SmarthistoryTravel focuses on curious, thoughtful travelers who want expert art analysis delivered in a casual and engaging style. The initial app in this series, “Rome: A First Look,” is now available in the iTunes App Store. We will launch a second app, “Rome: A Closer Look” later this summer. Additional apps that focus on art in other cities will follow. Proceeds from SmarthistoryTravel support Smarthistory, Inc., a not-for-profit organization. Enhance your travel experience and support Smarthistory at the same time!

Here’s our proposal for Open Ed 2010:

Smarthistory.org is a proven, sustainable, and inexpensive model for open educational resources in the Humanities. We will discuss lessons learned during the agile development process used to create this broadly adopted tool.

Smarthistory.org is a free and open, creative-commons licensed, multimedia web-book designed as a dynamic enhancement or substitute for the traditional art history textbook. For the past fifty years, introductory art history courses have nearly always been supported with a comprehensive textbook. These have grown unwieldy and prohibitively expensive; the standard art history textbook in the US now contains over 1100 pages and costs more than $150.

Begun in 2005, Smarthistory has grown in response to the needs of students, their professors, and informal learners. It delivers unscripted conversations between content-experts to engage students while using a form that is native to the web—multimedia. Subject-based pages combine image, video, maps, text, and high-quality links. Smarthistory was designed with multiple pathways to allow visitors to browse according to their needs and interests. Visitors can enter the site by artist, style, or time period and the home page contains an intuitive visual navigation that functions as an interactive timeline and is modeled on the chapters of a book.

Smarthistory does not seek replicate the format of the traditional textbook in an online environment. Instead, embedded videos use conversation to deliberately move away from the impersonal, monolithic voice of the typical textbook in-order to reveal disagreement, emotion, and the experience of looking. The listener remains engaged with both the content and the interaction of the speakers. These conversations model close looking and a willingness to encounter and engage the unfamiliar. Image-based disciplines can be difficult to teach in an online environment; but we have found, for example, that audio allows students to simultaneously focus on an image and commentary, in a way not possible with text. Smarthistory takes the inherent dialogic and multimedia nature of the web and uses it as a pedagogical method.

In 2009, Smarthistory won the Webby award for education, it has been cited for the past two years in the Horizon Report (published jointly by the Educause Learning Alliance and the New Media Consortium), and by organizations such as the International Council of Museums. Universities, libraries, and museums around the world direct their learners to the site. Smarthistory is aimed at undergraduate students, museum visitors, and other informal learners and was visited more than 450,000 times from more than 150 countries in 2009.

Smarthistory is an extendable Humanities framework that uses the open-source content management system MODx. It was inexpensive to create, and is easy to manage and update. Its chronological timeline/chapter-based format integrates new contributions into a single historical framework; an organizational structure applicable across the Humanities. This structure also allows many more content experts to be included than in a traditional text, and because the project is web-based, Smarthistory has grown iteratively and has quickly incorporated user comments and corrections. We invite other disciplines in the Humanities to adopt this framework and encourage those interested to contact us.

Arch of Constantine, 315 C.E., Rome

Speakers: Valentina Follo, Dr. Beth Harris, Dr. Steven Zucker

http://www.smarthistory.org/arch-of-constantine.html

Made with Smarthistory’s partner, ContextTravel.com

Of course, visit Smarthistory.org for many more!

The Cornaro Chapel was very different from the way I imagined it. No matter how many photos I have seen– nothing prepared me for the experience in person. The chapel itself was very shallow – I had always imagined one could enter it, and should enter it to experience it. But that’s not the case. In fact, it seemed that the ideal viewing location was from outside the space of the chapel proper. The images of the Cornaro family on either side reminded me of images of patrons on wings of altarpieces (ie. the Merode Altarpiece) – an association I had never had. The illusion of the clouds beneath Theresa was so much more real than I imagined. I felt like teaching this without seeing it first hand was far less than ideal. I was reminded of the obvious – of how works of art are so very singular, so very unique. Loving a work of art from afar, from reproductions – one can fall in love that way, but it’s a little like falling in love with something that’s at least partly a lie. The tragedy of loving works of art. The terrible need to see in person what you have fallen in love with, and the difficulty of managing that always. And the pressing absence always of what hasn’t been seen.

