In the 21st century, why a museum?, we begin with that question.
Museums have been around for hundreds of years and have traditionally been knowns as institutions focused around collecting, preserving, and interpreting objects. Max Anderson, the director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, wrote an interesting article in The Art Newspaper where he suggested that the new version of that is to gather, steward, and converse (http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Gather-Steward-and-Converse/21513).
Those new words indicate the kinds of changes that have taken place in museums, such as the increasingly role of the visitor as participant, but also the importance that museums still hold in our lives.
The museum has get clear and delimited functions, as a traditions safe box even as an instrument for strengthen and legitimized the national identity and the art market. What are the new functions or features of the museum?
I’m not entirely sure I understand the first part of this question, but in terms of the last part, museums have expanded their functionality beyond the traditional care, display and interpretation of objects to being social places where people with like interests come together to meet each other and interact in a “safe space”, both in person and online. At MoMA, this takes place in many forms, whether it is an evening event for 20-somethings with drinks and a curator-led tour of a temporary exhibition (http://www.moma.org/poprally/index), or a kid’s art lab with hands-on activities to introduce young children to line, shape, color and materials (http://moma.org/learn/kids_families/visits#interactive_space), or a museum’s Facebook page. The museum now is as much about engagement as it is about collecting and displaying.
In some places –in southern Mexico, for example- education departments of museums are usually frowned upon. What do you think about these departments and services? Can we understand the contemporary museum without education departments?
NO! Education departments are traditionally undervalued in art musuems, although I believe that is changing as our audience changes (younger people, online audiences, international visitors, etc.). Our Education Department is a critical partner in creating interpretive materials for the in gallery and online visit, including text, audio and video, evaluating the resulting visitor experience, and hosting programs for all types of audiences.
What is the use of digital and mobile devices in museums?
It starts with the digital display screens in our lobby, which feature exhibitions, events, ticketing information and various promotions, and continues with the audio tour, wayfinding information kiosks, an iPhone and Android app, and a mobile version of our website. We also have iPad apps for an exhibition (Abstract Expressionist New York) and for choosing and purchasing several MoMA publications to download (more for at home use than in the museum). As more and more people shift to using mobile devices to access content, our suite of mobile tools will only grow over time.
Do you think that the museum can still be understand from its four walls, or it is the time, as other places have done, to assume that a museum is, or can be, something beyond their physical location? The museum as a laboratory? What kind of laboratory?
Museums still can be understood within a physical structure, but the audience has extended well beyond the capacity to host them in one location. Online we get multiple times over our in museum audience.
That doesn’t mean the in museum audience goes away or becomes less important. It just means our reach and audiences has been expanded. A museum is a laboratory, but it is a laboratory in a physical location as well as a laboratory online. That being said, there are “museums” that exist purely online (the Adobe Museum of Art, for example). But MoMA is very much a museum that has grown out of a stellar collection of art and design that exists in a physical environment, and while we have added significantly to the ways and formats in which we talk about that collection, it still remains at the core of what we do.
What questions do you think that museums and those who work in them have not been made, and should be asking? What questions do you consider urgent, and could begin to be discussed at this meeting in Oaxaca (Encuentro Programa Nacional de Interpretación de Museos)?
I guess one question is how museums can empower individuals within them to be innovative, creative, and risk-taking and to trust them along the way. Too often there is an instinct to bring in an outside team or consultant to advise the museum, when often the skills are right there all along. How can museums engage with and trust not only their audience but also their own staffs to actively participate in shaping the museum’s future?