Monthly Archive for October, 2010

Advocate Sonwabile Mancotywa, National Heritage Council of South Africa, to give plenary at Johannesburg Museum Conference

Published on October 30, 2010 in Headline and Newsletter. 0 Comments

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Advocate Sonwabile Mancotywa will be joining the 2011 Inclusive Museum Conference as a plenary speaker at its annual conference at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Advocate Sonwabile Mancotywa is the Chief Executive Officer of the National Heritage Council of South Africa.

Born in Mthatha, Advocate Sonwabile Mancotywa is the first and current Chief Executive Officer of the National Heritage Council (NHC) serving his second term. In the first five years at the helm of establishing an organization in a totally new terrain, his record of clean reports in succession is proving his esteemed skills in the heritage sector. He is nationally acclaimed for his devotion on heritage matters. The NHC is a national institution entrusted with heritage preservation, protection and promotion. More…

Omeka Launches a Hosted Platform to Move Museum Collections to the Cloud

Published on October 29, 2010 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

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From The New York Times

Open-source publishing platform Omeka announces today the launch of a hosted Web service, Omeka.net. While similar in some ways to the content management system provided by WordPress, Omeka is geared towards the online exhibition of library, museum and archive collections.

And much like WordPress and other services have simplified the publication of texts online, Omeka is aimed at helping bring academic scholarship and cultural heritage sites to the Internet. By using Omeka.net, scholars and archivists will be able to easily build digital exhibits and publish digital scholarship, while also taking advantage of Web 2.0 tools that foster collaboration and communication.

To read more…

Inclusive Museum Journal, Volume 3, Number 1 now available

Published on October 28, 2010 in Journal and Newsletter. 0 Comments

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The first issue of Volume 3 of The International Journal of the Inclusive Museum has now been published.

Volume 3, Number 1 includes:

Who or What Are Museums For? The Essence of the Museum Message by Ann Coats.
Tendencies in the Interpretation of Works of Art in Museum Education Practises by Amaia Arriaga.
Case Studies of Museum Systems in the UK and Taiwan from the Collaboration Perspective by Chieh-Ching Tien.
Evaluating Performance Factors for the Yingge Ceramics Museum by Yung-Neng Lin.
Digital Interpretation of Cultural Heritage: 3D Modeling and Materialization of 2D Artworks for Future Museums by Galina Ivanovna Pasko, Alexander Alexandrovich Pasko, Turlif Vilbrandt, Arnaldo Luis Lixandrão Filho and Jorge Vicente Lopes da Silva.
Leading to Cultural Resources Through Visuals: An Image Retrieval System and On-site Information Approach by Momoko Hayashi and Kiyofumi Motoyama.
Popular Scholarship: Will Museum Scholarship Survive the Economic Downturn? by Jean Dyson.

Continue reading ‘Inclusive Museum Journal, Volume 3, Number 1 now available’

From Picassos to Sarcophagi, Guided by Phone Apps

Published on October 4, 2010 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

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From Edward Rothstein at The New York Times…

Walk into a crowded museum, and what do you see? People with cameras or cellphones snapping pictures of people looking at objects. The artwork, document or fossil is a tourist site; the photograph is our souvenir. And the looking — for which museums were created — becomes a memory before it has even begun.

Now something else is in play that may distance the museum experience even further — though it intends to do just the opposite. During the last week I have walked through galleries, half-looking at objects and half-consulting an iPhone screen.

I have swiped, tapped and maneuvered in iSpace while negotiating Egyptian sarcophagi, Matisse paintings and Apatosaurus bones. I have searched for item IDs, audio-tour-guide numbers and tagged thumbnail images while trying to get information about Pacific Islanders or Picasso. I have used museum apps to help me navigate museums. But I have generally felt used along the way, forced into rigid paths, looking at minimalist text bites, glimpsing possibilities while being thwarted by realities. More…