[Link here to the slides]

But to underscore that the technology is but a vehicle for the content, I couldn’t resist talking a bit about interpretation and different approaches to audio content design as well. We looked at scripted content, which should be more like blog posts written for the ear than recorded versions of object labels; interviews with experts such as artists or curators – always a favorite with audiences; and ‘vox pops’ that incorporate visitors’ opinions, for example, as is common in SFMOMA’s Artcasts; and conversations about art, like SmartHistory.org’s.

To illustrate the conversational approach, I played Beth and Steven’s podcast about American artist Mary Cassatt’s 1894 Breakfast in Bed in the Huntington Library in California, and we talked about how the informal dialectic space models learning, inviting the listener to join the conversation and develop his or her own views of the artwork. Even the speakers’ early disagreement in the podcast about which town they were in serves to reinforce this useful information about the Huntington, while lightening the tone and lending the podcast an approachable atmosphere.

We also looked at the context in which listeners experience the audio content: are they moving through the museum, sitting in the classroom, or on a bus? Are they looking at an artwork or a high-quality image of it online, or is this mainly an audio experience? And is the best vehicle for the podcaster’s message a traditional audio tour ‘stop’ or ‘soundbite’, that focuses on a given artwork in-depth, or is it an overview of a gallery (like this one Beth & I experimented with at the IMA), exhibition or theme that immerses the listener in a ‘soundtrack’ to provide a higher level guide or general tools for understanding an artist, a collection, a period?

Whatever their tack, I recommended that the teachers start with the questions that come immediately to mind for their students when they confront the art under consideration. These will range from the empirical ‘what is this?’ to the philosophical ‘why is it important?’ questions, and will be inflected by the specific content and context of the art. Here are some we collected from visitors to the folk art section of our Luce Foundation Center, an open study/storage facility displaying about thirty-three hundred objects in a compact space over three floors of the Museum’s west wing, where we are in the final stages of creating a cross-platform audio tour:

1. What makes folk art, ‘art’? How is folk art different from fine art? Why is it in museums?
2. Who makes folk art? What were the people who made it like?
3. What do the symbols mean?
4. Where does all this stuff come from?
5. What is it made of?
6. Why are fishing lures considered art?
7. What is up with the penguins?
8. Where did all these fish come from? One person or lots of people?
9. I’d like more information about the “memory” idea about the ceramics that have the stones and other objects. Could you give an example from one of these pieces?

The ‘leading with questions’ methodology could come straight out of a market research or customer service manual. By responding to what your listeners have foremost in their minds, you engage them in a mental dialogue that then opens up a space where other ‘key messages’ can be more easily received as well. You validate their questions and interests, so they are more likely to want to listen to what else you have to offer.

Of course the best way to learn is to teach, so another interesting use of audio in the classroom is having students create their own podcasts. The Education Department of the American Art Museum has a very popular student podcast program, in which high school students record their reflections on selected artworks in the collection. Through the process of creating a script about an artwork and listening to their own words, the students’ writing skills improve immeasurably, in addition to their visual arts literacy.

I am now relishing the vision of podcasting and the SmartHistory.org conversational technique being refined throughout American classrooms and engaging future generations more deeply with art through the students that the Clarice Smith teachers will touch. I hope they’ll be as generous in sharing their tips and best practice with the community of art educators as Steven and Beth have been with me!

About Nancy Proctor
Formerly Head of New Product Development at Antenna Audio, Nancy Proctor is now Head of New Media at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She also manages MuseumMobile.info and its wiki and podcast series on mobile interpretation content and technology for cultural sites. Nancy was recently appointed Digital Editor of Curator: The Museum Journal.

