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Getty Teacher Update is our free e-mail newsletter for K-12 teachers sent four times per year. It will keep you informed of resources and opportunities for you and your students at the Getty Center, the Getty Villa, and online at getty.edu. Subscribe to the Getty Teacher Update newsletter.

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Drawing from Antiquity
Artists have long looked to classical antiquity for inspiration. Discover this historical tradition at the Getty Villa in this monthly free, 1.5 hour program. Artist and educator Elmira Adamian guides an informal lesson as you sketch from works of art, architecture, and the gardens of the Villa. Experiment with various historical drawing materials in the gallery and studio. Supplies are provided and all skill levels are welcome.
Learn more about this free program.

Getty Drawing Hour
Enjoy the tradition of sketching from original works of art every first and third Sunday of the month at the Getty Center.
Learn more and see other upcoming studio courses.

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Drawing from Antiquity Artists have long looked to classical antiquity for inspiration. Discover this historical tradition at the Getty Villa in this monthly free, 1.5 hour program. Artist and educator Elmira Adamian guides an informal lesson as you sketch from works of art, architecture, and the gardens of the Villa.

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Professional Development Opportunities

If you are a teacher looking for professional development credit from taking an online course with MoMA, read item number one below. You can also take a free professional development course offered through MoMA’s partnership with Coursera. Read item number two below to learn how this can result in a Statement of Accomplishment.

1. MoMA.org Online Course Teacher Credit

Participating in any instructor-led version of MoMA.org online courses can result in one Professional Development credit. See MoMA.org/courseseonline for a list of current offerings. Teacher course tuition discounts are available. This professional development credit is offered through the University of Alaska Anchorage for an additional fee of $99. Learn more about PD credit for online courses.

2. MoMA/Coursera Teacher Professional Development Course

The Museum of Modern Art has partnered with Coursera, a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) provider, to offer a free professional development course for primary and secondary teachers all over the world.

Art and Inquiry: Museum Teaching Strategies for Your Classroom is intended for teachers of grades four through 12, of all disciplines. The course introduces ways to integrate works of art into your classroom by using inquiry-based teaching methods commonly used in museum settings. This course is designed to give teachers the tools to create meaningful object-based learning activities that can be integrated into a wide variety of curricula. Go to coursera.org/MoMA to enroll. Participation in this course could lead to a Statement of Accomplishment. See coursera.org/about/terms for more information.

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Review and revise their ethics statements to address emerging issues. Traditional areas of concern like conflict-of-interest and provenance research may need to be expanded to include sections on internships, privacy of digital data and the ethical provenance of art displayed in the museum. Policies on individual and corporate support may need to be updated and strengthened, and museums working in the global arena may want to take a proactive stance on ethical concerns related to that work.

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Review and revise their ethics statements to address emerging issues. Traditional areas of concern like conflict-of-interest and provenance research may need to be expanded to include sections on internships, privacy of digital data and the ethical provenance of art displayed in the museum. Policies on individual and corporate support may need to be updated and strengthened, and museums working in the global arena may want to take a proactive stance on ethical concerns related to that work.

Merritt specifies, on the hot-button topics of museum workers' wages and unpaid internships:

Now might be a good time to discuss what investments are consonant or inconsistent with the museum's mission and values. Debate the pros and cons of having people on the board who publicly and professionally advance causes antithetical to the museum's mission, whether that be science, sustainability or children's health.

Surprisingly, the section on ethics makes no mention of another hotly debated issue in the museum field, diversity - though it does come up tangentially in a passage from the wearable technology section. The question of how to increase diversity among museums' staffs and audiences is implicated in many of the areas on which this year's TrendsWatch report focuses and may be its most glaring oversight.

With regards to how institutions can personalize visitors' experiences, Merritt cautions:

Mass personalization requires lots of data, which is a challenge for museums individually and collectively. As museums build the technological capacity to generate personalized recommendations, they will have to convince people to contribute enough information about themselves and their preferences to jump-start the process. Many museums are just beginning to collect even basic data on how individual users interact with the organization.

On the issue of how museums should prepare themselves to handle rising sea levels and increasingly frequent extreme weather events, the report counsels vigilance and earnestness:

When a museum large or small sinks significant resources into new construction, a cold-blooded assessment of current and future risks should inform everything from choosing a building site to selecting the elements of design. [...] Create master plans for buildings and grounds that can be adjusted every decade to adapt to changing conditions.

The question of how to accommodate wearable devices seems poised to become the next frontier in museums' hot-and-cold relationship with new technologies - see the current trend toward banning selfie sticks while encouraging selfies. Above all, the report encourages accessibility rather than catering to the latest high-end gadget:

Monitor the wearable technologies used by visitors, and be prepared to integrate them into BYOD delivery of content and experiences. Support the use of wearables (as well as hand-held devices) by providing free Wi-Fi and charging stations. Explore (with permission, of course!) how data from personal biomonitoring devices might be integrated with indoor GPS to track how visitors experience the museum physiologically and psychologically. If the museum has created content or experiences that can only be accessed via wearable technology, consider having devices available for loan to visitors who don't bring their own. This would help bridge the "digital divide" and ensure that all visitors have access to what the museum offers.

Perhaps the most abstract section concerns the implications of the current "slow" trend for museums. While many think of museums as traditionally "slow" places, a visit to virtually any museum today will quickly dispel that notion. Merritt suggests that slowness must be cultivated:

Our field needs to grapple with what it takes to create slow experiences. Sometimes museums wrongly assume that "slow" is simply part of their DNA. [...] It takes conscious and thoughtful work to create slow engagement, with or without technological mediation.

One particularly interesting comment got me thinking:

As the world bifurcates into fast and slow lanes, museums will have to find temporal or spatial ways to accommodate different paces.

What if museums organized their permanent collections not by period, region, or medium, but by pace? One could spend a couple of hours in the "slow" galleries looking at a dozen illuminated manuscripts, video art pieces, and installations, or take in hundreds of design objects, photographs, and sculptures in the "fast" galleries. That's a vision of the future of museums I'd like to see realized.
Download the full 2015 Center for the Future of Museums TrendsWatch report here.

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The 6 Issues That Will Guide the Future of Museums

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Review and revise their ethics statements to address emerging issues. Traditional areas of concern like conflict-of-interest and provenance research may need to be expanded to include sections on internships, privacy of digital data and the ethical provenance of art displayed in the museum.

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826 Valencia is dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their writing skills, and helping teachers get their students excited about the writing. Our work is based on the understanding that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success and that great leaps in learning can be made when skilled tutors work one-on-one with students.

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While the delineations above are by museum subject matter, there are also significant differences between participatory opportunities in large and small museums. Small museums are more likely to be community-oriented and to be comfortable incorporating visitor-generated content without feeling that it disrupts the overall design of the institution. However, small museums are also less likely to have staff support to maintain and sustain participatory projects over time. While large museums are often beleagured by endless committee meetings that can hinder the potential for creative new projects, when all the dotted lines are signed, the projects tend to affect more visitors than those of small museums, and may be better funded over time. Frankly, I think small museums win out on this one--ultimately, they are less focused on authoritative image than large museums and more likely to enthusiastically embrace community involvement.

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Recently, I was giving a presentation about participatory techniques at an art museum, when a staff member raised her hand and asked, "Did you have to look really hard to find examples from art museums? Aren't art museums less open to participation than other kinds of museums?"

I was surprised by her question. In my travels and research, I've seen all kinds of museums be incredibly successful--and incredibly uncomfortable--with visitor participation. While it's true that art museums have some particular challenges, so do all kinds of institutions in their own ways. This post outlines what I see as the opportunities and challenges for different kinds of museums in pursuing participatory visitor engagement.

OPPORTUNITIES - History museums are in many ways the best-suited for visitor participation. They are frequently about real people's stories. As cultural anthropology has swung away from a vision of authoritative history and toward the embrace of multiple perspectives, there is potential for those stories to come from all over the place, including visitors themselves. For this reason, I see history museums as best-suited for participatory projects that involve story-sharing and crowdsourced collecting (e.g. ). Because of the incredible popularity of genealogy as an activity, history museums are also excellent places for visitor-generated or -supported research projects (e.g. Children of the Lodz Ghetto ). Finally, because of their social content, they are good places for community dialogue programming and comment boards (for example, consider the Levine Museum of the New South's extensive use of sticky notes and talking circles). Everyone can have her own personal experience of history.

CHALLENGES - Despite their support for multiple perspectives, history museums feel strongly about accuracy and authenticity. They also want to avoid stories or perspectives that reflect hateful or offensive views toward other people. Validating and moderating visitors' stories or contributions is often a top concern in history museums. So is maintaining a narrative thread that is intelligible and enjoyable to visitors. Balancing multi-vocal content with a comprehensive narrative can be tricky. Finally, some history museum staff members feel that they should not be dealing with contemporary social issues or that they are unable to facilitate dialogue on contentious topics.

OPPORTUNITIES - Art museums are well-suited for creative visitor participation. They show the creative process, and many visitors may be inspired to create their own art in response to that on display (e.g. In Your Face ). While art historians and curators may have their own sense of what interpretations of art are most accurate or valuable, it's generally accepted that everyone has his own experience of art, and that individuals' different interpretations or preferences are acceptable (which encourages some museums to invite visitors to write their own labels). Finally, many art museums do fabulous, highly participatory projects that are led by participatory artists who work specifically in the realm of dialogue or active social participation.

CHALLENGES - Art museums have more significant separations between education departments and curatorial departments than other types of museums. This means that an activity construed as educational (i.e. write your own label) often cannot be placed in the gallery if it is perceived by curators to distract from the aesthetic experience of connecting with the artworks. Ironically, art museums often present the most radical participatory experiences for visitors--but only when led by an artist, not by internal staff members. There is also a strong bias in some art museums against amateur content, which prevents some institutions from encouraging creative participation by visitors.

Science Museums and Science Centers

OPPORTUNITIES - Science museums and science centers have a long history of interactive display techniques, which makes them naturally suited to encourage other kinds of active visitor participation. They also have a general visitor-centered "you be the scientist" approach, which elevates visitors' own opinions, actions, and contributions in the context of the museum experience. Finally, they are commonly used by school and family groups as learning places. These attributes makes science museums and science centers ideal for participatory projects that are collaborative and action-oriented. Many science centers support participatory design challenges, citizen science projects, and nature exchanges that encourage visitors to engage personally and socially in doing science. Some science museums also present dialogue-based programs and exhibits around contemporary science issues, like race, wealth disparity, and climate change. Several also offer adults-only events or venues to encourage older visitors to engage with tough topics in modern science.

CHALLENGES - Unlike history museums or art museums, science institutions do not value multiple perspectives on basic interpretation of science. Theories like evolution and the laws of thermodynamics are not open to visitor reinterpretation. Additionally, the family-oriented focus on fun and shared learning at science centers leads some to shy away from controversial topics or visitor experiences that might be perceived as too complicated to integrate into a family visit. There is also the concern that visitors' contributions are more likely to be off-topic or comment boards used in entirely inappropriate ways, especially by school groups. Visitors are rarely engaged in exhibition development or content production as they might be in art or history museums; participation in science centers is often focused narrowly on teens and young adults who are engaged in formal internships or staff positions.

