Towards an open, participatory

cultural heritage

Museoalan Teemapäivät Whose Museum?

12 September 2014

Peter Hansen, Playing Children, Enghave Square, 1907-08, KMS2075. Public Domain.

Merete SanderhoffCurator of digital museum practice

http://www.slideshare.net/MereteSanderhoff@MSanderhoff

3 parts1. The big picture – inspiration and

influences

2. What we’re doing at SMK – some examples

3. Recommendations – based on what we’ve learned

Where I’m coming from

SMK is the National Gallery of Denmark

Visitors 2013Physical 355,000Online 615,000

220 people work there, all included

10,000 paintings and scultures245,000 prints and drawings3,000 plaster casts

1. The big picture

New ways to fulfil our public mission

Bildung* – Building

*Koulutus

GalleriesLibrariesArchivesMuseums

New approaches to being a museum

http://openglam.org/

http://www.santacruzmah.org/

Nina SimonExecutive Director

http://www.santacruzmah.org/about/

http://museumtwo.blogspot/

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/home.php

Shelley BernsteinVice Director for

Digital Engagement

http://www.gobrooklynart.org/about

https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio/

https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio-award

Taco DibbitsDirector of Collections

https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/nl/rijksstudio/142328--nominees-rijksstudio-award/creaties/ba595afe-452d-46bd-9c8c-48dcbdd7f0a4

Were our collections formed to inspire design of makeup lines?

We are not owners,but stewards

of our collections

“Our understanding of research, education, artistic creativity, and the progress of knowledge is built upon the axiom that no idea stands alone, and that all innovation is built on the ideas and innovation of others.”

Smithsonian Web and New Media Strategy, Version 1.0, 2009http://www.si.edu/content/pdf/about/web-new-media-strategy_v1.0.pdf

“The preservation, transmission, and advancement of knowledge in the digital age are promoted by the unencumbered use and reuse of digitized content for research, teaching, learning, and creative activities.”

Memo on open access to digital representations of works in the public domain from museum, library, and archive collections at Yale University, May 2011

http://odai.yale.edu/sites/default/files/OpenAccessLAMSFinal.pdf

“To be a public museum your digital data should be free. And digital data is not a threat to the real data, it’s just an advertisement that only increases the aura of the original. People go to the Louvre because they’ve seen the Mona Lisa; the reason people might not be going to an institution is because they don’t know what’s in your institution. Digitization is a way to address that issue, in a way that simply wasn’t possible before.”

William Noel, former curator, Walter’s Art Museum, 2012

“Our primary mission is to ‘tell the truth’. We put as much quality in our work as possible. That is why we share the best quality we have. If people google ‘The Milkmaid’ by Vermeer then we want them to find our good quality image, not all the bad and deformed versions of this beautiful painting.”

Lizzy Jongma, data manager, Rijksmuseum, 2012

“If they want to have a Vermeer on their toilet paper, I’d rather have a very high-quality image of Vermeer on toilet paper than a very bad reproduction.”

Taco Dibbits, Director of Collections, Rijksmuseum, 2013http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/arts/design/museums-mull-public-use-of-online-art-images.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

But wait…

aren’t we making money

on images?

"Everyone (…) wants to recoup costs but almost none claimed to actually achieve or expected to achieve this. Even those services that claimed to recoup full costs generally did not account fully for salary costs or overhead expenses."

Simon Tanner, Reproduction charging models & rights policy for digital images in American art museums, 2004

http://www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/USMuseum_SimonTanner.pdf

Myth buster

New sharing economy

forcesofgeek.com/

http://www.fastcompany.com/1146469/youtube-monty-python-videos-boost-dvd-sales-23000

The Mona Lisa effect

Kris Kitchen, Google+May 2014

A new participatory culture

http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/11/19/wikimedia-india-hosts-wikipedia-women-workshop-in-mumbai/

In 2014, there are more than 22 million registered Wikipedians worldwide

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedians

How can museums support – and benefit from –

this cognitive surplus*?

*

https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/SK-C-5

Infuse the web with trusted resources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_Watch_(painting)

Regain control with online collections

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Nightwatch_by_Rembrandt.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Nightwatch_by_Rembrandt.jpg

Flush out the poor copies

2. What we’re doing at SMK

How is SMK changing to a read/write museum?

http://www.participatorymuseum.org/

Bottom up approch

Johannes Simon Holzbecker, Hyacints, from Gottorfer Codex, 1649-59, KKSgb2947/26. Public Domain.

Bottom up approch

Johannes Simon Holzbecker, Hyacints, from Gottorfer Codex, 1649-59, KKSgb2947/26. Public Domain.

*

*Advice from Shelley Bernstein, Brooklyn Museum

What can you do today?

