As I mentioned in my previous post about mapping our digital landscape, we’re not letting the lack of CRM completely get us down. We have…
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As a follow-up to our ASK-guided gallery tours for Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving and Pride Month, the ASK team has created a new…
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In 2017 we partnered with educational start-up Duolingo and their new digital platform, Tinycards, to produce fun and educational art history flashcard decks. 2 years,…
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“Celebrate Pride Month! Our team of friendly experts guide you on a tour of LGBTQ+ artists and themes throughout the Museum via text message, chatting…
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The second evaluation completed by Pratt grad students last semester examined the ways visitors were using ASK. Partially inspired by wanting to know if people were participating…
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In my last post, I posited that although we don’t have a CRM, we are gathering data in the ways we can to help inform…
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One of my personal and professional goals for the Visitor Experience and Engagement department is to make more data-driven decisions. We’ve written A LOT about…
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Our exhibition Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving closed on May 12 and we’re taking a moment to review our ASK engagement for this show….
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In my last post I detailed how I knitted together thematic connections across different collections and what effect in-gallery labels have on object engagement, but…
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While I wanted to learn more about visitors complete interactions through the app, without the ability to systematically dive into chats, I chose to focus…
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I ended my last post with a brief exploration of what people are asking about via ASK. I was particularly interested in going beyond the…
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Our major exhibition for this spring, Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving, has been very well-attended and well-received so far. It has also posed unique…
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During my first semester as the Pratt Visitor Experience & Engagement fellow I was able to learn a significant amount about ASK user behavior—despite limitations…
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In my last post, I laid out some of the challenges working with the current metrics dashboard and the data exporting process for ASK. Despite…
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As the Pratt Visitor Experience & Engagement Fellow, I was tasked with conducting a deep dive into ASK-related data. There are several research questions that…
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From March through July 2018, the Brooklyn Museum was the home of the multimedia exhibition David Bowie is. It was the twelfth and final stop…
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I will admit, I’m a little embarrassed that it’s been more than a year since our last post. Rest assured, while we may have been…
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For the majority of this project, we have been fixated on use rate. After all, it’s easy to track and is a very clear measurement…
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Sometimes we plan and execute ASK-related projects on a long timeline, but occasionally a project will happen organically and almost take us by surprise. Using…
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One of the questions we’ve had since the beginning of the project was if ASK is appropriate for a mounted kiosk of some kind. We…
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One thing we’ve learned through all our ASK pilots and testing is that people love an incentive. Free drink tickets finally helped us to attract…
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Last week we wrapped up our final planned pilot project to help determine the direction for ASK 2.0. Another somewhat obvious solution to the challenge…
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As promised, this week’s post is on our second pilot in search of our direction for ASK 2.0. For the first pilot, we provided devices…
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As I prefaced in my post last week, while ASK has been successful from an engagement standpoint, we are stalled at between 1-2% use rate….
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Radio silence from us usually means we’re up to something and this time is no different. Since our last post in May, we’ve been looking…
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One of the things we learned from ERm’s evaluation was that ASK users really appreciate when the responses to their questions are well timed (i.e….
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This month marks one year since the reinstallation of the Museum’s fifth-floor American art galleries, formerly known as “American Identities: A New Look.” This anniversary…
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Early on in the course of ASK, Shelley and I noticed some really interesting patterns related to where people tended to use the app. While…
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Our special exhibition “Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern” opened on March 3, and—not surprisingly for a show about such a famous artist—it’s turned out to be…
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As part of our original messaging with soft launch, we deployed gallery labels advertising the app. This first round included questions that we hoped would…
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In a recent conversation with colleagues from the Peabody Essex Museum, Sara and I fielded a question that frequently arises: which works of art do…
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If you’ve ever visited the Brooklyn Museum on a Target First Saturday, you know what a special experience we try to provide for our visitors….
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In my last post I wrote about our process for deciding which collection highlights to include in ASK’s new self-guided tour, titled Highlights and Hidden Gems….
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Our entire ASK program has been built upon regular user testing and evaluation, which we’ve always completed ourselves…until now. Since we’ve been trying for over…
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Earlier this week, Sara introduced the topic of ASK’s new collaboration with our Group Tours office and our efforts to shape the content of our…
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If you’ve been following our blog, you know we spend a great deal of time focusing on getting our ASK app in more people’s hands….
