Moments of Clarity at the Met

This post will be another deviation from my accessibility discussion, but only because I am excited to share about other insight from the galleries and behind the scenes of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Within the galleries, I had the opportunity to see a few artworks that were highlighted in the high school class that inspired my interest in museum work (see below image)! I had forgotten that these works are exhibited at this museum, so it was a nice suprise to see these works in person.

Ugolino and His Sons, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, 1865–67.

Also, I am so intrigued by how the museum immerses its visitors in spaces which resemble the places where artworks were initially displayed. This context can be so necessary to understand and appreciate a work.

Moving from galleries to behind the scenes, and from physical to digital, we spoke with staff from the Met Digital Department. As we heard from these professionals, some ideas resonated with what we have heard from other museums throughout this seminar and with my studies within this graduate program.

Staff noted the shift from the concept of a museum as a space within walls. Museums no longer need a building to operate, as museum functions can happen online or elsewhere. This has me thinking about our conversations with the Studio Museum and the Climate Museum, both of which demonstrated their ability to function without being in a building.

However, Met architecture is beautiful!

And we heard about how metrics from websites like Wikipedia inform the success of Met open access collections and digital practices. I wrote my digital curation certificate research paper on how analytics can indicate the reach and impact of digital collections, so this was exciting to hear this sort of case study.

I could go on!

References

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1865–67). Ugolino and his sons [Marble sculpture]. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY.