On Jun 20, 2006, at 5:45 AM, peter weibel wrote:
> Therefore I have been reflecting how a museum should react to these
> developments. Why should professional curators have the monopoly to
> select and arrange information? Why shouldn't they just offer a
> framework, in which the visitor can choose the information and even add
> information; have exchange with other people about the information
> available. Why should he not communicate with other visitors about a
> project? etc. The new tools of the net make these old ideas technically
> possible.
Good question.
"Why should professional curators have the monopoly to select and
arrange information?"
For the same pragmatic reason professional librarians catalogue books
by subject and author rather than color or size even though the result
may be more aesthetically pleasing to the public? Both approaches are
frameworks but the former is probably more useful for certain
activities.
Yesterday I went to MoMA for the "Dada" exhibit, which is great, and I
was surprised how much of what I saw I thought of in terms of "media"
now rather than "objects". Part of the reason was that Dada is pretty
MoMA-proof to begin with but it was also due to how the curators
understood the material enough to be able to "in-form" it in that
framework.
While I'm sympathetic to his intentions of making a more user friendly
environment Weibel still seems far to in thrall to the technocratic
solution in the name of seeming populist and anti-elitist.
Robbin Murphy
http://post.thing.net
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