OPPORTUNITIES - Like science centers, children's museums are highly interactive and visitor-centered. There are many opportunities for visitors to make things both to share and take home in the context of a visit. Children's museums often encourage visitors to explore new ideas and develop narratives around their experiences, and institutions frequently showcase visitors' stories and creations. In some cases, professionals develop exhibitions or shows with children's participation, as in Capital E Theater's opera, Kia Ora Khalid, which was based on and developed with young immigrants. Some institutions encourage visitors to make personal pledges relative to tough topics, like prejudice, personal health, or environmentalism.

CHALLENGES - The biggest challenge to visitor participation in children's museums is concern about privacy. Most children's museum staff are not comfortable encouraging visitors to document each other (i.e. take photos of each other's kids), asking for personal data about children, or encouraging children to approach strangers (unsurprisingly). Additionally, many museum staff members assume that family and young visitors are not able to make substantive contributions as participants due to their level of ability and availability.

A Note on Small Museums vs. Large Museums
While the delineations above are by museum subject matter, there are also significant differences between participatory opportunities in large and small museums. Small museums are more likely to be community-oriented and to be comfortable incorporating visitor-generated content without feeling that it disrupts the overall design of the institution. However, small museums are also less likely to have staff support to maintain and sustain participatory projects over time. While large museums are often beleagured by endless committee meetings that can hinder the potential for creative new projects, when all the dotted lines are signed, the projects tend to affect more visitors than those of small museums, and may be better funded over time. Frankly, I think small museums win out on this one--ultimately, they are less focused on authoritative image than large museums and more likely to enthusiastically embrace community involvement.

What kinds of challenges and opportunities exist in your own institution? What types of institutions do you see as most open and closed to participation?

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How Different Types of Museums Approach Participation

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Recently, I was giving a presentation about participatory techniques at an art museum, when a staff member raised her hand and asked, "Did you have to look really hard to find examples from art museums? Aren't art museums less open to participation than other kinds of museums?" I was surprised by her question.

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But applied ethics, and museum ethics in particular, are more than a technical set of guidelines. Museums have a moral agency (Marstine 2011b: 7). They exist in a continuous dialogue with society and are complex institutions. Current research and publications in museum ethics (Marstine 2011a; Marstine et al 2011) recognize this multiplicity and complexity and encourage a more elaborate understanding of the institution and its social role. Museum codes of ethics reflect the values of the institution, but also the social contexts as well as the standards, values, norms and philosophies that determine how museums operate in accordance with their own values and those of the society to which they belong.

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Journal of Conservation and Museum Studies

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Article: Codes of Ethics and Museum Research

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Code of Ethics for Museums | Museums Association

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Developed by our ethics committee and voted for by our members, the code of ethics defines current consensus over the principles that should guide museum practice

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Adopted 1993 by the AAM Board of Directors and amended in 2000
Please note that the Code of Ethics for Museums references the American Association of Museums (AAM), now called the American Alliance of Museums.
Ethical codes evolve in response to changing conditions, values and ideas. A professional code of ethics must, therefore, be periodically updated. It must also rest upon widely shared values. Although the operating environment of museums grows more complex each year, the root value for museums, the tie that connects all of us together despite our diversity, is the commitment to serving people, both present and future generations. This value guided the creation of and remains the most fundamental principle in the following Code of Ethics for Museums.

Code of Ethics for Museums

Museums make their unique contribution to the public by collecting, preserving and interpreting the things of this world. Historically, they have owned and used natural objects, living and nonliving, and all manner of human artifacts to advance knowledge and nourish the human spirit. Today, the range of their special interests reflects the scope of human vision. Their missions include collecting and preserving, as well as exhibiting and educating with materials not only owned but also borrowed and fabricated for these ends. Their numbers include both governmental and private museums of anthropology, art history and natural history, aquariums, arboreta, art centers, botanical gardens, children's museums, historic sites, nature centers, planetariums, science and technology centers, and zoos. The museum universe in the United States includes both collecting and non-collecting institutions. Although diverse in their missions, they have in common their nonprofit form of organization and a commitment of service to the public. Their collections and/or the objects they borrow or fabricate are the basis for research, exhibits, and programs that invite public participation.

Taken as a whole, museum collections and exhibition materials represent the world's natural and cultural common wealth. As stewards of that wealth, museums are compelled to advance an understanding of all natural forms and of the human experience. It is incumbent on museums to be resources for humankind and in all their activities to foster an informed appreciation of the rich and diverse world we have inherited. It is also incumbent upon them to preserve that inheritance for posterity.

Museums in the United States are grounded in the tradition of public service. They are organized as public trusts, holding their collections and information as a benefit for those they were established to serve. Members of their governing authority, employees and volunteers are committed to the interests of these beneficiaries. The law provides the basic framework for museum operations. As nonprofit institutions, museums comply with applicable local, state, and federal laws and international conventions, as well as with the specific legal standards governing trust responsibilities. This Code of Ethics for Museums takes that compliance as given. But legal standards are a minimum. Museums and those responsible for them must do more than avoid legal liability, they must take affirmative steps to maintain their integrity so as to warrant public confidence. They must act not only legally but also ethically. This Code of Ethics for Museums, therefore, outlines ethical standards that frequently exceed legal minimums.

Loyalty to the mission of the museum and to the public it serves is the essence of museum work, whether volunteer or paid. Where conflicts of interest arise-actual, potential or perceived-the duty of loyalty must never be compromised. No individual may use his or her position in a museum for personal gain or to benefit another at the expense of the museum, its mission, its reputation and the society it serves.

For museums, public service is paramount. To affirm that ethic and to elaborate its application to their governance, collections and programs, the American Association of Museums promulgates this Code of Ethics for Museums. In subscribing to this code, museums assume responsibility for the actions of members of their governing authority, employees and volunteers in the performance of museum-related duties. Museums, thereby, affirm their chartered purpose, ensure the prudent application of their resources, enhance their effectiveness and maintain public confidence. This collective endeavor strengthens museum work and the contributions of museums to society-present and future.

Governance

Museum governance in its various forms is a public trust responsible for the institution's service to society. The governing authority protects and enhances the museum's collections and programs and its physical, human and financial resources. It ensures that all these resources support the museum's mission, respond to the pluralism of society and respect the diversity of the natural and cultural common wealth.

Thus, the governing authority ensures that:

all those who work for or on behalf of a museum understand and support its mission and public trust responsibilities

its members understand and fulfill their trusteeship and act corporately, not as individuals

the museum's collections and programs and its physical, human and financial resources are protected, maintained and developed in support of the museum's mission

it is responsive to and represents the interests of society

it maintains the relationship with staff in which shared roles are recognized and separate responsibilities respected

working relationships among trustees, employees and volunteers are based on equity and mutual respect

professional standards and practices inform and guide museum operations

policies are articulated and prudent oversight is practiced

governance promotes the public good rather than individual financial gain.

Collections

The distinctive character of museum ethics derives from the ownership, care and use of objects, specimens, and living collections representing the world's natural and cultural common wealth. This stewardship of collections entails the highest public trust and carries with it the presumption of rightful ownership, permanence, care, documentation, accessibility and responsible disposal.

Thus, the museum ensures that:

collections in its custody support its mission and public trust responsibilities

collections in its custody are lawfully held, protected, secure, unencumbered, cared for and preserved

collections in its custody are accounted for and documented

access to the collections and related information is permitted and regulated

acquisition, disposal, and loan activities are conducted in a manner that respects the protection and preservation of natural and cultural resources and discourages illicit trade in such materials

acquisition, disposal, and loan activities conform to its mission and public trust responsibilities

disposal of collections through sale, trade or research activities is solely for the advancement of the museum's mission. Proceeds from the sale of nonliving collections are to be used consistent with the established standards of the museum's discipline, but in no event shall they be used for anything other than acquisition or direct care of collections.

the unique and special nature of human remains and funerary and sacred objects is recognized as the basis of all decisions concerning such collections

collections-related activities promote the public good rather than individual financial gain

competing claims of ownership that may be asserted in connection with objects in its custody should be handled openly, seriously, responsively and with respect for the dignity of all parties involved.

Programs

Museums serve society by advancing an understanding and appreciation of the natural and cultural common wealth through exhibitions, research, scholarship, publications and educational activities. These programs further the museum's mission and are responsive to the concerns, interests and needs of society.

Thus, the museum ensures that:

programs support its mission and public trust responsibilities

programs are founded on scholarship and marked by intellectual integrity

programs are accessible and encourage participation of the widest possible audience consistent with its mission and resources

programs respect pluralistic values, traditions and concerns

revenue-producing activities and activities that involve relationships with external entities are compatible with the museum's mission and support its public trust responsibilities

programs promote the public good rather than individual financial gain.

Promulgation

This Code of Ethics for Museums was adopted by the Board of Directors of the American Association of Museums on November 12, 1993 and revised in 2000. The AAM Board of Directors recommends that each nonprofit museum member of the American Association of Museums adopt and promulgate its separate code of ethics, applying the Code of Ethics for Museums to its own institutional setting.

A Committee on Ethics, nominated by the president of the AAM and confirmed by the Board of Directors, will be charged with two responsibilities:

establishing programs of information, education and assistance to guide museums in developing their own codes of ethics

reviewing the Code of Ethics for Museums and periodically recommending refinements and revisions to the Board of Directors.

Afterword

Each nonprofit museum member of the American Association of Museums should subscribe to the AAM Code of Ethics for Museums. Subsequently, these museums should set about framing their own institutional codes of ethics, which should be in conformance with the AAM code and should expand on it through the elaboration of specific practices. This recommendation is made to these member institutions in the belief that engaging the governing authority, staff and volunteers in applying the AAM code to institutional settings will stimulate the development and maintenance of sound policies and procedures necessary to understanding and ensuring ethical behavior by institutions and by all who work for them or on their behalf.

The Code of Ethics for Museums serves the interests of museums, their constituencies, and society. The primary goal of AAM is to encourage institutions to regulate the ethical behavior of members of their governing authority, employees and volunteers. Formal adoption of an institutional code promotes higher and more consistent ethical standards.

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Adopted 1993 by the AAM Board of Directors and amended in 2000 Please note that the Code of Ethics for Museums references the American Association of Museums (AAM), now called the American Alliance of Museums. Ethical codes evolve in response to changing conditions, values and ideas.

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Does this mean Khan Academy is competitive with museums? Maybe. More importantly, it means that we should be looking to their model to push ourselves in how we think about delivering the most engaging, powerful content possible. We often talk about museums as leaders in providing substantive, essential alternatives to formal schooling. But museums are rarely seen as pursuing this promise in the innovative, aggressive, and highly publicized way that Khan Academy is.

