Museums of the Future - POLYLOGUES I.

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Museums of the future and for the future: equilibrium, separation or symbiosis of traditional and new artistic institutions and practices?

The speakers in our first session will present their activities and research:

• Jon Ippolito - University of Maine, USA, http://three.org/ippolito/
• Kenneth Knoespel - Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/stac/
• Hannah Redler - Science Museum, UK, http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/
• Ladislav Kesner - Cultropa, CR
• Pavel Dousa - Center for preservation of the cultural heritage, National museum, CR, http://www.nm.cz/english/
• Zuzana Bauerova - MinervaPlus, Ministry of culture, CR, http://www.mkcr.cz/http://www.minervaeurope.org/whatis/minervaplus.htm

The temples dedicated to the Muses are becoming crowded these days with new artistic practices and ever more complex objects that are demanding their own space and proper treatment. From the early curiosity cabinets to the immersive CAVE exhibitions, technologies of display evolve concurrently with the new views on what is art and what is our heritage: what should be presented to cause wonder and what is here to educate and to be preserved from the past. This tension between the art and history museums, between the isolated art works demonstrating our present and the contextual objects accumulating and translating our past is still strong. The new technologies can not only support both, delight and wonder as well as knowledge, but also bring them together.

Should we still separate these functions of the museums or create an equilibrium or even symbiosis? How can technologies help in this?
Should museums become a theme parks or remain temples for art, culture and science? What are the new roles of the museums? Are they repositories of the history, heritage institutions, forums for public debate, broadly based classrooms, memorials and places of mourning, sites of social interaction and creative encounters?
How to use the new tools to enhance and expand the museums' pluralistic roles as the agora, forum, a market place of ideas, a place of renegotiation of individual and group identities?
What positive does the emphasis on new technology bring and what are the problems?
Are the new technologies just new modes of delivery and how do they affect the visitors expectations? What are the problems with the collection, archiving and preservation of contemporary media art works and internet art?
How to resolve the problems of digital collections, the issues of storage, migration and emulation? How can museums become a research based institutions? How important are and what form should the partnerships between museums, universities and other institutions have?

This session is a part of a series entitled POLYLOGUES organized by www.CIANT.cz and New media studies, Prague, in cooperation with MARCEL network. It aims to stimulate interdisciplinary exchange of ideas via sessions moderated from Prague while having guest speakers from all over the world. We hope to create a bridge between countries that will facilitate intercultural or rather intercontinental and interdisciplinary exchanges in the fields of art and new technologies. All sessions will be recorded and made available to general public in the archive.

Moderators
Denisa Kera
New Media Studies
Charles University of Prague
denisa.kera[at]ff.cuni.cz

John Holder
School of Architecture and the Visual Arts
University of East London
holder[at]uel.ac.uk