Stay in the Loop
BSR publishes on a weekly schedule, with an email newsletter every Wednesday and Thursday morning. There’s no paywall, and subscribing is always free.
Slide shows on the web
Patrick D. Hazard
Slide shows on the web:
The new museology
PATRICK D. HAZARD
Cultural Planners and art critics alike writhe together and apart over what moneys will be allocated to which museums in the gloomy future. I am becoming convinced that the Internet can begin to substitute for Parthenon-type art museums. If the museum’s purpose is to put viewers into fuller appreciation of works of art, a slide show backed up by congenial prose beats the tourguide mini-radios that museums now employ to get closer to their patrons. Here are some examples of what I regard as the New Museology:
For several months I’ve been glorying in the architectural slide shows that Penn Professor Witold Rybczynski has been doing for Slate. These brilliant exegeses have appeared for more than a year, and the site’s fraymaster kindly clued me in to the entire backlog. Using ten slides and his lucid English, Witold R shows us the way to a hopeful future for a demotic architectural culture that heretofore has been hobbled by undereducated clients, viz. US as in US of A.
The freshest wrinkle at the new Slate Slide Museum is a fascinating take on the history of summer camps in America, based on a new book: A Manufactured Wilderness, by Abigail Van Slyck. It was a complex reaction to the ugliness of the new urbanization as well as the long summer vacations of urban children. (Their farmer coevals were busy doing the chores that keep their urban masters well fed.) Indian, pioneer and military themes compete for the applied fantasies of the arriving middle classes, and ultimately for the poor in Fresh Air Camps. A fascinating take on a neglected aspect of our leisure history.
And now Inga Saffron, the savvy architecture critic of the Philadelphia Inquirer, has gone to slides! Her take on the Tenth International Architectural Biennale in Venice (beginning a three-month run on September 10) is a natural for slides. Take a look at her Skyline Online .
The design critic of the International Herald Tribune , Alice Rawsthorn, has also gone to slides. She is the most ecumenical design critic writing for a general newspaper. Not only does she write and illustrate well, but she's constantly coming up with subjects you didn't realize contained a design aspect.
The rush to climb on the slide bandwagon is evident. Even so incisive a piece as Farhad Manjoo's "Cityscape of Fear" in a recent Salon would be considerably more effective if he used images of the new ways of defeating potential terrorists in the our big cities.
The new museology
PATRICK D. HAZARD
Cultural Planners and art critics alike writhe together and apart over what moneys will be allocated to which museums in the gloomy future. I am becoming convinced that the Internet can begin to substitute for Parthenon-type art museums. If the museum’s purpose is to put viewers into fuller appreciation of works of art, a slide show backed up by congenial prose beats the tourguide mini-radios that museums now employ to get closer to their patrons. Here are some examples of what I regard as the New Museology:
For several months I’ve been glorying in the architectural slide shows that Penn Professor Witold Rybczynski has been doing for Slate. These brilliant exegeses have appeared for more than a year, and the site’s fraymaster kindly clued me in to the entire backlog. Using ten slides and his lucid English, Witold R shows us the way to a hopeful future for a demotic architectural culture that heretofore has been hobbled by undereducated clients, viz. US as in US of A.
The freshest wrinkle at the new Slate Slide Museum is a fascinating take on the history of summer camps in America, based on a new book: A Manufactured Wilderness, by Abigail Van Slyck. It was a complex reaction to the ugliness of the new urbanization as well as the long summer vacations of urban children. (Their farmer coevals were busy doing the chores that keep their urban masters well fed.) Indian, pioneer and military themes compete for the applied fantasies of the arriving middle classes, and ultimately for the poor in Fresh Air Camps. A fascinating take on a neglected aspect of our leisure history.
And now Inga Saffron, the savvy architecture critic of the Philadelphia Inquirer, has gone to slides! Her take on the Tenth International Architectural Biennale in Venice (beginning a three-month run on September 10) is a natural for slides. Take a look at her Skyline Online .
The design critic of the International Herald Tribune , Alice Rawsthorn, has also gone to slides. She is the most ecumenical design critic writing for a general newspaper. Not only does she write and illustrate well, but she's constantly coming up with subjects you didn't realize contained a design aspect.
The rush to climb on the slide bandwagon is evident. Even so incisive a piece as Farhad Manjoo's "Cityscape of Fear" in a recent Salon would be considerably more effective if he used images of the new ways of defeating potential terrorists in the our big cities.
Sign up for our newsletter
All of the week's new articles, all in one place. Sign up for the free weekly BSR newsletters, and don't miss a conversation.
