment for the rest of their teammates.

Mindy Summers and I arranged a meet & greet with Major Paul Ciesielski, the IMPD Northwest district commander, and Jackie Stackman, the Community Relations officer.  We had lunch at Puck’s, showed them the security control room, and got some tips on how to take a bite out of crime.  Jackie now sends regular alerts and dates of community meetings, and police officers have held roving roll calls on our campus to help provide an enhanced presence in our area.

I now have a new BFF in Lisa Freiman, our Contemporary curator.  She begged me for her own cartoon and I never miss a chance to suck up to the cool kids, so I relented.  Inspired by Lisa’s Belly of the Beast blog entry, here’s what I came up with.

Oh, and Penrod?  It was perfect!  The weather was great, there were no lost kids, no injuries, and the Budweiser Clydesdales didn’t bite, stomp, or poop on anyone.

A group of IMA staff (myself not included) attended the Museums and the Web conference in Montreal last week. This conference is an annual gathering for the ever-growing crowd of technology-focused staff in museums around the world. They also host the “Best of the Web” Awards. IMA’s project, Roman Art Webisodes, was picked last week as “Best Podcast.” IMA’s Dashboard picked up an Honourable Mention in the “Professional” category. We are excited that our work has been so well received by our peers.

Also, last week we were notified that Roman Art Webisodes were also chosen as an Official Honoree for the 2008 Webby Awards. A very competitive and widely entered contest, we placed in the top 15 in the Non-Profit/ Educational category for Interactive Advertisting. I was most excited about this competition since last year they honored David Bowie and he is on the judging committee this year. What could be better than winning an award from the same people who gave one to Ziggy Stardust. Needless to say we are delighted.

In other news, the Media and Technology Committee of the American Association of Museums has selected IMA’s Dashboard as the winner of a 2008 MUSE Award.

So who knows what’s next for us! We have entered many other projects in a variety of competitions, so hopefully as spring continues to progress we will have more good news…

My work at IMA is in video production. I work with an ever-changing team of talented people to identify topics, interview artists and otherwise generate content we can float out onto the web and hope someone nibbles at it. Occassionally a hundred someones, even on occassion a thousand or more partake in our work. But we have yet to discover the elusive million-views video formula seen in YouTube classics like Dramatic Look (my 2007 favorite) and the notorious Rick Roll. Even the unexpected hit, Slug Sex, is kicking our proverbial ass. (If you haven’t seen this video, you absolutely should.)

So what is it? What is that wonderful, viral quality that compells you to e-mail your friends? Perhaps a good laugh, maybe playful irreverance, or just a creative peppering of well-timed obesenities, often set to music, top the list of viral trends. Certainly, we try. For the Roman Art from the Louvre webisode project, we pulled out the big guns and created an episode eerily similar to VH1’s beloved, I Love the 80’s series filled with our own brand of wit and swearing. But it wasn’t quite enough to get us over the hump. So as we move forward, I think it is safe to assume we will keep producing content that we feel has a lot of artistic integrity, contributes to the mission of the museum, all the while brainstorming about ways to strike YouTube gold. So, I challenge you, our constiuents, all 5 people reading this blog, to offer your suggestions for how we can grow that number to 10, then 10 million. I’m waiting….

I had no doubt that we would get a crowd opening weekend. However, I am surprised at the enthusiasm the visitors have for the exhibition. For art that is over 2,000 years old, it still has an impressive fan base. It’s been really great to see the reaction people have had to the marketing campaign, but more importantly, it has been really nice to see the reaction people have had to the exhibition. People really love it. And the entire IMA staff is breathing a collective sigh of relief after opening weekend.

Everyday when I arrive at the office the first thing I do is check the attendance for the day before. Generally, the IMA hosts about 1,000 visitors a day. Since last Friday (the member preview day), we have doubled that figure daily. Can we keep this pace up? I hope so. In fact, I hope that as people see the exhibition and tell their family and friends about it, the number will continue to climb.

If you are interested, you can track our attendance by visiting this page.

I’ve been living with this exhibition for a year now and it’s really hard to believe that it’s finally open. Soon our lives and our blogs won’t have the Romans at the center. On to the next big thing I guess!