Friday links

It's been a while between drinks but here are a couple of interesting projects and sites I've come across lately...



Have you heard about this exhibition? We're quite excited about it in Collections. It's called 'Move: Choreographing You - Art and Dance' and it's on at the Hayward Gallery in London. Using interactive sculptures and installations this show explores the intersection of dance and art over the past 50 years by encouraging people to actually dance there way through the exhibition.You can check out more about the show at this great microsite.

Caboodle is a fun kids/museums/digital project.You can read more about it here and here but basically it's a great way of getting kids invloved with collections by visiting museums, talking to curators, taking photos and uploading them to the Caboodle site. They can also become part of an online club and it is used both by schools and individuals. Kids don't have to interact with collections they can also draw, build, find something they want to photograph and upload.

The site where I found out about Caboodle is also worth a look. It's called Culture24 and it's run by a not-for-profit group working across the areas of arts, heritage, education and tourism in the UK. If you haven't come across it before it's definately worth exploring and being inspired.

Of Love & War

Uploaded to Flickr Commons on November 12, 2009by Australian War Memorial collection

As we have a wartime exhibition idea on the books I thought you might be interested to know that there are a number of new exhibitions about on this topic. They are not performing arts related of course but they do examine the social impact of war. The first is Of Love and War at the Australian War Memorial. The exhibition features photographs, artworks, letters and keepsakes and looks at the impact of war on relationships and 'the ways in which Australians incorporated affairs of the heart into their wartime lives'. If you can't make it to Canberra it is worth checking out the photostream on Flickr Commons.

Closer to home you might like to see Over-Paid, Over-Sexed & Over-Here? at City Gallery in the Melbourne Town Hall (this link takes you to the associated website). This exhibition explores the myths surrounding the American marines stationed in Melbourne during 1943 and has been curated by Kate Darian Smith of Melbourne University who worked with us on the Andrea Lemon Circus Project.

The last one is in the Western Visitors Centre at the Shrine of Remembrance. Threads of Connection looks at the orginality and creativity behind the many embroidered textiles created both on the homefront and on the frontline from World War I to today.

Enjoy!

Who Shot Rock 'n' Roll Pt 2

You may remember I recently sent through a post about Brooklyn Museum's new photographic exhibition, 'Who Shot Rock 'n' Roll'. This is a follow up post showing how they cleverly intergrated new media into their public programs. Although the exhibition is about rock 'n' roll, the focus of the show is photography so they sent out a call for people to come along and take their own rock shots at a live gig set up by the Museum. Punters were then encouraged to upload their images to the Museum's Flickr stream and legendary rock photographer Bob Gruen viewed the work and commented on his favourites both on Flickr and on the Museum's blog.

This sort of program may well be quite manageable for us as it had a very definate start and end date lasting just four weeks. The set up was not that different from our AC/DC Back in Black Friday gig. Next time we could advertise the 'call to arms' on the flyer, we already have a Flickr account (although we haven't actually started using it) and we know lots of great photographers who might have been interested in being involved. Maybe we could try something for 'Women in Rock' - what do you think?

Caz

Another crowd generated exhibition

Sometimes it's amazing what is going on right under your own nose! Do you all now about the Indoor Laneways Project? It's an online collaborative arts project created and moderated by Dan West in Education, Families & Young People as one of the Arts Centre's Youth Initiatives. Its aim is to encourage regional and metropolitan students to create and manipulate digital sound and artwork.

A curated selection of the works created will be on display in the Blackbox for two weeks during September so look out for it.

Caz

Exhibition inspiration

How would you feel about letting someone else do some of the curating? Here are a couple of different approaches to curating exhibitions that you might not have considered.

The first is Powerhouse's The Odditoreum which began life as an idea for a small school holiday program but resulted in a popular exhibition, book and limited edition print. The project had many constraints including a budget of only $7000 (excluding staff time) and was conceived as a 'low-tech' way of engaging visitors with the permanent collection.

The show was 'curated' by children's book author Shaun Tan. Tan chose 10 objects from a long list he was sent by the Public Programs Producer who had compiled and refined the list in consultation with curators, registrars and conservators. He then wrote fictitious labels of approx. 100 words for each object. Visitors were also invited to write their own labels. The 'real' label information was also included by only at the end of the exhibition.

The show was a hit and is a good reminder that you don't always have to spend a million bucks to pull off a good idea. It is also a good 'real-life' example of a the type of engagement people are also seeking online.

The other idea comes from the Brooklyn Museum and is called Click!: A Crowd Curated Exhibition. This exhibition was inspired by the notion of 'the wisdom of crowds' as espoused by business and financial columnist James Surowieki. Rather than try and explain it just click on the link for a short, sharp explanation.

Does anyone else know of any interesting exhibition concepts? Why not let us all know about them by leaving a comment below!

Caz