I asked Beth Harris and Steven Zucker about their experience working at Khan Academy after years in academia and museums. When I asked them what's in it for Smarthistory to be a part of Khan Academy, they highlighted the extent to which Khan Academy represents a revolution in education and high quality online learning experiences. Here are some of the comments on the "why" behind their involvement:

[Khan Academy has] a hugely generous vision and commitment to rethinking education-our mission is "a world-class education, for anyone, anywhere"-not to mention brilliant programmers and staff. This is an epic moment in the history of education, who wouldn't want to be part of it? We are finally leaving behind the 18th century model of education where groups of students are expected to learn at a standard pace. Every day we read about ways that teaching, learning and accreditation are being unbundled. New institutions and new, more personal modes of teaching and learning are being investigated. And we will soon know much more about learning, thanks to analytics, than we ever have before.

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Last week, I became completely intoxicated with the online videos of Vi Hart, self-described mathemusician. Her nerdy, entertaining videos about math evoke the power of free choice learning while poking gentle fun at the drudgery of how math is often taught in school. She's brilliant and funny and pushes people to get excited about higher math and the big ideas behind it. She would be the best science center educator ever.

But Vi doesn't work in a science museum. She was a free agent for a long time, until the beginning of 2012, when she joined the teaching staff of Khan Academy.

Khan Academy, the free, nonprofit online source for educational instructional videos, is a young powerhouse in the online learning space. Its multilingual videos have reached almost 200 million viewers since it launched in 2006. Its funding has skyrocketed as major foundations and technology companies have made multi-million dollar grants and investments in its growth. Founder Salman Khan started by sharing his own videos with a math and science focus, and in the last year, he has added new "faculty" including Vi Hart as well as Drs. Beth Harris and Steven Zucker, who are well known in museums for their excellent Smarthistory website and podcasts.

Khan Academy is interesting in itself as an online learning space. But the participation of partners like Vi, Beth, and Steven puts it in a new category for me. Salman Khan's videos give people access to good instructional content on standard (and often confusing or poorly taught) educational topics. How to solve a quadratic equation. How to titrate an acid. Test prep for the SAT. This is all fine, but it exists very much in the K12 and college framework.

Vi Hart's videos, on the other hand, are idiosyncratic, explorative, and a bit subversive. Beth Harris and Steven Zucker's content about art history is social and dialogue-based in format. These instructors aren't teaching you the equivalent of a high school course in math or art history. They are connecting you with knowledge and inspiration in more creative ways... the way the best museums do. It's no coincidence that Beth Harris' last job was as Director of Digital Learning at MoMA.

Does this mean Khan Academy is competitive with museums? Maybe. More importantly, it means that we should be looking to their model to push ourselves in how we think about delivering the most engaging, powerful content possible. We often talk about museums as leaders in providing substantive, essential alternatives to formal schooling. But museums are rarely seen as pursuing this promise in the innovative, aggressive, and highly publicized way that Khan Academy is.

I asked Beth Harris and Steven Zucker about their experience working at Khan Academy after years in academia and museums. When I asked them what's in it for Smarthistory to be a part of Khan Academy, they highlighted the extent to which Khan Academy represents a revolution in education and high quality online learning experiences. Here are some of the comments on the "why" behind their involvement:

[Khan Academy has] a hugely generous vision and commitment to rethinking education-our mission is "a world-class education, for anyone, anywhere"-not to mention brilliant programmers and staff. This is an epic moment in the history of education, who wouldn't want to be part of it? We are finally leaving behind the 18th century model of education where groups of students are expected to learn at a standard pace. Every day we read about ways that teaching, learning and accreditation are being unbundled. New institutions and new, more personal modes of teaching and learning are being investigated. And we will soon know much more about learning, thanks to analytics, than we ever have before.

They commented on the power of the learning community around the online videos (for example, check out this conversation about Leonardo's Last Supper):

Khan Academy is much more than a huge library of high quality videos, there are learning analytics, self-paced exercises, and perhaps most importantly, a committed learning community-even for art history! We have a great community of learners that ask and answer questions and our videos are being translated by volunteers all over the world. We are reminded of how much fun learning can be.

They advocated for the power of online research and learning:

There is a huge appetite for knowledge about art that is not being met. We both come from higher education and it's always seemed remarkable to us how little museums work together to support the study of art. Students around the world want to understand the history of art, not necessarily the history of a particular collection. We also wish that museums and universities worked together more closely not just for research, but for learning. Learning is increasingly global and fluid and the fact that cross-institutional initiatives such as the Google Art Project and are rare, points to how much work still needs to be done. We wrote about that in a recent blog post, Why the Google Art Project is Important.

Many museums produce superb lesson plans, curator interviews and artist interviews for the web. But there are other content models we can explore. Conversation has been key to Smarthistory's success, and we've worked with several museums to facilitate the creation of conversation-based content. We've also done short technology workshops to enable content experts to create their own videos. In the era of YouTube, we don't always need Final Cut Pro and expensive videographers.

And they talked about the difference between working for a museum and working for a startup nonprofit:

We both loved working for MoMA in different capacities. But as everyone knows, museums are not the easiest ships to turn. This is a period of intense change when nimbleness is a real asset; working for a start-up has allowed us to produce a lot of high-quality academic content. For the Google Art Project, the two of us recorded, edited and produced 90 videos in four months (with only a small amount of editing assistance). Obviously, museums produce fantastic content, but we wonder if their limited resources should remain focused on traditional print publishing. The principles of digital publishing-which is iterative, personal, prolific, and collaborative, could unleash museums as active centers of learning and engagement.

One of the things that baffles us about museums is that while they support scholars with deep expertise, they produce relatively little content for public consumption on the web. The focus remains on the high status, expensive and little-read exhibition catalogue, instead of developing web-based content that will draw more visitors, and help create a loyal web-community. An educator at the Met recently told us of a group of visitors from Japan that joined a gallery tour and promptly asked to see the works of art featured on Smarthistory.

If we want museums to be pioneers in free choice learning, seen and funded as "hugely generous" and committed visionaries who are rethinking education, we need to push ourselves. Beth and Steven ended their email to me by quoting Salman Khan's new book, The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined, in which he writes:

What's needed, in my view, is a perspective that allows us a fresh look at our most basic assumptions about teaching and learning, a perspective that takes nothing for granted and focuses on the simple but crucial questions of what works, what doesn't work, and why.

What would that "fresh look" mean for museums?

Thank you to Beth and Steven for contributing to this post. They wanted me to tell you that Smarthistory invites art historians and curators to contribute in the their areas of expertise. If you would like to contribute, please contact them at: Steven@khanacademy.org and Beth@khanacademy.org

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Khan Academy and the Revolution in Online Free Choice Learning

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Last week, I became completely intoxicated with the online videos of Vi Hart, self-described mathemusician. Her nerdy, entertaining videos about math evoke the power of free choice learning while poking gentle fun at the drudgery of how math is often taught in school.

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Triangulation
Learning online should be as inspiring and self-directed as visiting a museum, where you see and experience objects and information at your own pace. This is one reason why we often offer both instructor-led and self-guided versions of the same course. But whatever the format, our teaching method is the same: art history lectures, studio demonstrations, and introductory texts all feature similar key concepts presented and explained in different ways. That way, even if a student does not review ALL of the content in a lesson, chances are good that they will have encountered the important ideas at least once. This triangulation approach also supports a variety of learning styles: some visitors prefer hearing new information, others like to observe process, read text, or do a project. All of our audio content is captioned, which our international students and those with hearing loss greatly appreciate. As we attract students of every age and background from all over the world, we think broadly about how people learn.

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As Director of Digital Learning in the Department of Education, I answer many questions about how MoMA makes online courses. Here are my top six thoughts, aka The Six Ts:

Topic
As breaking any museum into equal and interesting parts can be challenging, I recommend going for variety and listening to your students. Ten-week survey courses provide a great framework for understanding important historical trajectories, and we balance these with shorter, thematic courses, the subjects of which are based on questions commonly asked by visitors. Questions like "Why is this photograph ugly?" "What is the point of a room full of wrapped candy?" and "How does this performance fit into an art museum?" inspired MoMA educator Pablo Helguera to create Five Puzzles of Contemporary Art, a course designed to help visitors identify patterns of artistic intention among the most bewildering artworks.

Teachers
Teaching art online is, well...an art! Our online instructors must pass a screen test, Andy Warhol-style, and we select the ones who appear relaxed and have the ability to convey complex ideas in compelling and accessible ways. Studio art instructors must be great at explaining what they do while actually doing it, which is harder than you might think. We also look for instructors who transmit warmth and enthusiasm in their writing. Our star teachers attract loyal student followings and mentor the new instructors, and we are so grateful to have them.

Treasures
Of course, museums are full of them, but my "treasures" are more than collection objects-they include rarely seen materials from the archives, the expertise of art conservators, recordings of interviews with artists, and the knowledge of staff from all parts of the Museum. Online courses are a fantastic platform to bring these disparate elements together into a cohesive narrative. For example, MoMA has one of the largest and most important collections of Fluxus art, yet much of it-such as paper instructions for performances-is quite challenging for a gallery display. Fortunately, we have on staff a Fluxus artist and expert, Jon Hendricks, who agreed to reenact Fluxus artworks from the collection in front of the camera. (Below you see him pouring water according to a Fluxus score.) And our Conservation team has produced a wealth of "how to" materials that complete students' understanding of art and the Museum's role in its care.

Tasks
Learning online should not be a passive experience. In fact, experts in neuroscience and pedagogy all agree that if students can make something or teach something-in other words, put knowledge into practice-that subject is more likely to become a permanent part of their memory. Even the simple act of cutting paper with scissors becomes a bonding experience online, inspiring extensive classroom critiques among students that some alumni have continued their in Facebook groups.

Triangulation
Learning online should be as inspiring and self-directed as visiting a museum, where you see and experience objects and information at your own pace. This is one reason why we often offer both instructor-led and self-guided versions of the same course. But whatever the format, our teaching method is the same: art history lectures, studio demonstrations, and introductory texts all feature similar key concepts presented and explained in different ways. That way, even if a student does not review ALL of the content in a lesson, chances are good that they will have encountered the important ideas at least once. This triangulation approach also supports a variety of learning styles: some visitors prefer hearing new information, others like to observe process, read text, or do a project. All of our audio content is captioned, which our international students and those with hearing loss greatly appreciate. As we attract students of every age and background from all over the world, we think broadly about how people learn.

Tracking
We are continually learning about our online students through surveys, discussion posts, and Facebook activity. We know what they like about our courses (the teachers and behind-the-scenes access), and we take their suggestions for improvement seriously. Our alumni are very loyal to the program and enroll in multiple courses-some even call us when they visit MoMA. Building a lifelong learning community is as important to the students as it is to us, the staff. As we pass the 2,500 enrollment mark (since 2010), one of our big challenges is keeping in touch with everyone. Thank goodness for social media!
To stay in touch with MoMA Courses Online, visit MoMA.org/MoMAcourses. You can also follow us on Twitter @MoMAlearning; like our MoMA Course Alumni page on Facebook; or attend a Google Hangout online open house called "How to Teach Art Online" at 8:00 p.m. EST on Wednesday, March 6.

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MoMA | How to Make Online Courses for Museums

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As Director of Digital Learning in the Department of Education, I answer many questions about how MoMA makes online courses. Here are my top six thoughts, aka The Six Ts: Topic As breaking any museum into equal and interesting parts can be challenging, I recommend going for variety and listening to your students.

