Welcome and opening remarks by Wang Huangsheng, Director of the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) Art Museum.

A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary.

– Wikipedia

What if our profession created a museum in which visitors could comfortably search for answers to their own questions regardless of the importance placed on such questions by others?

– Elaine Gurian, 2008

What if we already have created a museum, as Elaine Gurian suggested, in which visitors can seek answers to the questions they care about most?  One does not generally think of a museum as a network but what if it is, de facto?  What if the rapid expansion of networked culture, digital media, digitized collections, of ‘always on’ mobile access and, more importantly, of online participation has already created a museum in which visitors, both ‘real’ and virtual, decide what is important and even what the ‘collection’ is?

If this is the case – as Rich Cherry will argue that it is – then the war on the traditional model of museums as static “collections of collections” (of three-dimensional specimens and artifacts) is over, and talk about reexamining and reengineering current business models is missing the point. Instead of arguing against the museum as dusty repository or an ivory tower, we can now think of the museum as a node on a network that connects us to 2.7 billion Internet users, tens of thousands of museums, and millions of other ‘nodes’ around the world filled with information. Those of us who work in museums, let alone those of us who are still building museums, might feel a little threatened by this idea.

In a network, a node is either a connection point, a redistribution point or a communication endpoint. As one can imagine, the value of the node to the network varies based on the type and quality of the node.  A large museum with a storied history can be valuable simply as an endpoint, while a new museum with limited resources might want to focus on being a connection point. The question of whether the node is more important than the network is a fundamental one, but with a network the size of the Internet there are very few nodes so important that a large percentage of the 2.7 billion users would notice they are missing were they to vanish.

Rich will discuss this metaphor further as he discusses his experiences in building cultural as well as technical networks, and the building and planning of The Broad, a new museum of contemporary art opening in 2014 in downtown Los Angeles.  His insights are based on his experience providing cutting edge technology solutions for cultural institutions, overseeing the construction of museums and creating multidisciplinary teams to support their operations.

Unlike most museum professionals, providers to the cultural sector usually work with dozens of museums of many different types during their careers. As a result, they have unique insights into what works – and what doesn’t – in a range of contexts. In this series of short presentations followed by question and answer sessions, selected vendors of critical services and platforms to museums are invited to share the best practices they have learned from their work “pollinating” the museum field.

Presenters include:

1. Paul Thyssen, Gallery Systems
2. Alex Tourski & Alex Palin, IZI.travel
3. Scott Brewer and Tony Holzner, ArtProcessors
4. Chris Mclaren, Tristan Interactive/Espro-Acoustiguide

A roundtable discussion on the changing and transformational nature of curation in the era of the Internet, digitization, and ‘born-digital’ artworks with curators Daisy Wang (Peabody Essex Museum), Adriel Luis (Smithsonian’s Asian Pacific American Center), Jennifer Mundy (Tate), Philip Tinari (Director and Chief Curator of the Ullens Center Contemporary Art), and Sarah Kenderdine (National Institute for Experimental Arts, UNSW, Australia / ALiVE, CityU, Hong Kong).

Museums have been using mobile technologies to provide interpretation and other content and experiences in their galleries for more than 60 years. Jack Ludden (Getty), Rich Cherry (Broad) and Nancy Proctor (Museums and the Web) will present the “state-of-the-art” in mobile apps and mobile web today, and discuss where the field is going in terms of both content and technology, including location-based services and responsive design strategies.

Sara Bodinson (MoMA) and Pat Rodewald (museum consultant, formerly of High Museum) discuss how new platforms and, more importantly, new approaches to both collaboration and content development can lead to more effective educational strategies and programs.

Lauren Nemroff and Pearl Yao from Google will demonstrate the Google Art Project and reflect on collaborations with the Google Cultural Institute. Attendees are also invited to contribute their ideas and suggestions for future development of these and other collaborative museum platforms.

Wang Chun, Director and Ge Yi, Project Leader of the Information and Communication Department, NAMOC present this workshop in Chinese.

In order to reach their audiences across all the platforms now popular, more and more museums are presenting their web content using “responsive design.” This means that online content will be presented in different ways depending on the device on which it is being viewed. In other words, a museum’s website may appear different when it is being seen on a desktop vs. a tablet vs. a smart phone. The “responsiveness” of these designs allows online content to be more facile across today’s ever-changing universe of devices. It no longer assumes a superiority of a one device over another. This gives a greater breadth of creativity to museums in creating their interface as well as their other content.