WOW! Discovered at nearly midnight last night:

http://www.discoverpentimento.com/

I am so impressed – the interface is beautiful, and presents so many possibilities for interpretation. It’s offline. It’s free. Objects are available via themes, or an image gallery or item list. Audio, zooming… gorgeous!

WOW!

More later…

Ramesses II, Egypt, Herakleopolis
(Temple of Harsaphes), ca. 1250 BCE

Great Lyre from the “King’s Grave,” ca. 2650-2550 B.C., Gold, silver, lapis lazuli, shell, bitumen and wood (University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology)

Unknown, Mixing Vessel with Odysseus Escaping from the Cyclops’s Cave, 550-500 B.C.E.

Speakers: Drs. Matthew A. Postal and Steven Zucker

Unknown sculptor, Venus after the Greek original by Praxiteles from the 4th century BCE,
Roman, 175 – 200 CE (Getty Villa)

Speakers: Drs. Beth Harris, Francesca Tronchin, Steven Zucker

Mary Cassatt, Breakfast In Bed, 1897 (Huntington Library).

Brooklyn is Watching is a breakthrough relational art project by Jay Van Buren that invites interaction between the two thriving art communities of Second Life and Williamsburg, Brooklyn accentuating the power relations between and among them. It consists of a series of inter-related spaces for artists, audiences, and participants. The primary spaces are a square parcel of land (sim) in Second Life where artists are invited to leave their work for one week (when it is automatically returned), and an alcove in the Williamsburg art gallery—Jack the Pelican Presents where the sim can be viewed on a large monitor and entered via an avatar. In addition, there are two online forums for discussion, a blog which chronicles and comments on the work recently installed, and weekly podcasts where artists, art historians, gallerists and critics discuss the art and related issues.

Dekka Raymaker and Jay Newt

However, the most important aspects of Brooklyn is Watching are not found on the sim, in the gallery or within the critical discourses Van Buren enabled, but rather in the fraught relationships between the groups that inhabit these places. These interactions, or in certain cases, lack of interaction, starkly highlight the relative power of each group and their zones of influence. There are many distinctions within the art communities in Second Life, but there is a generally pervasive desire for art there to acquire the status accorded to “real” art and its attendant discourses, market, and press. This desire is made explicit and even exaggerated by the structures of Brooklyn is Watching which places artwork directly before a varied public, unmediated by gallery, curator or collector. Because all of the art has been placed on the sim within the past week, there is a heightened sense of immediacy. Clearly, artists who display their work on the Brooklyn is Watching sim explicitly seek critical attention. These tensions are implicit in the name—”Brooklyn is Watching.” It is also inscribed in its architecture, with its high watchtower and wide-eyed resident avatar.

The project enacts these antagonisms by offering artists the following instructions:
Welcome to Brooklyn is Watching. “Here” you will be able to be seen by visitors to Jack the Pelican Presents, an art gallery in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. Do something “here” and “you” will be watched, thought about and commented upon…whatever…leave “something” “here” and it will be chronicled on our blog and talked about on the Brooklyn is Watching podcast or…possibly…ignored…or possibly…mocked.

The heart of Brooklyn is Watching is this open invitation to artists to install (rez) their work on a sim, an uncurated space surrounded by water on all four sides. Artists and visitors find a flat astroturf-green field where art is scattered both at eye-level, below sea level, and often at altitudes well above the viewer. In the center of the sim sits an imposing tower. Its sole occupant is Monet Destiny, a large eyeball-shaped avatar (with additional protruding eyes), ironically sporting a trucker’s cap, his name a reference to Cezanne’s quip about the french Impressionist; “Monet is only an eye; but good God what an eye!” Over the course of the year, more than one hundred artists have left approximately four hundred works of art on the sim. This dynamic, uncurated exhibition space creates constantly changing relations between works of art that sometimes inter-relate or even intentionally intersect. Because so much of the art native to second life is concerned with defining space, the art itself shapes and reshapes the sim’s geography.