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It is clear that what distinguishes the museum from other educational, scientific, and aesthetic organizations is its relationship with its collections. "Museums exist," writes Morris Museum Director Steven H. Miller, "because of an assumption that physical objects have value." In Museums, Objects and Collections, Susan M. Pearce writes, "The point of collections and museums . . . revolves around the possession of 'real things' and . . . essentially this is what gives museums their unique role."

But when I look at the message I get from museums on the Internet, the collection rarely sits front and centre. Many institutions still don't have their collections online, and although I realise there are often both financial and time constraints, this just reinforces my sense that the collection has fallen down the priority list.

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There are a couple of questions that have started nagging at me when I look at museum websites, and particularly when I look at online collections. With the American Association of Museums annual meeting on in the States this week, it seemed like a good time to start asking them.

Are museum collections actually as important as we often say they are? I cannot count the number of times I have heard someone in a museum argue that the most important thing about the museum is its collection - and why wouldn't they? Each museum's collection is unique. It is here that museums can differentiate themselves. A local art museum can collect works of national and local importance, and use each to speak of its place in a community. A history museum can define its very purpose by those objects that it has acquired.

Even more than this, as Steven E. Weil points out in his excellent book Rethinking the Museum, the justification makes "a kind of strategic sense to stress what it is that is most distinctive about museums - that they acquire and care for collections." (p29.) In doing so, museums craft out a niche for themselves.

In Managing Things - Crafting a Collections Policy from the AAM's Museum News, John Simmons writes:

It is clear that what distinguishes the museum from other educational, scientific, and aesthetic organizations is its relationship with its collections. "Museums exist," writes Morris Museum Director Steven H. Miller, "because of an assumption that physical objects have value." In Museums, Objects and Collections, Susan M. Pearce writes, "The point of collections and museums . . . revolves around the possession of 'real things' and . . . essentially this is what gives museums their unique role."

But when I look at the message I get from museums on the Internet, the collection rarely sits front and centre. Many institutions still don't have their collections online, and although I realise there are often both financial and time constraints, this just reinforces my sense that the collection has fallen down the priority list.

When even a major collecting institution such as the Met - whom have clearly invested a lot of time, thought and money into their online collection, and who were just awarded MW2012 Best of the Web for Research/Online Collections - does not obviously feature their collection on the front page of their website except in the navigation bar, it does not reinforce the message that the collection is what is essential and unique to the museum.

I know that we don't really know who or what online collections are for, but maybe the Internet exposes the fact that we don't actually know why our collections would be valuable to anyone for reasons other than the ones we provide in our existing displays and scholarship.

As regular readers would know, I firmly believe the Internet is actually the perfect vehicle for making museum collections more useful and more valuable, by ensuring that the collection can be found, used and reconnected to the ever-deepening well of online information. We might be able to ensure that the ideas anchored by our collections are be able to be put to worthwhile use externally to the museum, as well as within it. We are only just beginning to imagine how and why the Internet will be useful for the production of new knowledge and new memories, but it seems to me that there is richness to be found here.

Still, we contradict ourselves when we speak of the importance of our collections, and then act as though our programming is the centre of our existence, as is often the case online. Certainly, programming is easier to quantify and market. Our audiences know what it means to look online for events and changing exhibitions. It's something they understand. But it's also something we understand and know how to talk to.

Weil continues (p.29.), writing (emphasis mine):

The difficulty is that somewhere along the line too many of us - and here I must include myself - have too frequently misapprehended what has been a strategy to be the truth. We have too often taken what is a necessary condition to the work of museums - the existence of carefully-acquired, well-documented and well-cared-for collections - and treated that necessary condition as though it were a sufficient condition. In developing justifications for the public support of museums, we too have forgotten that their ultimate importance must lie not in their ability to acquire and care for objects - important as that may be - but in their ability to take such objects and put them to some worthwhile use. In our failure to recognize this, we run the danger of trivializing both our institutions and ourselves.

It seems to me that the Internet is exposing the fact that the rhetoric about the importance of collections to museums is not necessarily matched by actions that support that narrative.

Obviously each individual institution is different. Some institutions do emphasize the importance of their collections on- and offline, while others no-doubt place greater emphasis on other things in their missions. Non-collecting institutions are surely exempt from this issue ( are they the institutions most honest with themselves about the reasons for their existence?). But what does this say about us as a field, that our rhetoric does not necessarily match our actions. And if we are lying to ourselves, should we change our actions to match our words, and actually find ways to put the collection front-and-centre online, or do we alter the stories we tell ourselves?
What do you think? Is the Internet exposing an internal inconsistency between what we say and what we do in museums? And if so, is it our rhetoric that should change, or our actions?

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Museum collections and the "rhetoric gap"

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There are a couple of questions that have started nagging at me when I look at museum websites, and particularly when I look at online collections. With the American Association of Museums annual meeting on in the States this week, it seemed like a good time to start asking them.

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In making the announcement, Mr. Campbell said: "Through this new, open-access policy, we join a growing number of museums that provide free access to images of art in the public domain. I am delighted that digital technology can open the doors to this trove of images from our encyclopedic collection."

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Metropolitan Museum Initiative Provides Free Access to 400,000 Digital Images | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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New Web Program Allows Free Image Download for Non-Commercial Use (New York, May 16, 2014)-Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, announced today that more than 400,000 high-resolution digital images of public domain works In The OASC Additional # May

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Erik van Tuijn, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, Netherlands, Karen Drost, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, The Netherlands, Maarten Brinkerink, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, Netherlands, Lotte Belice Baltussen, Koukishin, Netherlands

Abstract
Open is as open does. Open content has been a hot topic in heritage for several years. The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision has long been a front runner when it comes to supporting open standards and free re-use of our collections. Surprisingly enough, we never tried it the other way around: using open content to create an exhibit. So when we started to develop an exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of 3FM - one of Holland's main public pop radio channels - we asked ourselves: would we be able to create a personalized, interactive videomapping exhibit using mainly open content? During a How-To-Session Karen Drost and Maarten Brinkerink will dive into how we managed this, and share what we learned.
Keywords: Exhibit, Interactives, Personalisation, Videomapping, RFID, Open Content, Creative Commons

1. Introduction: About the exhibition

In 2015, the Dutch public radio station 3FM celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. The first broadcast of the station-then still called Hilversum 3-took place on October 11, 1965. From the start, the station focussed on pop and rock music, later supplemented with electronic, house, and dance music. The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision chose to celebrate this anniversary with a dedicated temporary exhibition, 3FM presents: Your Serious Radio. Its focus: the influence of music and radio in your teenage years. The exhibition showcases DJs from all eras of 3FM, featuring hits and radio jingles from the 1960s to present day, and lets visitors experience what it's like to produce a radio show.

When visitors enter the exhibition, they can provide information that builds up their personal profile: year of birth, gender, and favourite radio show, song, and musical genre from their teens. This data is paired with the RFID-chipped ring that Sound and Vision uses throughout its entire museum. So, using its basic infrastructure for the 3FM exhibition was a logical thing to do. We changed a few of the personalisation questions to fit the exhibition and were ready to go.

2. About the RFID ring: How does it work?

The ring has been an integral part of the Sound and Vision Experience since its opening in 2006, and has never lost its shine as a key element of our "heads up" visitor experience. It is equipped with a simple RFID tag, and each regular visitor receives a ring when they arrive. The ring lets visitors use all interactive pavilions in the Experience and save their creations, such as their performance as TV news anchor or DJ, or their part in a Crime series (their task: chase the bad guys in a car). It also asks for a few key pieces of information (e.g., their email and age) and lets them choose a personal (and famous) guide. The ring is used well: 78% of the visitors that receive one use it to create one or more results. 62% of these ring bearers also find their way to our post-visit website to watch, share, or retrieve their results.

Videomapping and personalising the teenage bedroom

The RFID ring's user profile is used extensively for one of the key interactives of Your Serious Radio: a videomapping installation of a teenage bedroom. The installation consists of a sparse white space split into a sitting and sleeping area filled with twenty-five different elements (also white): a bed, desk, couch, rug, radio, television, bookshelves, and many more. When a visitor activates his or her personal profile with the ring, personalised imagery is projected onto the entire room and its objects: period-correct wallpaper, posters from the user's favourite artists of the time, "sweet sixteen" t-shirt designs, historical television, and radio fragments.

Together they transform the generic room into a personalised room. To enable this level of personalisation, we needed a wide array of images: artists and bands to project on the wall as posters, book covers, a window view (because everyone wants a room with a view). We also needed so-called "seamless" or "tileable" patterns for the interior elements, like the couch, floor, and wall. All these elements are created in a 3D virtual world, and depending on the visitor's information, the seamless patterns are projected and repeated on each of these elements.

How many images?

To create this personalised visitor experience, we mapped the personalisation questions to time segments. We decided to divide the fifty-year period (1965 to 2015) covered by the exhibition into ten five-year segments: 1965 to 1969, 1970 to 1974, and so forth. The profiling software then sorts visitors into these segments by calculating when they were sixteen years old based on their year of birth. Together with their gender and general musical preferences, this provides enough granularity to curate a personalised and recognisable teenage bedroom. To keep things manageable, we scaled back the number of musical genres per time period from the preferred eight to a minimum of four. Quick calculations showed using eight genres per segment would require researching tens of thousands of images, instead of hundreds. This was especially important for us if we wanted to have a fighting chance to complete our mission: use open content for all of it. But even with these limitations, this still posed a sizable challenge.

3. Open is as open does

Searching for and using open content provided by others for our museum exhibitions was not a common practice by any means. So initially we had a lot of questions and even reservations about the feasibility of our mission. Is there enough quality open content out there? How do we find it? What are optimal search strategies? And how do we provide correct attribution? Do all Creative Commons licenses allow us to use them for our videomapping? How can we know for sure that what we find is indeed published by or with permission of the rights holder?

Where to search

Before we started researching, we drafted search guidelines to help the art directors find and identify open content. Main sources and approaches in these guidelines were:

Wikimedia Commons: All content on Wikimedia Commons has an open license limited only to attribution and share-alike requirements, or is in the public domain. This proved to be an important source, in particular for pictures of bands and musicians.

Flickr: Many photographers, designers, and other image creators open up their content under an open license on Flickr. The platform has an easy search filter for open content.

The National Archives of the Netherlands: The Dutch National Archives has an amazing and vast collection of openly licensed pictures (CC BY-SA, over four hundred thousand images).

Google Image Search: The Search Tools in Google Image Search has a "Labeled for reuse" filter. Since Google also searches in Wikimedia Commons and Flickr, this was often the first resource consulted. But sometimes going directly to websites allows you to break out of the Google "filter bubble" and find more results.

The Doornroosje poster archive: The Regional Archives of Nijmegen (NL) have released the poster collection of their music venue Doornroosje on Flickr. Since we needed a lot of music-related posters, this was a great-and fun-source for us.

Pixabay and Creative Commons Search: Later on, we found the open stock-image site Pixabay (all content CC0, meaning "No Rights Reserved") and Creative Commons Search to be indispensable sources as well. The latter is valuable, since it is an easy search entry point to Europeana, with its millions of open content resources that as of yet do not pop up in Google Images Search.