Cross-platform thinking and responsive design are extraordinarily important for museums to embrace. This workshop will address the three core areas of museum practice that are involved in ‘going digital’ in a networked approach to content and experience design: platform choice, team skills and collaboration, and audience impact. We will discuss how responsive design satisfies certain expectations of a contemporary audience. It will also consider how a cultural institution can continue to try to satisfy those expectations amidst a rapidly changing digital universe.

For better or for worse, the proliferation of platforms and devices in our networked world have led the audiences of cultural institutions to expect more flexible and responsive digital experiences overall.

Susan Chun draws on decades of experience with leading organizations such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Asia Society, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Alfred A. Knopf to offer best practices and insider tips for museums going digital and multilingual with their publications.

Zeng Hui, Deputy Director of Beijing International Design Week and Beijing Digital Design Market Committee, leads this workshop in Chinese.

Nancy Proctor and Susan Chun present the findings of Museum and the Web’s recent “Deep Dive” into the Cleveland Museum of Art’s groundbreaking Gallery One and ArtLens projects. Over 50 museum professionals from around the world convened in Cleveland September 18-19 for workshops, presentations, and informal discussions about the project. Nancy and Susan will share their learnings and reflections from the forthcoming digital publication on this project and event.

Sun Limei, Deputy Director and Liu Jun, Chief of Site Studio of the Information and Internet Department, NMOC lead this workshop in Chinese.

Creating video content for your institution can be far more inexpensive than expected. Creating dynamic content for with informal techniques can create casual dialogue and increase accessibility of content for visitors. Thinking about content, story, and method of delivery serves as a framework in this workshop on low budget documentation methods to develop unique and accessible content.

Yan Feng, Director of the National Research Center for Digital Media and Head of the Interaction Design Lab, CAFA, leads this workshop in Chinese.

With support from Pat Rodewald, MoMA’s Sara Bodinson provides a step-by-step overview of how museums can adopt a collaborative and iterative approach to research, design, development and launch for digital and cross-platform projects. Drawing on examples from MoMA and the High Museum, the workshop will also highlight the importance of conducting qualitative visitor research throughout project development, and provide concrete examples of how user feedback can continue to inform the iterative development of digital products throughout their life cycle.

This workshop gives an introduction to the leading edge of technology in the cultural space and digital thinking for the new kinds of immersive, “embodied” experiences that are now possible both in museums and beyond.

Since the advent of location based entertainment as early as the 17th century (typified by all manner of optical devices, magic lanterns, various phantasmagorias, cabinets des curieux, wunderkammern, panoramic rotundas and kaiserpanorama, through to cinema, OmniMax, IMAX and beyond!), new technologies have inspired museums to explore new forms of cinematographic and video narratives, the opening of experimental acoustic spaces, and the shifting of artistic, scientific and curatorial praxis inside the ‘machines’ themselves, all driven by the desire for public engagement. Our cultural institutions are also seeking to develop new apparatus of experience (both software and hardware) for which there was no former demand, and engineer new stages for participatory performance never before conceived.

This sessions encourages museums to act as applied laboratories, nodes of experimentation for the cultural imaginary of our times. Using heterogeneous datasets representing intangible and tangible heritage, this talk unpacks recent projects by Dr Kenderdine and her colleagues at the Research Centre for Innovation in Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museum (iGLAM) and the Applied Laboratory for Interactive Visualization and Embodiment (ALiVE), City University, Hong Kong.

Tang Bin, Deputy Director of CAFAM, Li Wenlong, Instructor of Industrial Design, CAFA, and Marco Chan, Instructor of Design, CAFA, lead this workshop in Chinese.

In the information age, our demands for information and interaction are higher than ever before. As an important medium for public art education, art museums are transforming from uni-directional aesthetics output to multi-directional communications with the public. Such multi-directional communications can not only collect feedback and data from the audience, but can also enable public art education to be more effective and relevant. The workshop leaders will show the collective research and practice of CAFA Art Museum. When technology is no longer a barrier, art will be more accessible.

In this closing plenary session, attendees are invited to ask the assembled experts about any aspect of the presentations and discussions from the preceding two days, and seed new conversations with topics not yet addressed! In a fun game-show atmosphere, our panelists will try to beat the clock and each other to nail remaining unanswered questions, drawing on their knowledge, experience, and own professional networks through social media and the web. Attendees will be asked to contribute questions throughout the two-day event to be used in this final session, and are encouraged to include their colleagues and social media networks in the conversation as well. Expect lots of laughter but also lots of resources and innovative thinking to emerge from this seriously fun session.

Fan Di’an, Director at the National Art Museum of China, and the Chairman of the Art Museums Committee in China, offers thanks and closing remarks.