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Since time immemorial, nerds have been listing things and memorizing them for fun. 2,000 years ago, the Roman writer Pliny the Elder published his Natural…
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I know it’s been pretty much radio silence here since my last post about the MUSE Awards, but rest-assured, we have been busy! Over the…
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I’m delighted to share that my suitcase was a little bit heavier on my return trip from the annual meeting of the American Alliance of…
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If you’ve been following our posts lately, you’ve noticed our tech team has been doing some amazing behind-the-scenes work in anticipation of our Android launch…
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Extremely smart people dedicated to the field of machine learning have made tools that are not only better, but far more accessible than they have…
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A number of things happen after a visitor has a chat with our ASK team. At the end of each day, the ASK team takes the…
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Every second counts when the ASK team is responding to visitor questions. With that in mind, a few weeks ago we looked into how we…
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It’s been a year since the original ASK team arrived at the Museum, and we’ve been reflecting on all the ways ASK has evolved over…
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ASK Brooklyn Museum for Android is now available on Google Play. We had one early quandary, but this was a fairly straightforward development process. That is, until we…
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As the ASK Team gears up for the app’s Android launch in April and expands to two full-time members and four part-time members, it seems…
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Hard to believe that it’s been a full year since we began the initial hiring process for our ASK team. We’ve accomplished so much in…
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As reported earlier, the Android version of our ASK app is due to launch in April. For the most part, the app will look and…
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Our Android release is coming in April. I’m often asked about our strategy to expand into Android when 74% of our users are on iOS…
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It’s been just over a year since I wrote about the realities of installing ibeacon to scale. Our ASK app, funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, has been active…
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In one of my previous posts, way back in March 2015, I discussed our initial plans for a shared research database (an “ASK wiki”) which…
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I’m sure it will come as no surprise to anyone that getting out of your own head every once in a while can have great benefits. We’ve…
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In our last post, Sara discussed our ongoing definition and refinement of the ASK app’s engagement goals and our recent collaborative workshop with some of…
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We developed ASK based on the premise (determined by over a year’s worth of pilot projects) that our visitors want to talk about art with…
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Things have been pretty quiet over here for a while—have you noticed? We had been blogging our progress on ASK weekly and in my last post…
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As summer draws to a close, so does our testing for the location of our ASK team. You may remember the results from our earlier testing in…
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We all struggle with how to measure success. We’re thinking a lot about this right now as we begin to put the pieces together from…
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Knowing what we know about our visitors, we figured pretty early on that we would need to offer face time with staff as part of…
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Perhaps its the nature of an agile project, or just this agile project, but at each stage of ASK Brooklyn Museum we find ourselves facing…
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If you think about it, building a project is fairly straightforward. It’s a one way street of sorts; a controlled process with steps involved, tests we can run, and timelines…
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In my last post, I discussed our “opening response” and slight tweaks to make that a better experience. Our “first response” (the first message the…
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What is the pedagogy of a text message conversation? Can you actually have a pedagogy of texting? If so, what does it look like? How…
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Sara and I couldn’t be happier to have ASK featured on Museum 2.0, so instead of blogging our own progress this week we’ll point you…
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At the Brooklyn Museum, we like to take inspiration from many things. After recently watching “Mad Max: Fury Road,” we realized to make our servers…
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We’ve talked a lot about how user expectations helped shape our implementation. There are times when it’s incredibly valuable to listen to your users, but there…
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When we first began thinking about the lobby reconfiguration, the need for flexible and moveable was paramount and all of our discussions with the design…
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Shelley and I like to cast a wide net when looking for inspiration and ideas, often looking outside the museum sector from the customer experience…
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As you’ve been reading, ASK Brooklyn Museum isn’t just about an app—it’s an initiative that seeks to re-envision our visitor experience from top to bottom. That “top”…
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In every project there’s always a moment where the timeline starts to shrink. You start to look at your launch date and the to do list (ours is…
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Last month we had the pleasure of introducing the six members of our audience engagement team, the specialists who will be engaging with visitors via…
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As I introduced in a previous post, SITU Studio was brought on board to design a mobile, flexible, and temporary set of furniture components that…
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When you’ve got any tool that is designed to answer questions the danger is that people think it’s an automated system; with ASK we need to…
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In my previous post, I talked a lot about agile development and where we failed it. Agile has also thrown us some serious curves in…
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As we march toward our June launch for ASK, it’s a good moment to look back at some of the issues we’ve faced along the way….