Is there enough suitable content available (and what about the quality)?

Even though there are plenty of sources available (and we haven't even mentioned The Internet Archive, Open Culture, or any open sounds databases, such as UBUWeb or Freesound), we still weren't overly confident of finding enough quality material for our mission. This problem was further compounded by our need to find seamless images, mentioned earlier. But some quick searches (e.g., "retro pattern," "1980s texture") on Wikimedia Commons and Flickr yielded enough results to feel confident enough to plunge in.

Which licenses support reuse within museum exhibits, and which do not?

The most important question we needed to answer was: are all six Creative Commons licenses fit for our purpose? Looking back, we found that even more restricted licenses did not prevent us from reaching our goal. For instance, the no-derivative requirement (ND) used in some variants of the Creative Commons licenses turned out not to be a problem: we were able to project all images as is. And even if they become part of a larger whole, the original image would not be adapted. The non-commercial clause (NC) warranted a bit more study, since the concept and interpretations can vary and are a bit vague. To this end, we looked into two important resources offered by Creative Commons itself on this topic: an explanatory page on the interpretation of the NC element and a study done on the interpretation of both creators and users on the terms "commercial" and "noncommercial."

Sound and Vision is a non-profit organisation, but does receive revenue through tickets sales of the exhibition in which we were going to use the content. Thus, we are not a "non-commercial" entity per se. However, a very important distinction we found in the resources above, and in the language of NC licenses, is that our use is not "primarily intended for or directed towards commercial advantage or private monetary compensation." This made us confident that our intended use was within the scope of any NC license. Furthermore, we decided to notify all creators of whom we would use content about our project. If they would object, we would replace the image with another one.

What if open content is suspect?

Oh, if only all open content were truly open. Occasionally, we found content provided under an open license by a supposed someone, that we doubted was created by themselves or that was obviously made by somebody else, like in the image below:

First of all, we simply decided not to use these files. Second, we did our part for the community. If the image was found on Wikimedia Commons, for instance, the "suspicious" content was flagged for deletion. This means that the Wikimedia community can decide whether this flagging is indeed correct and proceed to delete the file in question.

In other cases, people did use a Creative Commons license for content they made themselves, but indicated in the description that they would prefer it if people did not reuse their image without asking them. We decided to exclude this group as well, in order to keep exceptions to a minimum.

Attribution and contacting creators

Another important part of participating in the "open movement" is attribution. All six Creative Commons licenses require it. But since we were going to use hundreds of images, we could not attribute every image in the physical exhibition without severely impacting the experience as a whole. We decided to point to a URL in the physical exhibition colophon that allowed museum visitors to open an extensive online colophon, with a link to a Google Spreadsheet with an overview of all content used. By doing so, we felt very comfortable that we were honouring the providers and creators of the open content as best we could. The final step in the process was contacting the people whose open content we used for the projection-not just to thank them, but also to send them pictures of how their content looks in the final result. Curious yourself? You can find all the pictures of all the rooms here.

4. Conclusions

In the end, we used 254 individual textures, patterns, and pictures, 44% of which are explicitly openly licensed with one of the six Creative Commons licenses. Almost a quarter of the textures are in the Public Domain (11% have the Public Domain-mark, 12% are labeled CC0). 15% of the content is freely usable, but does not have a generic, worldwide acknowledged open license-like Creative Commons. Examples include images of which the creator/owner/user explicitly stated that anyone is free to use their content as they please, or use of a website-specific license as part of a site's Terms and Conditions ( look at these terms from CG Textures for example).

Well over 80% of the individual content we used was indeed freely usable. The rest is part stock material (7%) or copyrighted material (10%), either from Sound and Vision's own collection, or for which we obtained direct usage permission of the rights holders or through collective rights organisation Pictoright.

We are very happy that we managed to find this much highly specific and quality content that is freely usable. We feel we have managed to demonstrate-to ourselves and the outside world-that open licenses are working as a tool for stimulating creative reuse on a professional level.

Mind you, we did pay a few hundred euros for licensing and swapped spending money on commercial licenses for content with spending man hours, but the end result is an exhibit that is striking and also very popular among our visitors.

So: Mission accomplished! But that leaves one question unanswered: can we implement this presentation tool for future use? Yes, we can-provided, of course, that there is manpower available to do the leg work. Also important: do a proper scan of the available material beforehand. Because yes, we did find enough usable material in the categories of wallpaper and music, but there is no way of knowing if that is true for all other possible subjects.

Videomapping credits

Technical realisation: Kiss the Frog
Design: Pièce Montée
Research and art direction: Bij de Tijd and Sound and Vision
Project management: Sound and Vision
Cite as:
. "Open is as open does. How to use open content in a personalized interactive museum exhibit."MW2016: Museums and the Web 2016. Published January 28, 2016. Consulted .
https://mw2016.museumsandtheweb.com/paper/open-is-as-open-does-how-to-use-open-content-in-an-interactive-museum-exhibit/

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Open is as open does. How to use open content in a personalized interactive museum exhibit

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Erik van Tuijn, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, Netherlands, Karen Drost, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, The Netherlands, Maarten Brinkerink, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, Netherlands, Lotte Belice Baltussen, Koukishin, Netherlands Open is as open does. Open content has been a hot topic in heritage for several years.

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Why Open Content?
The Getty adopted the Open Content Program because we recognized the need to share images of works of art for free and without restriction, so that all those who create or appreciate art-scholars, artists, art lovers, and entrepreneurs-will have greater access to high-quality digital images for their studies and projects. Art inspires us, and imagination and creativity lead to artistic expressions that expand knowledge and understanding. The Getty sincerely hopes that people will use the open content images for a wide range of activities and that they will share the fruits of their labors with others.

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Don't be misled by the e-commerce hiccup; we're on a digitization juggernaut. Just a few years ago, leather-bound DayTimers dominated business meetings, but no longer; today, you'll find a preponderance of Palm Pilots. As for that novel or newspaper you're reading, doubt it not: digitization is coming. Of course, you needn't worry about print media disappearing overnight; if anything, the Internet is fueling a renaissance of newspaper reading. Beneath the surface, though, print media have changed. The underlying technology is already digital, from the point of creation to the means of national and international distribution. As publishers are trying to capitalize on their digitized product, they're pushing the US Congress to enact legislation granting them what amounts to real property rights in perpetuity over printed material--rights in which even the authors do not share. Coupled with these disturbing legal developments, the digitization of print media archives presages the rise of a world in which access to basic facts and scientific knowledge is parceled out by a state-protected pay-per-view industry--and as you'll learn in this article, that's bad news for democracy. If for-profit copyright holders get their way, democratic notions concerning public access to factual information may seem just as quaint as a DayTimer seems to the Palm-toting digerati.

In this article, I'll argue that the open content movement--a movement to release written documents with a license similar to the GNU General Public License (GPL)--is beginning to stir for precisely the same reasons that launched the Free Software movement in the 1980s: the realization that a for-profit industry was about to lock up indispensable public knowledge and, in so doing, pose a grave threat to the advancement of knowledge and human welfare. This time, the stakes are, if anything, even greater. If the social goals of the Free Software movement mean anything to you, please--read on. (Fair warning: this is a bit long, but I hope you'll conclude it's worth the effort.)

In what follows, I'll argue the healthy democracy depends not only on the ability of citizens to access facts and ideas freely, but also to produce derivative works that substantially incorporate and rework the means of expression found in copyrighted works. Be forewarned: by contemporary standards, my position is a decidedly fringe perspective, notwithstanding the fact that, in my view, it aptly characterizes the view that prevailed during the American republic's first century (a point to which this essay returns).

To be sure, it's widely agreed--even today--that the free flow of facts and information is important to a democracy. Vital to a successful democracy is a flourishing civil society, a "sphere of voluntary, nongovernmental associations in which individuals determine their shared purposes and norms" ( Netanel 1996; I follow his argument closely here). A robust civil society fosters an embedded and self-perpetuating "democratic culture" that make it resistant to tyranny. But such a culture cannot endure in the absence of free access to --facts about what has happened, what the government is doing, how decisions were made, who benefits from such decisions--and the that enable people to link these facts into meaningful patterns by which they can engage in positive political action. Of course, copyright makes facts and ideas widely available by providing incentives for authors and publishers to make them so; copyright furthers this purpose by giving no protection to the facts and ideas, but only to the author's unique expression of these facts and ideas, in a copyright work. From this perspective, voiced by neoclassical economists and legal scholars influenced by the neoclassical viewpoint, extending the scope and duration of copyright can only enhance the contribution made by copyrighted works to democratic deliberation.

But I would like to argue that democratic deliberation may legitimately involve appropriations of a work's expression as well as the underlying facts and ideas. To rob an idea of its most eloquent expression--consider "I have a dream" or "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country"--is to rob it of its life and force, as Netanel (1996) compellingly argues. This point is especially valid when one considers artistic or popular works that can advance powerful political ideas in a compelling ways. In addition, the purposes of democratic political deliberation are sometimes best served by permitting the appropriation and complete reproduction of an entire copyrighted work. For example, in 1971, the New York Times started a series of articles that reproduced the text of a secret Pentagon study of the Vietnam conflict, now known as the Pentagon Papers. Under President Nixon's direction, the US Justice department attempted to suppress the publication of the Pentagon Papers on national security grounds; however, the US Supreme Court subsequently ruled that the constitutional guarantees given to the freedom of the press overruled other considerations, including national security. What is more, the exigencies of political deliberation required the publication of the of the Pentagon Papers, for only then would citizens be able to judge all the nuances of the compelling question placed before them: the wisdom of continuing to support the South Vietnamese regime.

Today, it's not entirely certain the Pentagon Papers would see the light of day, and a Justice Department bent on suppressing them would doubtlessly turn to copyright law rather than appealing to national security concerns. Consider what's happening to Free Republic ( http://www.freerepublic.com; for a legal scholar's analysis, see Benkler 1999).

Unlike most news-oriented web sites, Free Republic's readership is growing at an explosive rate, and the reason is partly that, like other equally successful experiments in Free Republic makes full and innovative use of the Web's potential as a new communications medium. The term refers to news-oriented sites that republish news articles in a clearly defined intellectual context and openly invite reader commentary ( Katz 2001). But Free Republic goes much further than most open media sites, and that's why it's in trouble. Users are permitted to post news articles in their entirety. One could argue that such appropriations are entirely legitimate within the scope of US copyright law, as it permits uncompensated excerpts totaling 100% of the original copyrighted material when doing so is essential for effective public analysis and political deliberation. And Free Republic's readers post the news articles in the context of an extremist, right-wing narrative in which the media is seen to be little more than the tool of the "liberal establishment"; for example, is described as "Ted Turner's Commie Rag". The context demands publication of the entire text, which readers then dissect in a way that often requires exacting attention to a subtle turn-of-phrase buried in the midst of the article. In sum, Free Republic's success in fostering a forum for political deliberation hinges on its readers' ability to appropriate copyrighted works without payment or permission, republish them and utterly transform them in the context of a causticly critical narrative that satirizes and ridicules the "liberal media," and lays bare the full text of the articles for massively invasive surgery on Free Republic's operating table.

