International Museum Day: virtual tours, conferences and the possibility of imagining the future of art

Nadia at these meetings of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), where May 18 was defined as International Museum Day – it has been celebrated since 1977 – that a few decades later all museums in the world would be closed due to ‘a pandemic. And if today every country and city is taking different types of measures depending on whether or not COVID-19 is progressing, the truth is that the role of these cultural institutions has started to transform.

If museums change, does art change too? What’s your future? From different spaces around the world, they have set themselves a double objective: to raise awareness of the importance of museums in cultural exchange and enrichment, as has been done since 1977, and to rethink their role in this changing and uncertain present. . And it’s not that art is disappearing: in the past year, there have been over 500 million searches on Google related to art every month.

With its free website and app for Android and iOS, Google Arts & Culture offers virtual tours of more than 2,000 museums around the world, including the collections of four Argentine spaces: the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires (MAMBA ), the Museum of Contemporary Art of Buenos Aires (MACBA), the National Museum of Fine Arts of Buenos Aires (MNBA) and the Municipal Museum of Art of La Plata (MUMART).

These tours of the great Argentinean spaces also include the Pallarols Museum, the Amalia Lacroze Art Collection in Fortabat, the Buenos Aires Graffiti, the Historical and Numismatic Museum “Héctor Carlos Janson” of the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic and the Museum of popular art José Hernández, among others. In addition to institutions such as the Favaloro Foundation and AMIA.

Despite the pandemic, the International Council of Museums (ICOM) continues to celebrate International Museum Day. In 2020, despite the limitations imposed and the virtual format, 37,000 museums from over 150 countries took part. The 2021 edition will focus on “The future of museums: recovering and reinventing” so that museums and institutions, professionals and communities can create and share new practices, business models and innovative solutions.

ICOM’s objective for this day is to convey the message that “museums are an important means of cultural exchange, enrichment of cultures, promotion of mutual understanding, cooperation and peace between peoples ”. For their part, the National Directorate of Museums and the National Directorate of Heritage Management, depending on the Cultural Heritage Secretariat of the Ministry of Culture of the Nation, present two activities.

So far so close

Today at 11 a.m. in Argentina and 4 p.m. in Europe takes place So far, so close. Projects to bring distances closer in museums in Europe and Argentina. This is a transmission by Zoom, free, without registration, with a limited capacity: a virtual meeting between six museums in Europe and Argentina during which their directors will talk about the challenges they face in creating new strategies for community engagement in remote contexts.

The Terry de Tilcara Museum and the Dauphinois Museum in Grenoble will bring together the work they have done with the Andean and Alpine communities, respectively. The costume museums of Argentina and Spain will analyze how their spaces can be used to recover traditional textile crafts and techniques. The National Palace of the Arts and the MG + MSUM will talk about their programs for integrating communities historically excluded due to problems of class, gender or ethnicity.

Participate Juan Ignacio Muñoz of the José A. Terry National Museum in Tilcara, Jujuy, Argentina; Olivier Cogne del Musée Dauphinois, Grenoble, Francia; Vicky Salías the Museum of the History of Costume, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Helena Lopez the Museo del Traje in Madrid, Spain; Feda Baeza of the National Palace of the Arts – Ice Palace, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Aleš Vaupotič of the Museum of Modern Art / Museum of Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia. Moderator Marisa Baldasarre.

Open Source Museums

On the other hand, on Wednesday 7 at 10 a.m., the Open Source Museums Virtual Conversation: National Heritage Research Experiences, via @museosypatrimonio’s Facebook account and @wikimedia_ar’s YouTube channel. Based on the slogan proposed by ICOM this year, knowledge production within museums and its possibilities for dissemination through collaborative virtual projects will be addressed.

Presentations by research teams from four national museums will take place. Each will present and share with the public a paradigmatic case on pieces from their collections, their architectural heritage or their documentary archives. These are the Roca Museum – Institute of Historical Research, the National Museum of the Jesuit Estancia de Alta Gracia and the Casa del Virrey Liniers, the National Historical Museum and the Museum of the Historical House of Independence.

Secondly, Wikimedia Argentina will present the general lines of its Open Culture and Knowledge program and explore the possibilities of Wikipedia as a space for building up-to-date, located and relevant knowledge, where local cultural heritage acquires global significance. . Being an era marked by the digitization and virtualization of content, the objective is to analyze the ways of inhabiting these digital territories.

International tours

But there are museums for all tastes ranging from art, history and archeology to music and motorsport. This word that comes from Latin Museum and that from greek Moyseîon, and properly means “place dedicated to the Muses”, it is not simply a question of a set of paintings, but also of the possibility of thinking of a space allowing the spectator to immerse himself in a world different from that which he travels daily.

On the app and on the Google Arts & Culture web, you can access the Norwegian International Museum of Children’s Art, the world’s first large-scale children’s art museum and which contains works by young people from over 180 countries. On the platform, in addition to visiting the museum through Street View, you can see virtual collections in watercolor, paper and oil paint.

There is also the Country Music Hall of Fame and the United States Museum (life and work of Loretta Lynn, Ray Charles Yes Kitty wells, among others); the Museo Nazionale dell’Automobile in Italy (one of the oldest automobile museums in the world); the Salvatore Ferragamo Museum in Italy (for fashion fans); and the Brazilian Football Museum which, in alliance with Google, created the Offside Museum, a project on women who played football during Prohibition between 1941 and 1979.

Technology and preservation

A novelty is technology in the service of preservation: Google Arts & Culture has undertaken various projects with governments and organizations to revive cities, monuments or buildings that are part of the cultural heritage. Construction of 3D models, generation of virtual tours and digitization of photographs or documents are some of the processes that have been carried out to keep the heritage of this heritage alive.

Reconstruction of Shurijo Castle (Okinawa, Japan) is a digital reconstruction project that aims to preserve and showcase the culture of Shujiro, after a fire destroyed the castle which is part of the UNESCO World Heritage. This project includes 3D models of the main temple made from the compilation of 80,000 photos and the possibility to explore the main hall of the castle.

The art and soul of Mosul (Mosul, Iraq) is another Google project in collaboration with Al-Ghad Radio: the first online exhibition of art and artifacts from the post-ISIS era. The goal, they say, is to showcase Mosul’s rebirth and preserve the city’s heritage for future generations. On the platform, you can find 3D models of destroyed heritage sites such as the El Hadbaa minaret and a reconstruction and virtual tour of the Al Nouri Mosque.

Artificial intelligence and augmented reality are carried out in projects such as An ocean of books (a guide map through the authors and books classified under different themes), Play a Kandinsky (the question is interesting: what if you could hear the color?) o Hopper the scout penguin (A friendly penguin guides us through the most famous places in the world, such as the Palace of Versailles or the Natural History Museum in London.

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