New V&A Galleries

Accompanying recent Guardian articles about the opening of the new V&A gallery spaces is a great time lapse video containing interviews with key gallery staff. A great idea and such a easy way to invite visitors into the space and let them explore it...even if they are thousands of miles away...anyone up for a V&A trip?

Sneaky MCA visit

So I found myself, er, let's call it 'between' meetings today. Too late to go back to the office, too early to meet others...stuck at Circular Quay. Hmmm, what to do, what to do...well the MCA seemed like a place to wile away an hour.

Now I should say I've never been a fan. 'Contemporary' or 'modern' art and me haven't always been the best of friends, I love some, I loathe others..and I'm not quite there with my own personal aesthetic experience...I'm into plastics and early modernism at the moment, the minute rarity and one a kind meets mass production and consumption. And I hate the venue. All plain walls and stairs. But pushing aside my dislike of the physical and the crazed temporal states of my mind. Spare hour = MCA.

I was surprised and will go back.

Wonderful silver gelatin photographs by Ricky Maynard depicting indigenous Australians...being a fan of photography I was in heaven. However it was the placement of Maynard's works with that of those whom inspired his series, which was, well the inspiring part. The journey of Maynard (and really any artist) was just as interesting for this audience member as the work itself.

Video art. How very underrated by me...but some were wonderful, others *can you see me doing that motion for the subject matter went completely over my head!*. But one of them in particular struck me, a video piece that the artist had based on a work by Caspar David Friedrich. It had me entranced.

So...what's the outtake...well engagement and learning resonates through the lens of the viewer's previous experiences

and memories. Yep. And I'm the walking embodiment.

Note to self - visit the MCA more.

Wikimedia: Conference seeks open cultural content

Stealing a headline here, but following on from yesterday's mention of cultural institutions using Wikis to gather and share planning and policy...here's another one, but only about 100 times bigger!

It will be interesting to see the outtakes from this conference and its many notable speakers. Here's hoping the content is captured and shared just as they are aiming to do with Australia's (and NZ's) cultural content....although one question...er, what about the other arts?

Wikimedia: Conference seeks open cultural content

'In a world-first conference, the Wikimedia Australia community will this week sit down with more than 170 senior executives from the nation’s largest cultural institutions – from the National Gallery to the Parliamentary Library – to devise strategies to better share Australia's cultural heritage.

Called ‘GLAM-WIKI: Finding Common Ground,’ the event at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra on August 6-7 brings together Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums (GLAM) with Wikimedia Australia, the all-volunteer force that brings Australian content to the Wikipedia site.

GLAM-WIKI convener and Wikimedia Australia vice-president Liam Wyatt says the conference aims to increase the availability of Australian and New Zealand cultural content through Wikipedia in a sustainable way through collaboration and the open source treatment of cultural items.'

To visit the official wiki of GLAM-Wiki see here