Although I recognize that Free Republic is indeed fostering the spirited debate and deliberation that is part and parcel of a healthy democracy, I personally disagree, vehemently, with just about everything I've read on the site. That's why I'd love to start a neoliberal site that subjects the conservative press to the same, ungentle treatment, but I don't dare. Thanks to a lawsuit brought by two major newspapers ( Los Angeles Times and New York Times), Free Republic's days seem to be numbered; a Federal judge has already issued a summary judgment forbidding Free Republic from reproducing articles from these newspapers. It seems likely that Free Republic will have to stop reproducing news articles in their entirety, or, more likely, the sites' creators will have their personal finances destroyed in a series of legal battles and will be forced, eventually, to close up shop.

Admittedly, Free Republic is difficult to defend. Court deliberations reveal that Free Republic's founder hoped to profit financially from the huge numbers of web users attracted by the site's polemical fireworks, fueled by the appropriation of others' uncompensated work. Moreover, the aggrieved newspapers argued that Free Republic's actions would cut into the market--minuscule, by most accounts--for their pay-per-view archives. Still, these objections ignore the larger issues at stake. To argue that one must eschew profits in order to foster serious political deliberation places citizens at a serious, if not fatal, disadvantage vis-à-vis wealthy media corporations. Should the New York Times have been forced to reincorporate as a nonprofit in order to publish the Pentagon Papers? Moreover, what interests Free Republic's readers is today's news, and the site's commentaries on today's news, not yesterday's. I seriously doubt whether either of the plaintiffs could prove they're suffering a loss of income from their lightly-used archives due to Free Republic's activities. But the newspapers reply that what counts is the principle at stake: the right of these newspapers to have exclusive control over the distribution of their "properties" in the new, networked medium.

In the end, the Free Republic case shows why the site's extremist, right-wing perspective on the so-called "liberal media" is flat out, dead wrong. If the "liberal media" really were driven by pinko political commitments, the of our largest cities would act in such a way that neoliberal commentary sites modeled on Free Republic could emerge without fetters. Instead, they're suing Free Republic, and the result sends a chilling message to anyone who would like to use emulate Free Republic's lead. Why are the newspapers attacking Free Republic? Call me cynical if you like, but in my view, the "liberal media" are much more interested in the bottom line than promulgating a political perspective. As media executives understand the opportunities available to them, they must attack any attempt to horn in on any competing claims to what they see as their exclusive right to market their "properties" on the Internet. That is precisely why the same newspapers are doggedly defending themselves against a lawsuit brought by freelance authors, who claim they deserve a slice of the Internet take.

To sum up my argument, I take issue with the commonly asserted argument that copyright law adequately serves the goal of democratic deliberation by ensuring the diffusion of facts and ideas throughout society. Genuine political deliberation may necessitate the appropriation and transformation of copyrighted works in ways unkind to authors and copyright holders. To the extent that fostering democratic deliberation matters, copyright law should strike a balance between the interests of authors and copyright holders, who naturally seek a return from their works, and the legitimate interests of a people who would govern themselves. As the following section explains, there's a compelling argument that US Copyright struck exactly the right balance during its first century. Since then, and particularly since the 1970s, copyright law has been hijacked by wealthy copyright holders, and the consequences--illustrated by Free Republic's persecution--are not healthy for democracy.

US COPYRIGHT: THE FIRST 100 YEARS

From the passage of the first copyright legislation in Congress (1790) until the passage of the Chace Act almost exactly one century later (1891), the US enjoyed what may well have been the optimum copyright regime for democratic political deliberation and all of its positive consequences, including rapid social and economic development.

Mandated by the US Constitution (Article 1, Section 8), US copyright law gives copyright holders the right to duplicate, distribute and perform works that are "fixed in a tangible means of expression"; however, the protection applies only to the expression of the underlying facts and ideas, not to the facts and ideas themselves. In Folsom v. Marsh (9 F. Cas. 342 [C.C.D.Mass. 1841, No. 4,901]), Justice Story introduced the British doctrine of fair use, which holds that the state must indeed endeavor to secure for authors the enjoyment of their copyrights but not to the extent that doing so places "manacles upon science" (Lord Ellenborough, quoted in Loren 1997).

The fair use doctrine establishes guidelines--complex and situationally dependent ones, to be sure--that permit authors to appropriate the expression found in copyrighted works without seeking permission or paying royalty fees, so long as the appropriation is done for the purposes of analysis, commentary or parody. But the US system went much further than this. As originally formulated, US copyright law would also have delivered the entire copyrighted work--facts, ideas and expression--to the public for such purposes after a maximum copyright period of only 28 years. After copyrights expire, works become part of the public domain. This principle has been decisively affirmed by the US Supreme Court: "The copyright term is so that the public will not be permanently deprived of the fruits of an artist's labors" (my emphasis; Stewart v. Abend, 495 US 207, 228 [1990]). What is more, no copyright protection was given to any work published by foreign authors, and some argue the original US copyright law actually encouraged US citizens to pirate foreign works. To justify this policy, Alexander Hamilton pointed to the need to foster infant American industries. Protection for foreign copyrights was not recognized in the US until the passage of the Chace Act in 1891 ( Post 1998). In sum, the democratic aims of copyright as envisioned in the US Constitution, "promoting the progress of science and the useful arts", were obtained, during the first 100 years of the US republic, not only by guaranteeing authors a period of protection for their writings, but also by withdrawing this protection after a "limited time" and by permitting no protection whatsoever for foreign authors. Central to the Constitutional conception of copyright, in short, is a flourishing public domain in which authors can readily appropriate the expression of other authors.

What the public domain, and why is it so important to the growth and development of a democratic civil society? Yochai Benkler, a law professor at New York University, defines the public domain in these terms: "Information is "in the public domain" to the extent that no person has a right to exclude anyone else from using the specified information in a particular way. In other words, information is in the public domain if all users are equally privileged to use it" ( Benkler 1999). This is an exceptionally important definition because it highlights the importance of the public domain for political speech: If one is making use of a public domain document, one is free from the restraint that must necessarily accompany the "fair use" of a copyrighted document; as the courts have repeatedly stressed, just what constitutes "fair use" is impossible to define and rests, ultimately, on a court's judgment. Ensuring the eventual passage of copyrighted material into the public domain provides the only sure way that future writers can fearlessly appropriate works of expression, recombine and reformulate them in new and compelling ways and make the resulting reformulation available to the public.

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PUBLIC DOMAIN

If an expansive and permissive definition of fair use and the rapid flow of information into the public domain are vital to a thriving civil society, the US is in serious trouble. Driven by lavish donations from lobbyists representing wealthy copyright holders and media corporations, the US Congress has passed a series of laws (including the notorious Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998) that not only restrict or eliminate fair use insofar as digital media are involved, but also criminalize any attempt to circumvent copyright management systems (even if no infringing duplication takes place!) and extend the duration of copyright to the point of near-perpetuity (with extensions, more than 150 years). The most recent example of such legislation is the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) that extends existing copyrights for 20 more years so that cartoon figures such as Mickey Mouse will remain protected. One result of CTEA is that no copyrighted works will enter the public domain for an entire generation. (For an excellent overview of the transformation of copyright into something approaching real property, see the excellent legal review by Fisher 1999, which is available on-line.) Other laws at the state level, such as UCITA, would give the force of law to "click-here" license agreements for digitized written works. One such license, the one you agree to when you use Adobe's Glassbook Reader, reportedly forbids licensees from reading the work aloud!

There's more legislation on the way. For several years, the US has been mulling over various versions of a database protection bill (for an overview, see Band 1999; for an update, see Yu 2001). The bill's impetus is the US Supreme Court's surprising decision in Feist vs. Rural Telephone (499 US 340 [1991]), in which the Court refused to recognize that a telephone book, despite the undeniable cost and labor required to assemble it, contains a form of expression of sufficient creativity or originality to merit copyright protection. The decision cast into doubt whether digitized databases, such as collections of full-text newspaper articles, could be protected by copyright in the absence of some sort of creative organization. But the whole point of a relational database system is to avoid organizing the material a priori so that users can retrieve material in the most efficient manner possible. Feist implies that databases cannot be protected at all--which is why database vendors are so keen on claiming new forms of protection for their products. Another reason lies in the need to bring US law into conformity with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaty, which calls for special forms of protection for databases. What's generally omitted in discussions of WIPO, however, is the fact that US database and software vendors played a significant role in shaping the WIPO documents.

If database vendors succeed in their lobbying efforts, for-profit vendors of newspaper articles and scientific journals may be able to lock up not only the expression found in these articles, but even the facts and scientific findings contained in them; a major impetus for this legislation is to restore the principle, abandoned in Feist, that the "sweat of one's brow" is worth something after all. Access to such databases could be controlled by means of copyright management systems (CMS), the circumvention of which is already a criminal act subject to penalties in excess of those used in cases of second-degree murder in most US states. To be sure, market economics may demand that database vendors do not impose strong access constraints on users of archival materials. But the point is simply this: They could. What is more, they can do so on the basis of whatever whim happens to occur to them at the moment. This is a point best appreciated by noting the long, expensive struggle waged by the AFL-CIO and other labor unions to gain access to business databases offered by Dialog Information Systems, Inc. Union researchers could of course access the same material by visiting a university library, but the inefficiency of non-computerized research techniques prevents them from competing effectively with their corporate counterparts, such that the playing field is no longer level.

In sum, the public domain is essentially dead, fair use has been constrained to the point of irrelevance, and digitized information is increasingly locked up in systems protected by Draconian anti-circumvention penalties. For now, you can still go to the library to access much of the digitized information for free, but you'll sacrifice the efficiency gained from using computerized search tools. And when print media finally disappear, it's anyone's guess whether anything from today's public libraries will survive in their present form.

FIRST STIRRINGS OF THE OPEN CONTENT REBELLION

The trends discussed so far--the increasingly rigid copyright regime, the chilling effect on free speech of a sharply constricted fair use regime, the destruction of the public domain, and the growing amount of vital information that's locked up in systems capable of enforcing pay-per-view access--have led more than 100,000 scientists worldwide to sign an open letter demanding that scientific journals in the fields of medicine and the life sciences release their copyrighted articles after six months to an on-line public library, PubMed Central, which would provide free and unrestricted access to the information these journals contain. Signatories to the letter are refusing to publish in journals that won't cooperate with the PubMed Central initiative.

What's behind this development? It's an attempt to create a balance between the need of commercial, for-profit publishers to derive income from publishing scientific journals, and the contrasting right of the public to have free and open access to the knowledge created by "tens of billions of dollars of mostly public money each year, and representing the original ideas and millions of hours of hard work by hundreds of thousands of scientists, and the voluntary participation of hundreds of thousands of patients in clinical studies" (from the Public Library of Science FAQ). Many scientific journals make their articles accessible to the public after six months, and evidence suggests they do not lose money by doing so; subscribers are willing to pay for the latest information, even if older articles are available for free.

