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How cultural institutions are embracing digital technology
Commissioned by the Wyncote Foundation
  • _BigImage_Crowds on Steps
  • The Dinner Party
  • BrooklynMuseum
  • Stair Installation

The Brooklyn Museum has been an early and continuous leader in digital media. Interactive projects have included its crowd-curated 2008 photography exhibition Click that invited both the digital and local community to participate in curation; Split Second, an exhibition of Indian paintings informed by participant reactions and ratings; and Go, a 2013 community-curated open studio project that drew on ideas from digital engagement projects to create a physical event. Its digital collections are illuminated through special groupings like Art Base within the Elisabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, a digital archive of feminist art with images, video and audio segments, links, biographies, and an archive of feminist art statements; or Hiroshige’s One Hundred Famous View of Edo, offering this rarely-displayed work in its entirety online, with interpretive information. Recent blog postings explain why the Museum is ending some digital initiatives and focusing on others, based on outcomes and metrics.

Enabling visitors to better engage with the collection is also part of a 3-year initiative funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies that includes location aware technology and an ASK app, winner of two MUSE awards in 2016. Together these features enable staff to answer visitor questions in real time by pinpointing the visitor’s location within the museum. Also notable: the staff’s transparency around what the museum is testing and what it is learning.