Contemporary Art: Who Cares?

Following our contribution to the ACCESS2CA seminar at the Moderna Galerija in Ljubljana (Slovenia) last year, the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage (ICN) has invited us to give a number of workshop at this year’s symposium ‘Contemporary Art: Who Cares?’. This international event will take place at the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam this summer and is organized for (up-and-coming) professionals, from diverse disciplines, who are connected to the conservation of modern and contemporary art.

The symposium is co-organized by the Foundation for the Conservation of Contemporary Art in the Netherlands (SBMK) and the University of Amsterdam (UvA). Key note speakers include Stedelijk Museum‘s conservator Bart Rutten, Van Abbemuseum‘s director Charles Esche, Tate‘s Pip Laurenson, artists Eija Liisa Ahtila and Nedko Solakov and various other people from around the world with an interest/stake in contemporary art conservation with a special focus on complex, large scale multimedia installation works.

Our series of workshops will look at how contemporary art conservation can be made accessible to the public and the role of conservators and conservation information in this process. Participants of the sessions will learn about how organisations (in and outside of cultural heritage) are using new media and emerging technologies to engage with audiences. The workshop exercise wil give participants a first hand experience with (online) media, including various social networks, gaming, mobile applications and data visualization.

Eija-Liisa Ahtila, ‘The Wind’ (2002) from reel aesthete on Vimeo.

By Michiel — Posted April 12, 2010 — 3,477 Comments

Museum Manager 2010

It must have been 1995 when I picked up my first copy of Championship Manager 2, the football management computer game. Much like games like Simcity and Flight Simulator, it proved to be a highly addictive and incredibly challenging simulation game. Being the manager of a club like Barcelona, Manchester United or AC Milan, you had great responsibilities: building up a balanced squad, improving training grounds with the money earned at the gates, and focussing on youth development when finances were tight. As the years passed by, the game went from buying Roberto Baggio and Marco van Basten to employing specialist coaches and scouts to better the club and motivate players to give it all. AI – as avid players lovingly call the game engine – adds incredible things to the game play, making it in my case much more fun to do than watching 90 minutes in a stadium or on the television.

Having recently rediscovered my interest (and addiction) for this immensely popular game (that has been renamed Football Manager), I started thinking about the possibility of translating the game directly to the museum domain. And thus the idea of Museum Manager 2010 was born. Wouldn’t it be great to become the manager of Tate or MoMA (or maybe the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris?) and think about a strategy to move the museum forward, just like you do with all the other simulation games like Football Manager and Simcity? Hiring the right curator for a new exhibition, or buying that masterpiece that will draw a crowd but forces you to invest in safety and maintenance that will drain your budget? Expanding overseas like the Guggenheim and Louvre, or forming a network with other small museums around the planet?

I would definitely play this game (and become addicted). Could this be an interesting approach to open up museums and learn from our current and future audiences? Could a game be a museum? Could a museum be a game? I hope to find out more while writing this article for the next Metropolis M next month.

(Disclaimer: I used the SEGA logo without their permission. Please don’t shoot me.)

By Juha — Posted January 5, 2010 — 10,004 Comments

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