Weekly Studio Roundup #29
Around the Web
Introducing the M+ API
“The M+ API, in its current form, is a mirror of the data that has been made available on the museum’s GitHub page. For now, the M+ API exists to satisfy the needs of the developer community, and it is the thing to use if you are interested in building an app or a bot that needs access to M+’s data in real time. If you are doing a data analysis or visualization, you should probably consider downloading the dataset as a single CSV file from GitHub. With the M+ API, you can easily explore the M+ Collections data. You can develop your own complex queries, and integrate M+’s data into your application. The data found in the API is updated nightly, which means your app will be updated nightly as well.” — link to M+ Labs.
Evaluating The Museum App: CMOA Case Study
“As arts administrators we often ask ourselves how we can more deeply engage with our audiences. Museums have been at the forefront of this movement, offering hosts of hands-on activities to supplement the visitor’s experience and help them connect to the art. With the Knight Foundation’s recent $5m endorsement of art and technology in Philadelphia Museums, it becomes clear that technology can play a big role in shaping visitors’ experiences. And what better way to spend a dreary afternoon than in the Carnegie Museum of Art taking a look at how the museum’s Gallery Guide, its mobile app created in 2016, can transform the experience of visiting the museum?” — link to Arts Management and Technology Laboratory.
Museums Must Confront the Big Issues
“Today, the role of museums in supporting democracy strikes me as more vital than it has been for a generation. Around the world, the post-war tenets of liberal democracy are crumbling, and so it falls to institutions like museums — along with a free media, business, universities, faith bodies and civil society — to preserve the ecology of civic life.” — link to The Art Newspaper.
Google Has Virtually Recreated the National Museum of Brazil
“Google has released a virtual recreation of the National Museum of Brazil, which was gutted by a catastrophic fire in September. An estimated 92.5 percent of the 20 million artifacts in the museum’s archive are believed to have been destroyed in the blaze. Thus far, researchers have recovered 1,500 including the museum’s prized possession, Luzia. Along with 360-degree tours of some of the museum’s most significant holdings as they were installed before the fire, the virtual version of the National Museum of Brazil also includes online-only exhibitions of artifacts from the collection — many now destroyed — culled from cultures ranging from ancient Egypt to Brazil’s indigenous peoples.” — link to Artsy.
Should We Relinquish Our Insistence on Privileging Original Works of Art?
“Digital reproductions of museum collections have contributed to burgeoning cultural tourism. It is worth asking whether three-dimensional and virtual replication might do the reverse, offering antidotes to the “sacrality” of the original and its unintended consequences for the environment. Advances in 3D printing have given rise to full-scale replicas of Islamic State-looted Palmyrene architecture. Augmented reality offers an alternative to scraping feet and polluting breath in prehistoric caves, Egyptian tombs and the Sistine Chapel. The recent auction at Christie’s of a portrait generated by an algorithm points to evolving forms of creativity spurred on by digital innovation.”— link to The Art Newspaper.
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