Page 202 - AC/E's Digital Culture Annual Report 2015

Cultural business models on the Internet202Over the past 20 years certain digital areas have emerged and stabilized. Almost all museums consider a website as necessary as a building... in fact some museums lack a building andexist only in the digital realm. Many museums have put their entire collections online, and many more, like the Philadelphia Museum of Art, are in the process of doing so. Recentlythe Whitney Museum of American Art put its collection of more than 21,000 objects by more than 3,000 artists online in an exceptionally easy-to-use format, with pages of thumbnailsin alphabetical order.4 Ticketing and customer relationship management are driven by the need to communicate with visitors, develop members and donors and track interactions. Email,email newsletters, social media and distributed content (like artist videos) have taken over while mailed newsletters and print publications have begun to taper off. Audio tours with proprietary hardware have given way to bring your own device cell phone tours and more recently smart phone and tablet applications. Phone systems have shifted from dedicated wired devices to Voice over IP and to bring your own mobile and some organizations have migrated to telecommunication applications like Skype leapfrogging even VOIP phones. Security cameras with VHS tapes and key based security systems have also shifted to digitalwith Digital Video Recorders and Video over IP and RFID based keycards and bio metrics. A relatively new system in the museum digital ecosystem is the Digital Asset Management System which consists of a set of software tools that are used for the ingestion, tagging, storage, retrieval and distribution of digital content such as digital photographs, audio and videos to other systems. Backups and disaster recoveryhas moved from tape, to near line storage to cloud backup and archiving systems. Last but not least, some early adopters are working with the ideas of loyalty systems and gamificationto enhance engagement, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) and Learning Management Systems to teach web visitors and more recently staff as well as venturing into cloud services, digital signage and e-paper labels.Many museums have put their entire collections online, such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.The BroadThe Broad is a new contemporary art museum being built by philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. The museum, which is designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, will open to thepublic in 2015. The museum will be home to the nearly 2,000 works of art in The Broad Art Foundation and the Broads’ personal collections, which are among the most prominent holdings of postwar and contemporary art worldwide. With its innovative “veil-and-vault” concept, the 120,000-square-foot, $140 million building will feature two floors of gallery space to showcase The Broad’s comprehensive collections and will be the headquarters of The Broad Art Founda- tion’s worldwide lending library.As The Broad is being built we are not only interested in the physical space but also inPractice not theory: a new art museum in the digital age