Really interesting metamuseum of sorts – has links to a bunch of different online museums and collections. It’s received lots of accolades, including being “featured recently on NPR's All Things Considered and selected as one of Time Magazine's 50 Coolest Websites for 2005.” What I liked most is that it puts all these different sites under one “roof,” making it really easy to explore lots of different museums and collections at once – and the sites they feature are all really intriguing and seem well-designed.
The home page features three categories. The Museum Campus includes a lot of links to several renowned traditional museums’ online sites, including the Met, the National Gallery, the Rijksmuseum, the Smithsonian Art Museum Weblog, and the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as some more eclectic/interesting collections and museums: The Museum of Useful Things (located in Massachusetts) (Katie, I thought this was interesting in light of last night's Patronage comments on Americans and utility) and the American Package Museum. (These two are actually really interesting and I had to take more of a look at them individually.) The Permanent Collection includes many more such museums, both eclectic and “serious.” (Exploring some of these sites actually made me question where you can draw the line between “serious” museums and those which don’t qualify.) A long listing of online Galleries, Exhibitions and Shows includes The Gallery of Skatepark ID’s (sic), both the Museum of Old Soviet Radios and Mr. Bali Hai’s Sixties Soviet Postcard Collection, the Seventies and Eighties Leisurewear Museum, and a Gallery of Nebraska Pay Phones. (Most of the collections in this category seem kind of silly, but the galleries are actually intriguing and some of them are quite well-done.) Robin . . . there's a knitting museum. Just thought you should know.
I’m not sure what the “About this Site” section contains because each time I clicked on it, it wouldn’t open (might be a problem on my end), but their mission statement indicates that they include “links from our archives to online collections and exhibits covering a vast array of interests and obsessions,” including “links to brick-and-mortar museums with an interesting online presence,” a permanent collection with “links to exhibits of particular interest to design and advertising,” and “an eclectic and ever-changing list of interesting links to collections and galleries, most of them hosted on personal web pages. In other words,” they say, “it's where all the good stuff is.”
The MoOM actually has a Board of Directors, who each get a password and online posting privileges. You can click on most of their names and it leads to . . . their homepages or blogs, appropriately. I’m not sure what their credentials are. One of directors has a resume posted; she seems to have business and computer credentials. Other directors’ homepages seem less academic, I guess. Lots of pokes at “brick and mortar” museums, where membership “can cost well over a thousand dollars and often requires that you attend stuffy formal soirees and make small talk with muckety-mucks.” You can become a Member for $25 a year (much less than some memberships at brick-and-mortar museums, and they let you know it).
Comments (1)
http://essentialvermeer.20m.com/
Not to drown you in sites . . . this one, listed on the MoOM, was really interesting to me. I love Vermeer, and more than just showing/cataloguing his art, it's loaded with questions and answers about Vermeer, who he was, how he worked, interviews from Vermeer experts . . . the site kind of lets you interact with his art.
Posted by Elaine Jackson | October 17, 2007 9:31 AM
Posted on October 17, 2007 09:31