Brooklyn is Watching’s only physical installation is an alcove in the gallery Jack the Pelican Presents, located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a magnet for new art outside of Manhattan. The installation consists of a couch, a coffee table, a computer, and a fifty-two inch monitor that continuously presents the avatar Monet’s view to gallery visitors. When Monet emerges from his watchtower, his motion and communication can be controlled by visitors, or if left to his own devices, he automatically shadows any avatar visiting the sim.

Brooklyn is Watching incorporates a blog and a weekly podcast. The blog allows individual contributors to chronicle and discuss specific works of art or broader issues and allows images and other materials to be sent via the “Tell us What to Watch” form. Posts regularly provoke or invite responses and this often leads to discussions between constituencies. In contrast, the weekly podcasts call on a core group of “regulars” (with rotating guests) that Van Buren assembles for compelling, no-holds-barred conversations about the meaning and quality of the most recent art installed on the sim. In this way, Van Buren relinquishes his authority replacing it with a salon-like discussion where meaning is constructed from the collision of multiple perspectives. Ideas are vetted and elaborated upon or summarily discarded, artists praised or dismissed.

By Jurria Yoshikawa

Second Life has increased the opportunity for non-experts to make art. As a user-created virtual world, Second Life has built-in tools that facilitate the act of creation. Every avatar is therefore a potential artist having the means of creation at her disposal. Like many other “web 2.0″ technologies, Second Life is both a platform and tool for content creation and just as the general public is invited to comment on the Brooklyn is Watching blog and non-experts participate in the podcasts, the spectrum of art makers in Second Life range from the theory-saavy Yale MFA to the amateur builder.

By Selavy Oh

Brooklyn is Watching seeks to witness and participate in the new broad wave of producers of culture that technology has empowered, producers with the potential to create more and more varied art than has ever been possible before (in contrast to the twentieth-century model of passive consumers of mass culture). Even the vocabulary that has arisen in Second Life is indicative of this shift away from an elite–in Second Life the word creator often replaces artist, and build is used instead of installation.

By Arahan Claveau

In part, Brooklyn is Watching asks the same question that Len Manovich asked in the last essay of “The Art of Participation,” an exhibition at SFMoMA, “can professional art survive the extreme democratization of media production and access?” When reformation Europe, aided by the printing press, realized that the Roman Church was not the sole path to God, the implications were enormous. Similarly, Brooklyn is Watching questions the apparatus and prejudices of the art market in the digital era and is perhaps the first Second Life project to explicitly focus on the juncture between real and virtual art practices and in doing so may point to critical issues that loom on the horizon.

DanCoyote Antonelli

Did we miss anything? Please let us know by leaving a comment.

Maybe this post should begin with the news that I started my new position as Director of Digital Learning at MoMA last week. I couldn’t be more thrilled to be working at this great institution with such great colleagues.

And now the point of this blog post — we confess, we read the Digital Humanities Manifesto, with glee! We’re always suckers for descriptions of the radically new and different face of education that is emerging. This pleasure was sharply contrasted with the disappointment that we felt when we read the much more widely discussed essay, “The Last Professor,” by Stanely Fish in last Sunday’s New York Times Op/Ed section. Here, Fish, writing as curmudgeon of the academy, nostalgically laments the death of an idealized humanities education of yore—an education he imagines nobly separated from practical application and that he sees defiled by for-profit institutions and the rise of a permanent adjunct class. He ends by smugly noting “…I have had a career that would not have been available to me had I entered the world 50 years later. Just lucky, I guess.” He is reacting to and lauding his former student Frank Donoghue’s new book, “The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities.” In his essay, Fish looks only to the past and seems to fear that all change leads to a for-proft, job-focused educational system.