Michael Edson, Director of Web and New Media Strategy, Smithsonian InstitutionSMK digital advisory board meeting, November 2011

160 hires images

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Sharing authority

to experienceto interpretto reuseto build on

– some examples

1. Remix art Cool Constructions

Collaboration withCopenhagen Metro Company,

local citizens,and Art Pilots

CCBY 4.0 Merete Sanderhoff

Metro fence #01Analog mashup

CCBY 4.0 Merete Sanderhoff

CCBY 4.0 Merete Sanderhoff

CCBY 4.0 Merete Sanderhoff

CCBY 4.0 Merete Sanderhoff

CCBY 4.0 Merete Sanderhoff

CCBY 4.0 Merete Sanderhoff

Metro fence #2Digital remix

CCBY 3.0 Frida Gregersen

CCBY 3.0 Frida Gregersen

CCBY 3.0 Frida Gregersen

Instrumental reuse of digitised collections

CCBY 3.0 Frida Gregersen

CCBY 3.0 Frida Gregersen

Winner of the Fence Post 2013by public vote

CCBY 4.0 Merete Sanderhoff

…and the remixing continuesCCBY 4.0 Merete Sanderhoff

2. Open beta

Development with usershintme.dk

Many museumsOne platform

Twitter-based

Users are equal

Democratic, multivocal dialogue

Tapping into existing communities

Learning together about participatory media

Meaningful relations

TweetupsUsers create content

Users always see something different

Users become interns

Sofie CæcilieHelp refine functionalities

Support museum partners

Develop new activities

Raise new funding

3. HackathonsHack4DK

Collaboration with peer institutions

and developer communities

CCBY-SA 2.0 Morten Nybo

Room for the unexpected,even the unimaginable

CCBY-SA 2.0 Morten Nybo

http://hack4dk.wordpress.com/

Third Hack4DKFocus on serving real needs

…again, an instrumental perspective

4. Instawalks at SMK

http://iconosquare.com/tag/emptysmk

http://iconosquare.com/tag/emptysmk

#emptysmk

tours of SMK outside opening hours

for instagrammers

#emptysmk #instamuseum #smkmuseum

A special user group gets a special treat

We reach new users

People make SMK their own

More info@jonassmith

Learnings

Access and inclusion = ownership

”Touching” the art makes it yours

Non-users are potential happy users

Collections can be useful in new contexts – also outside the museum

Now we’re ready to goPublic Domain

http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

Creative Commons Public Domain dedication

http://www.smk.dk/en/explore-the-art/free-download-of-artworks/

http://www.smk.dk/en/explore-the-art/highlights/peter-hansen-playing-children-enghave-square/

http://www.smk.dk/en/copyright/creative-commons/

http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

Peter Hansen, Playing Children, Enghave Square, 1907-08, KMS2075. Public Domain.

Public Domain potentials

Public school programmesTeachers, researchers, scholars, studentsWikipediansCulture snackersPublishersCreative industriesNiche groups and communitiesOpen innovation

Cultural heritage needs to be here

Cultural heritage needs to be here

If it it isn’t online, it doesn’t exist

Necessary investmentsDigitisation

200,000 works are inaccessible online

Infrastructureconnect images, data and users

Physical and online create integrated experiences

Facilitation of reuse

3. Recommendations

Think big, start small, move fast*

Share ownership of your collections

Be a catalyst for users’ knowledge and creativity

Different users need different things

Technology is not a goal, but a precondition

Digital is a state of mind

Be human, be yourself

Work together, learn, grow – and share

*Michael Edson

CCBY-SA 2.0 ODM on Flickr

International seminar in Copenhagensince 2011

Participants from the culture sectors, ministry and agency, Wikipedia, startups

www.sharecare.nu

Sharing what we learned back to the community

Image by @mpedson

www.sharingiscaring.smk.dk/en

What’s next?

I dream of…all Danish school kids becoming Art Pilots*

more Danish art collections embracing the Public Domain

measuring the impact that openness has on people’s lives, opportunities, and wellbeing**

open museums that support people’s own Bildung and Building

*Peter Leth, Lær IT**Simon Tanner, King’s College

”Our role is still more to facilitate public use of cultural heritage for learning, creativity, and innovation. Today, learning happens in reciprocity. We are all a part of the web. We shape each other.”

http://www.altinget.dk/kultur/artikel/dannelse-i-digitaliseringens-tidsalder?ref=newsletter&refid=15337&utm_source=Nyhedsbrev&utm_medium=e-mail&utm_campaign=kultur

Mikkel Bogh Director, SMK

Please share.Merete Sanderhoff

Curator of digital museum practicehttp://www.slideshare.net/MereteSanderhoff

@MSanderhoff

MuseoalanTeemapäivät Whose Museum?

12 September 2014

Peter Hansen, Playing Children, Enghave Square, 1907-08, KMS2075. Public Domain.