Initially published on the blog of Media Impact Funders. Read entire post here.
Media funders take note. The museum community has been investing steadily in its collective media capabilities: in technical infrastructure, media production tools, staff expertise, and asset digitization. As a result, museums are becoming some of the 21st century’s most compelling conveners, storytellers, and media producers.
What’s the evidence? At last week’s Museums and the Web 2015, a four-day tech-a-palooza in downtown Chicago, 700 global museum tech folks gathered to share ideas, plans, and results within a friendly and spirited learning community. These media doers and makers are also the internal advocates for a re-set in museums’ orientation. The shift – well underway – is from museum as quiet citadel of scholarship and refuge, to museum as dynamic, visitor-centered civic hub. Art, or history, or science, are the wells museums draw from, but their collections are no longer mere “holdings,” not the end in and of themselves. Instead, collections are the beginnings – the impetus for conversations, for stories, and for sharing perspectives and instigating dialogue on diverse subjects that reach far beyond the objects on view.
Here are three examples of groundbreaking work ......