Several journals have already agreed to play ball with the Public Library of Science, and they've released their older content to the archive. According to the Public Library of Science, these articles are part of a fast-growing "public domain" of crucial knowledge in medicine and the life sciences that will remain freely available to the public. But don't be to sure. The Public Library of Science allows the source journals to retain their copyright on the republished works. This means publishers can withdraw their participation at any time, and they can also bring lawsuits against users who appropriate and distribute the articles in a way that is not to the publisher's liking.

When will the first lawsuit occur that deals with material appropriated from the Public Library of Science? It's just a matter of time. Suppose I put together a textbook consisting of classic articles in the last ten years of the life sciences, and it just happens to eat into the market for one of these publishers' books. Do you think they'll sit back contentedly? And just imagine what would happen if I put together a string of articles culled from the Public Library of Science that demonstrates bias in studies funded by certain pharmaceutical companies. See you in court, baby!

My point is this. In the absence of a true public domain, in which no one person's claim to the rights to use a work are in any way superior to any other person's, those who would make information freely available must develop an alternative to copyright that replaces the functions of the public domain for written works. The failure to do so is to embroil the "freely redistributed" information in a legal quagmire increasingly inimical to the exercise of free speech.

As much as I respect the Public Library of Science and the values it represents, there's a bit of naivete about this movement immediately recognizable to anyone familiar with the history of free software. Posed between an increasingly rigid copyright regime and public domain software, which for-profit companies could appropriate, compile and resell, the architects of the Free Software movement recognized a need for a Third Way. The most important achievement of the free software movement may well lie in the legal and conceptual arena--specifically, the General Public License (GPL)--which provides a meaningful alternative to the prevailing copyright regime.

As most readers of this journal doubtless realize, the GPL uses a form of contractual enclosure--a software license-- to impose constraints on what a user of a GPL-licensed program may do. Specifically, these constraints prevent a user from denying to others the same user rights that were granted when the program was obtained, including the right to access the source code, the right to duplicate and distribute the software freely, and the right to make derivative works out of the original code. Although the GPL does not prevent users from selling GPL-licensed works, it does prevent them from copyrighting the software in any way that departs from the GPL, closing up the code so that users cannot access it or making claims against users who make unauthorized copies of derivative works.

Were the articles published in the Public Library of Science made available by means of a license similar to the GPL, those who wished to use this information freely could do so with a clear conscience and without fear of unexpected legal persecution. That's not true at the moment, and, from the perspective of the Free Software movement, the Public Library of Science may be making a serious mistake.

That said, it's far from clear just what an open-content model should look like and how best to protect written work using a models derived from the Free Software movement. The next article in this series will examine a variety of open-content models developed thus far, including the Free Software Foundation's offering, and critically analyze their usefulness for what might be a crucial role: Preserving the public's right to access facts and ideas freely in a world in which information has become a zealously protected right of real property.

Bryan Pfaffenberger is Associate Professor of Technology, Culture and Communication at the University of Virginia. He is currently teaching a course entitled Media Studies 317, "Intellectual Property and Digital Media" and encourages you to visit the class's web site, which is driven by PHP and MySQL.

Benkler, Yochai. 1999. " Free As the Air to Common Use: First Amendment Constraints on Enclosure of the Public Domain," New York University Law Review, Vol. 74, May 1999.

Benkler, Yochai. 1999. " The Free Republic Problem: Markets in Information Goods vs. The Marketplace of Ideas," paper presented at a conference entitled Private Censorship/Public Choice: The New Age of Information Regulation, April 9-11, 1999.

Loren, Lydia P. 1997. " Redefining the Market Failure Approach to Fair Use in an Era of Copyright Permission Systems," Journal of Intellectual Property Law, Vol. 5, No. 1 Fall 1997.

Netanel, Neil W. 1996. " Copyright and a democratic civil society," Yale Law Journal, Vol. 106, No. 2, November 1996, pp. 283-387.

Post, David G. 1998. " Some Thoughts on the Political Economy of Intellectual Property: A Brief Look at the International Copyright Relations of the United States," National Bureau of Asian Research, Conference on Intellectual Property, Congqing, China, September 1998.

Band, Jonathan. 1999. " Armageddon on the Potomac: The Collections of Information Antipiracy Act," D-LIB Magazine , January 1999.

Katz, Jon. 2001. "Analysis: The Rise of Open Media," available on-line at http://slashdot.org/features/00/06/19/1714239.shtml.

Yu, Peter K. " Evolving Protection for Databases," JurisNotes.com (viewed April 3, 2001).

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Don't be misled by the e-commerce hiccup; we're on a digitization juggernaut. Just a few years ago, leather-bound DayTimers dominated business meetings, but no longer; today, you'll find a preponderance of Palm Pilots. As for that novel or newspaper you're reading, doubt it not: digitization is coming.

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If C-MAP's energy can be sustained, and its purview extended, the museum has a chance of breaking out of the parochial definition of Modernism on which it was founded. MoMA is still a thoroughly 20th-century place: it buys as the market directs; its record with diversity is poor; its master narrative is obsolete. Yet a corner of the institution is showing signs of 21st-century life.

Even that cosmopolitan corner, though, has a limited reach, because it's part of a museum that a significant population of Americans, defined by class and ethnicity, will probably never visit. And that population is growing larger every year. A museum can either accept the reality of us-and-them-ism as a given, or it can try something proactive and start taking art to where people are, turn itself into a museum without walls.

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Toward a Museum of the 21st Century (Published 2015)

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When, and how, will art institutions step up to the challenges of global migration and seismic change in cultural frames of reference? Museums need to experiment.

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“Most of us see it as part of a museum’s obligation in this century to make this content available in this way,” said Koven J. Smith, director of digital adaptation at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Tex. “The days of art museums being reluctant to release content are drawing to a close.”

But not every museum shares that sense of obligation. Some institutions, including the French National Library, have resisted on the grounds that giving away the licensing rights erodes their authority and undercuts their control over valuable images — the most popular of which can earn essential revenue when sold for a download fee or merchandised with holiday cards and T-shirts (though the income may barely cover the administrative costs of the sales).
Inertia may also prevent museums from adopting open content. It requires no small amount of institutional will, not to mention expense, to digitize collections, post them online with identifying text and untangle the legal obstacles to open use.

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In 2009 Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, told a TED conference that if cultural institutions opened their collections without limitations, they would "be used by other people to do wonderful things, in ways that they could never have imagined." He then led the audience in a chant: "Raw data now, raw data now."

Mr. Berners-Lee's call for open access has grown into a cultural movement. In museum boardrooms, unrestricted sharing is a current fixation. The new openness, loosely known as "open content," calls for curators to put holdings online without copyright restrictions. As with open-source software, anybody can use the material, and for any purpose. Want to turn a Cézanne still life into a T-shirt or a tattoo? Come and get it.

"We hope people will use our images to enrich their lives," said James Cuno, president and chief executive of the J. Paul Getty Trust, which shares 100,714 images from the Getty Institute and the J. Paul Getty Museum. "But they're free to make shower curtains or stationery. We don't care."

The open-content museum dates to 2011, when the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam made the first of 208,000 images available for download at no cost after curators found more than 10,000 low-quality scans of one of its Vermeers online. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art and the Yale University Art Gallery soon followed.

Today more than 50 cultural institutions have opened their collections for unrestricted use. The number is steadily increasing as administrators come to recognize the value of circulating work to a wider audience online and inviting the public to study and use it at will.

"Most of us see it as part of a museum's obligation in this century to make this content available in this way," said Koven J. Smith, director of digital adaptation at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Tex. "The days of art museums being reluctant to release content are drawing to a close."

But not every museum shares that sense of obligation. Some institutions, including the French National Library, have resisted on the grounds that giving away the licensing rights erodes their authority and undercuts their control over valuable images - the most popular of which can earn essential revenue when sold for a download fee or merchandised with holiday cards and T-shirts (though the income may barely cover the administrative costs of the sales).

Inertia may also prevent museums from adopting open content. It requires no small amount of institutional will, not to mention expense, to digitize collections, post them online with identifying text and untangle the legal obstacles to open use.

Encyclopedic compilations like those of the British Museum or the Metropolitan Museum of Art have relatively few legal hurdles because the works have largely passed into the public realm. Contemporary-art museums, on the other hand, face the difficulty of clearing the copyrights of living artists or those of deceased artists with rights controlled by estates. The Museum of Modern Art has withheld images of its collection for just that reason. However, this year MoMA posted a spreadsheet with titles, dates and other vital statistics, known as tombstones, for 120,000 works. The tombstones can be revealing in a way that images cannot. They show, for example, that the lag between creation and acquisition has steadily diminished. And that the most common given name among these artists is John.

The most immediate beneficiaries of open content are scholars who can now efficiently search millenniums of cultural history and analyze the results with scatter charts and other big data wizardry commonly applied to subjects like baseball and politics. What percentage of portraits in the Getty depict women? How many paintings at Yale contain animals? Or corpses? Or Jesus? How did yellow's popularity wax and wane during Impressionism, Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism?

The big-picture goal of the open-content movement is to make our entire cultural heritage accessible. Fourteen art museums took a meaningful step in February by agreeing to pool their collections with linked open data, a connective tissue that allows databases to converse in a way that goes beyond simple keyword searches. When completed a year from now, the system will recognize that a doctoral candidate researching John Singer Sargent at the Dallas Museum of Art might also want to know more about 19th-century portraiture and will pull relevant texts and images from the 13 other linked museums.

"Linked open data is the bleeding edge of web technology," said Sara Snyder, chief of media and technology at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which organized the consortium. "It's not the easiest starting point for most museums, but it's potentially more powerful than anything we've seen so far because of the baked-in connectedness."

The dream of open content is to put art and artifacts in the public's hands so that it can be reprocessed in unimagined ways. "We're trying to put content out there and see what happens," Ms. Snyder said. "Build what you will, fellow humans! That's where the museum field is headed."

With that in mind, the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum last year commissioned a three-dimensional scan of its Manhattan building, a 64-room mansion built by Andrew Carnegie, and offered it free of charge. The scan has been downloaded more than 900 times so far. How it might be used is still a mystery.

"We're open to the fact that remixing will happen," said Caroline Baumann, director of the Cooper Hewitt. "People can place the mansion in a virtual world or use it for video games. They can change the texture of the walls, or make them glass. And that's awesome."

Correction:

An article on Page F14 this weekend about a movement to put museum holdings online without copyright restrictions misidentifies the builder of Cooper Hewitt. He was Andrew Carnegie, not Andrew Mellon.

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New Online Openness Lets Museums Share Works With the World

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In 2009 Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, told a TED conference that if cultural institutions opened their collections without limitations, they would "be used by other people to do wonderful things, in ways that they could never have imagined." He then led the audience in a chant: "Raw data now, raw data now."

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The director of the Getty Research Institute reflects on twenty years of scholarship and collecting.

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For one, museum education is predicated on informal, constructivist learning approaches which encourage the learner to control their learning. Similarly, online courses allow students to go through the content at their own pace, constructing their own meaning from discussion forums, assignments and projects. Deborah Howes, Director of Digital Learning at MoMA, said, the pairing of museum education and online learning is, “conceptually, very much aligned.” She continues:

“Museum education teaching is based on the curiosity of people who come from all different walks of life and have any number of questions about what excites them. Teaching online, we offer different kinds of learning experiences–videos of behind the scenes tours, slide shows of art works, DIY experiments–and students explore this variety according to their own interests to create meaning.”

