_1215_fine_art_catalogue

The Death of Traditional
Art Galleries and
Museums
by Emily Matthews
Digital technology is having a significant impact on
the artworld, whether welcomed or not. Its
expansive forms, through painting, sculpture,
moving image, photography, print, installation,
sound, have all been transformed by new digital
methods and technologies, while new forms have
emerged through virtual reality, digital installation
and net art. These new forms in the main sidestep
the museum and gallery, and its supremacy,
distributing visual practices through the Internet.
The changes in the music and publishing worlds
through the Internet seem to show what is faced
and probable on the commercial side of the
artworld. The selling of artwork would be more
efficient and more cost effective if it was to be done
through the internet. Many people in the art world,
galleries, curators and artists, would find this
problematic, arguing that art has to be seen or
experienced. However, this is already not always the
case, many collectors purchase works without
seeing them in person as they trust the galleries and
advisors they are buying from.
Does this mean within the commercial frame that
galleries are the thing of the past? And how do we
unpick this from other influences, such as recessions
and weak economies that have hit more broadly
across the commercial sector. And what of artists,
how do they position themselves within this altered
landscape. Galleries may for the time remain the
best places for works to be shown, but digital
technologies are leaning to other contexts and
platforms. And what from the gallery and Museum
side. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (MOMA), New
York, has embraced the digital change into their
galleries, making the experience smartphone
friendly. Visitors are able to interact with the
environment through the use of the smart phone,
giving them another perspective to the artworks.
They want people to embrace the digital change
and learn more through it. They need to appeal to
modern audiences, who want to be surrounded by
technology and be able to use their phones
whenever they please. Many museum officials insist
that there is an influential aesthetic and cultural
foundation to this as well. As Paola Antonelli (senior
curator of architecture and design at the MOMA)
states ‘We live not in the digital, not in the physical,
but in the kind of minestrone that our mind makes
of the two.’ [2] Saying that the two differences have
an important role in helping people understand and
explore this ‘new’ culture.
Cooper Hewitt from the Smithsonian Design
Museum has embraced the new culture in which we
live in and has created a 21st century design
museum. ‘’Cooper Hewitt’s renovation provides the
opportunity to redefine today’s museum experience
and inspire each visitor to play designer before,
during and after their visit.’[3] It has taken three years
and ninety-one million dollars to renovate, giving
the institution 60 percent more gallery space to
enable a new visitor experience that should fit in
with the new digital age. When entering the
museum each visitor is given a digital pen (with
computer memory, a radio for communication, and
a touch sensitive stylus) intended to let visitors play
and explore using tablets. And they have rooms that
project images onto the walls from the tablets
allowing the visitors to be immersed in a totally new
experience.
The issue of sharing collections online came around
when Google began a project called Art Project. This
was to provide virtual tours and have images of the
artworks, using high definition cameras. There were
matters of copyright, commercialisation and Google
making a profit from what the museums owned. In
2010 the Art Project kicked off with 17 museums;
today it has 500 institutions in 60 countries with 7.2
million artworks. The high definition images that are
captured are about 10 billion pixels, more than the
eye can detect. This allows the public viewing the
work online to see details, scratches and brush
strokes, that when viewing in real life cannot be
detected from where it can be viewed.
These experiences won’t necessarily replace gallery
and museum facilities, where direct contact and the
first-hand experience of the artwork will always offer
something outside of and beyond the computer or
smartphone screen, as Ms. Merritt, from the Centre
for the Future of Museums states ‘Virtual art will
never psychologically replace the real, because a
piece of the creator is attached to the object itself.’
[4] But they can and perhaps are informing and
deepening our relations to artworks and the
possibilities of how and where and on what terms
we encounter them.
[1] unknown. (2005). How has art changed? Available:
http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/how_has_art_
changed/ . Last accessed 28th Jan 2015.
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/arts/artsspecial/
the-met-and-other-museums-adapt-to-the-digital-age.
html
[3] unknown. (2015). The new Cooper Hewitt experience.
Available: http://www.cooperhewitt.org/newexperience/.
Last accessed 29th Jan 2015.
[4] Lohr, S. (2014). Museums Morph Digitally. Available:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/arts/artsspecial/
the-met-and-other-museums-adapt-to-the-digital-age.
html . Last accessed 19th Jan 2015.
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