Clearly, the humanities are changing and the university is being challenged to its core; but maybe what will be lost is its insular elitism. Had Fish had more vision, his essay might have noted that the humanities have never been more vibrant and that the very dim view he holds is largely because the cloistered walls of the University block the light. The continued vitality of the humanities is however very apparent to those whose wireless signals breach those walls to connect with and distribute knowledge in ways that are incredibly exciting and give us every reason to think that academic research and teaching are exactly where we want to be now.

Here is the definition of “digital humanities”:
Digital humanities is not a unified field but an array of convergent practices that explore a universe in which print is no longer the exclusive or the normative medium in which knowledge is produced and/or disseminated.

And here are our favorite parts of the manifesto:

Paragraph 11: Among the highest aims of scholarship: entertainment; entertainment as scholarship: a scandal that is now no longer a scandal. To speak to an audience.

Paragraph 13: Redefinition of the contours of the research community once enclosed by university walls. The field of knowledge and expertise far exceeds these confines. There is no containing it within these walls. The challenge: to construct models of knowledge creation/sharing that confront this increasingly distributed reality.

We’ve written earlier about a new model of education where teachers are more accountable to students (no more boring lectures?). With Smarthistory, we’ve tried to be entertaining AND enlightening – using conversation as our tool. We’ve also tried to eschew an authoritative voice in favor of personal, opinionated voices. But we’ve also struggled with how to engage a broader public. We’ve “distributed” smarthistory to dipity, flickr, youtube and vimeo… and we’re working on Facebook now too (with Juliana Kreinik’s help).

This past week, we had two important lessons. I had a twitter account for months, but didn’t “tweet” much. But in the last couple of weeks, when I was home editing alot of videos, I twittered a few times about the videos I was posting on Smarthistory.org. Nothing happened at first, but several days later there was a small explosion of interest — due in part to a few twitterers, the Getty Museum, Shelley Mannion, and CJ, who spread the word around. It was wonderful — we had a twitter epiphany.

Then, the Museum of Modern Art twitterer, one brilliant Victor Samra in the Digital Media and Marketing departments twittered Smarthistory, and the “followers” came rolling in and so did the lovely comments about the site. I look forward to working a lot more with Victor, and with my colleagues in the Education department, and the Digital Media department as well.

The other revelation this week happened with Flickr (readers of our blog know we have been HUGE fans of using Flickr for teaching for years). Here’s Steven’s summary from the Smarthistory page:

One of our Flickr contributors sent me the following: “One point I noticed in the discussion is the location at which Van Gogh painted the potato eaters. In the dialogue it is said that he painted it in a coal mining area in Belgium near the French border. Whereas, received knowledge here in Nuenen is that he painted it in the time he lived here.”

He is absolutely correct. We listened to the podcast and we clearly make an incorrect statement. The Potato Eaters was painted in Nuenen when the artist lived there and we were (unclearly) referring to a period a few years prior when Van Gogh was Borinage. We had been thinking of the impact of the spiritual on his subject in this painting. We are so glad he offered this correction. It is one of the great strengths of social media like Flickr. Here is a great reminder that expertise is broadly distributed. I love our networked world!

The Liberal Arts at an end!? We hardly think so…

Works of art discussed:
Pablo Picasso, Three Women at the Spring, oil on canvas, 1921 (MoMA)
René Magritte, The Human Condition, oil on canvas, 1933 (private collection)
Piet Mondrian, Broadway Boogie-Woogie, 1943-44 (MoMA)

Works Discussed:
William Holman Hunt, Strayed Sheep (Our English Coasts), oil on canvas, 1852 (Tate Britain)
Claude Monet, Boulevard des Capucines, oil on canvas, 1873 (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City)
Vincent Van Gogh, Potato Eaters, oil on canvas, 1885 (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)

Wow! What else is there to say?

Goya’s Third of May, 1808:
Look at this and this and this and this!