Second, museum learning is often social. Visitors come in groups, field trips, or with families to share the experience of looking at and discussing objects. Learning Management Systems like Blackboard, Moodle, and Haiku allow for similar discussions and facilitate group collaboration.

Both the MoMA and NCMA courses started because of grants from Volkswagen and Wells Fargo Foundation, respectively. Both of these grants end soon, and both institutions are seeking future funding for the growth and expansion of the courses. MoMA charges $150–200 for their self-guided course and $200–350 for their instructor-led courses. Those fees will help sustain the program, whether or not they receive a future grant. The NCMA, on the other hand, does not charge for their courses, instead, high school students receive school credit. While we encourage students to visit the NCMA to see their exhibition or attend a field trip, we don’t have additional funds to cover their travel.

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"The recent development of MOOCs (massive open online courses) can provide museums with valuable possibilities for education, community outreach and multi-disciplinary collaboration."

The quote above by David Greenfield, a doctoral candidate in Learning Technologies at Pepperdine University, was part of a paper entitled "MOOCs, Museums, and Schools: Natural Partners and Processes for Learning" presented at the recent Museums & the Web Conference in Portland theorizing about the potential of partnerships with schools and community members in developing online museum courses. Museums are already starting to realize those possibilities in the area of online courses.

The Museum of Modern Art, the Tate and my own North Carolina Museum of Art are currently offering extended online courses similar to MOOCs. These courses are different from each other in content, audience, and style, yet they are all pioneering engagement with local, national, and global audiences through objects in their specific collections. Their experiences offer important lessons to future museum MOOC-makers.

Why Museums Can Excel Online

Why are museums uniquely suited to be leaders in this field? For one, museum education is predicated on informal, constructivist learning approaches which encourage the learner to control their learning. Similarly, online courses allow students to go through the content at their own pace, constructing their own meaning from discussion forums, assignments and projects. Deborah Howes, Director of Digital Learning at MoMA, said, the pairing of museum education and online learning is, "conceptually, very much aligned." She continues:

"Museum education teaching is based on the curiosity of people who come from all different walks of life and have any number of questions about what excites them. Teaching online, we offer different kinds of learning experiences-videos of behind the scenes tours, slide shows of art works, DIY experiments-and students explore this variety according to their own interests to create meaning."

Second, museum learning is often social. Visitors come in groups, field trips, or with families to share the experience of looking at and discussing objects. Learning Management Systems like Blackboard, Moodle, and Haiku allow for similar discussions and facilitate group collaboration.

At the North Carolina Museum of Art, students who might live hundreds of miles away can work together on a video project and post art projects to receive peer feedback. MoMA and Tate also encourage this type of online community through discussion boards. MoMA online course alumni have created their own Facebook groups to extend the learning community, some of which are in their third year of operation

MOOCs Multiply Museum Outreach

Online learning can offer virtual windows to the extensive, beautiful, and awe-inspiring collections that museums have to offer. The NCMA is located in the middle of North Carolina, a state 560 miles (900 km) long. The virtual courses offer both synchronous and asynchronous components. Each week the instructor is in charge of opening the module (or unit) and hosting one live class with students. Otherwise, students go through that module and complete assignments at their own pace. Modules can include articles, assignments, discussion forums vocabulary wiki's and/or multimedia. Over half of our online high school students live hours away and may never have even heard of their state art museum. Online, they can take our courses, be exposed to art spanning 5,000 years of all mediums, including sculpture, photography, paintings, and mixed media.

Once students take online classes at NCMA, we want to find ways to bring them to the brick-and-mortar building. To do that, we host exhibitions that highlight work from our online courses, which encourages students to visit the NCMA in person (see photo). We've also offered field trips and buses to our annual teen event.

The Tate's reach stretches nationally and even globally. Rosie Cardiff, e-Learning editor at Tate, found that 31% of her students based outside the United Kingdom, with just under 10% living in Australia and New Zealand. Similarly, MoMA has both a national and international reach. A woman from rural Canada who took one of the online courses thanked Howes for the opportunity to interact with a global community of contemporary art lovers that she could not find locally. "A museum can provide that type of community and support," Howes says.

Financing Remains a Challenge

Both the MoMA and NCMA courses started because of grants from Volkswagen and Wells Fargo Foundation, respectively. Both of these grants end soon, and both institutions are seeking future funding for the growth and expansion of the courses. MoMA charges $150-200 for their self-guided course and $200-350 for their instructor-led courses. Those fees will help sustain the program, whether or not they receive a future grant. The NCMA, on the other hand, does not charge for their courses, instead, high school students receive school credit. While we encourage students to visit the NCMA to see their exhibition or attend a field trip, we don't have additional funds to cover their travel.

In Tate's case, Rosie Cardiff explained that "initial funding for developing the courses came from the Tate Online core budget." Tate charges £20 ($31) for unlimited course access. Cardiff says the courses "have now paid for themselves and cover costs of ongoing maintenance and copyright fees, etc., but they don't generate much in the way of profit." When asked what advice she would give to future museums or institutions looking to invest in developing online courses, Cardiff advised thinking "carefully about the business model for the online courses if you are planning to use them to generate revenue. Courses can be costly to produce and you need to think about ongoing maintenance costs, especially if the courses are tutored."

Cardiff and her team presented an evaluation of their courses and their changing business model at Museums & the Web 2012.

Grounded in Specific Collections

As museums create online courses, resources, or distant learning programs, Howes advises they "think creatively about the unique qualities of their collection and what that could offer to a global audience. Anyone can do a course on modern art if they have a collection, but how do they offer a unique look on this topic?"

Similarly, the Tate and NCMA courses offer visitors opportunities to engage with and respond to art specific to their collections. The NCMA courses use art in the permanent collection as catalysts for learning about topics such as game design, advertising, fashion, photography and videography. The multimedia we provide include videos of art in the galleries, interviews with museum staff or local, North Carolina experts in that particular field.All three museums offer opportunities to watch video interviews with artists, curators, or experts, as well as demonstrations of artist technique and process.

Full Speed to the Future

David Greenfield believes that when it comes to museums and online learning, "we're in the evolutionary stages of what's going on." As pioneers of a new educational format, museums join with for-profit companies like 2U and Coursera in shaping a field that is rapidly changing. In fact, as of May 1, 2013, MoMA, along with the Exploratorium in San Francisco, has announced a new partnership offering professional development MOOCs for K-12 teachers.

"Museums", says MoMA's Deborah Howes, "have a chance to rewrite art history in a way that is relevant to where they are." MoMA, Tate, and NCMA are already doing just that.

ONLINE COURSE DETAILS:
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Courses Online

Audience: lifelong learners, general public

Cost: varies from $150-350

Length: 5-10 weeks

Course topics (selected): From Pigment to Pixel: Color in Modern and Contemporary Art, Experimenting with Collage, Modern Art 1880-1945, Materials and Techniques of Postwar Abstract Painting, etc.

Instruction: Self-guided and instructor-led options

North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) Virtual Courses

Audience: North Carolina public high school students

Cost: Free; only available to high school students for credit

Length: semester

Course topics: Videography, game design, fashion, advertising, photography

Instruction: Instructor-led

Audience: lifelong learners, general public

Cost: £20

Length: 6 units per course, self-guided

Course topics: Artists' Techniques & Methods, Introduction to Drawing Techniques

Instruction: Self-guided

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
EMILY KOTECKI: Associate Coordinator of Teen and College Programs at the North Carolina Museum of Art. Emily creates online and onsite programming for these audiences, including art competitions, arts councils, and developing online courses. Prior to museums, Emily worked at The Washington Post as a multimedia politics producer covering the 2008 presidential campaign. She received her received her Master of Arts in Teaching from The George Washington University and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Broadcast Journalism from American University. Follow her on Twitter @EmilyKotecki or visit www.emilykotecki.com. Emily's postings on this site are her own and do not necessarily represent the North Carolina Museum of Art's positions, strategies, or opinions.

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Why Museums Can Excel in Online Learning

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"The recent development of MOOCs (massive open online courses) can provide museums with valuable possibilities for education, community outreach and multi-disciplinary collaboration." The quote above by David Greenfield, a doctoral candidate in Learning Technologies at Pepperdine University, was part of a paper entitled "MOOCs, Museums, and Schools: Natural Partners and Processes for Learning" presented at...

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The British Museum welcomes teachers and learners of all ages exploring world cultures. If you can't make it to the Museum, we have a huge bank of free online resources covering most curriculum areas.

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Museums are poised to meet this need and eager to reach more students and

their teachers than ever before. But it will take more than simply making col-

lections available online to the masses. It requires systematic instructional

design that carefully considers the learners and the learning objectives, fol-

lowed by the consideration of the best tools to meet those objectives. This

special issue examines the current state of online learning offered by

museums, and discusses the pedagogy and practice in museum online learning.

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The Museum was based on the practical principle that the collection should be put to public use and be freely accessible. It was also grounded in the Enlightenment idea that human cultures can, despite their differences, understand one another through mutual engagement. The Museum was to be a place where this kind of humane cross-cultural investigation could happen. It still is.

The Museum aims to reach a broader worldwide audience by extending engagement with this audience. This is engagement not only with the collections that the Museum has, but the cultures and territories that they represent, the stories that can be told through them, the diversity of truths that they can unlock and their meaning in the world today.

The Museum has continually sought to make its collections available to greater and more diverse audiences, first in London, subsequently the UK and worldwide. Over the past forty years, the increasing ease of international travel has meant not only that more visitors from abroad can come to London to use the collection, but that the collection can more easily travel to them, and be put to public use in new local contexts.

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The future of the museum may be rooted in the buildings they occupy but it will address audiences across the world - a place where people across the world will have a conversation. Those institutions which take up this notion fastest and furthest will be the ones which have the authority in the future.
Sir Nicholas Serota 2009 1

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Going digital requires a profound rethinking of the ways in which art historical content can be interactively organized, maintained, updated, and, ultimately, used. A host of technical, legal and administrative hurdles complicates the online delivery as many museums lack the financial, technological and human resources to tackle these complex and far–reaching issues.

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Helping museums unlock the potential of digital publishing with online collection catalogues

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But there’s another kind of construction going on that tells more about where museums are at and where they are going than any shiny new edifice: their websites. That might sound surprising to anyone not professionally involved in museum work, but if you want to know how museums are changing their philosophies and programs in a time of increasing financial pressure and the continuing rise of private museums like Eli Broad’s in Los Angeles, websites are the most visible and informative places to look.

...a white paper by Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, summing up discussions about the future of museums by art museum directors. In it he wrote, “The external force of the Internet and social media — combined with museums’ own efforts to create more interactive educational and exhibition programs — leave no doubt that the two way relationship between the museum and its audience has the potential to reshape the future of art museums in ways not yet envisioned.”

Regularly supplemented and updated, it makes art history textbooks like Janson’s nearly obsolete.

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No Detail Goes Unnoticed When Art Is a Click Away (Published 2015)

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Art museum websites have become more useful, with entire collections online, some accompanied by essays and videos.