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Our ASK team has a number of exciting challenges ahead of them. How do you communicate information about art in an informed and engaging way…
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I know that everyone on the team agrees—spending time learning about the collection is a privilege, an honor, and a lot of fun. Training started…
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ASK is a tool that allows any museum visitor using the Museum’s app to have the opportunity to be in direct and immediate contact with…
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I am happy to announce that we’ve identified and hired six individuals who are knowledgeable, experienced at connecting people with art, and excited to take…
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The most passionate debates in our office have centered around how we are using geofencing in our upcoming app to present different information to users dependent upon…
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The ASK mobile app has gone through many design iterations and has continually evolved in a quest to to offer an exceptional user experience. In…
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We have an incredible opportunity in front of us; the folks who will be using our ASK app are coming through the door every day, so we…
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The most basic goal of the ASK app is to connect visitors to works of art in the museum. Although the conduit for this connection…
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I’ve just joined the Bloomberg Connects project as the Audience Engagement Lead. I will be heading the team that will be answering inquiries from visitors…
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On the surface, it might seem that our Bloomberg Connects project is all about tech. After all, this particular Bloomberg Philanthropies initiative is specifically for…
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1 + 1 = 2? Obvious right? How about (2 + 2 x 4)^2? That’s a little more complicated but not so bad either. Over…
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Location aware technology as part of Bloomberg Connects is pretty vital. We use it to tell the staff answering questions which gallery a visitor is standing…
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The dashboard—the web application our audience engagement team will use to answer incoming questions—is a complex application with many parts and before we hit the…
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We are excited to announce that the Brooklyn based design firm, SITU Studio, will be working with us to create a new, more friendly and…
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Every year a gathering of hackers and information security professionals convene in Washington, DC to discuss how awful and broken the state of computer security…
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In previous blog posts we’ve discussed the results of our initial user testing. In this blog post we’ll talk about the process and challenges of getting…
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From the outset we knew that the dashboard—the web application our audience engagement team will use to answer incoming questions—was going to be a huge…
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In the web development world, RESTish APIs (Application Programming Interface) have slowly become the de facto standard by which different computing systems are used to…
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By and large, most software in the world is made to a spec enshrined into immutability, then interpreted differently by various parts of the teams…
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Earlier this week I covered how we have been testing the ASK app internally. Today I am going to talk about how we user tested…
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I was very excited by the prospect of user testing in the field when I started working on the Bloomberg Connects project. As a web…
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In getting our ASK iPad pilot into full swing for Bloomberg Connects we needed to nail down how we were going to present the answers…
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As Shelley mentioned in her previous post, we’ve tweaked our comment kiosks over the past year or so, shifting them to an ask functionality only…
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Brian and Jennie have been talking about our forthcoming mobile application, which is one of the public facing components of our Bloomberg Connects project, but…
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When I started as Web Designer for the museum in January, I assumed I had been hired for a website redesign. Rookie mistake. As you’ve…
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When Apple released iOS7 in 2013 one of the new features introduced was iBeacon. This technology would now enable Apple devices to pick up broadcasting…
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In previous Bloomberg Connects blog posts we’ve described the iterative process of determining how we can engage the visitor, enhancing their museum experience. The ASK app (our…
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“Three Simple Truths” from The Agile Samurai by Jonathan Rasmussen: 1. It is impossible to gather all the requirements at the beginning of a project….
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If you’ve been reading the blog lately you know we’ve been taking stock of our digital efforts and making considerable changes. I’ve been discussing what’s not…
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As Sara mentioned in her previous posts, we’ve been careful in this project to let visitor need pave the way toward an idea. It was…
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A series of internal meetings got us set on the path for this project, but we wanted to test it with our visitors. To do…
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As Shelley introduced in her last post, we have the very ambitious goal of overhauling our visitor experience through an initiative funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies…
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We are incredibly excited that Bloomberg Philanthropies has funded a three-year initiative as part of Bloomberg Connects and it gives us the opportunity to significantly improve…
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Since we first made use of our 3D printer, we’ve grown the number of things we’ve used it for, ranging from creating a participatory experience…
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Remember my post on Social Change? We’ve been evaluating our digital projects with a careful eye toward what’s working and what isn’t. At this juncture,…
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A few years ago we moved away from hosting our website infrastructure from its dusty basement to the Cloud. This brought a certain peace of…
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There comes a moment in every trajectory where one has to change course. As part of a social media strategic plan, we are changing gears…
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Earlier this year, we started exploring how 3D printing could enhance the visitor experience and began by introducing it on that month’s sensory tour. In…
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As I embarked on The Dinner Party Wikipedia project, my first step was to conduct a thorough assessment of the presence of these 1,038 women…
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I am just delighted to announce the wonderful news that this fall, Brooklyn’s acclaimed Michelin star restaurant, Saul, will move from its current location in…
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The conversation about sexism on Wikipedia is longstanding. In 2011, The New York Times Room for Debate took up the question of why there are…
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As I’ve been leading the current Wikipedia initiative at the Brooklyn Museum, I have recently started working with our curator of African Art, Kevin Dumouchelle,…
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One of the best parts of working in contemporary art is that we often work closely with artists, and are able to build relationships over…
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In September 2012, a representative from WikiAfrica approached us about working with them to provide Africa-related content to the Wikimedia Foundation’s websites. As the WikiAfrica profile…
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Our online collections have a relatively small number of visitors compared to the whopping 470 million unique visitors to Wikipedia each month. Every day, hundreds…
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If you’ve ever heard me speak at conferences you know that one of our most successful technology projects is also one of our simplest—the comment…
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If you’ve visited the second floor of the Museum recently, you may have noticed that it looks considerably more bare than normal. Big changes are…
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In my last post, I highlighted several of the many prints in the Brooklyn Museum’s collection that, like those now on view in the Käthe…
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The current exhibition in the Herstory Gallery of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art features the politically engaged work of early twentieth-century artist…
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I’ve been at the Brooklyn Museum for about a year-and-a-half now, which is also as long as I’ve been a resident of our fair borough….
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When Shelley and David brought up the idea of 3D printing, my not-so-inner tech geek and my really-blatantly-outer education geek got pretty excited. As Shelley…
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My first exposure to the world of 3D printing took place in 2009 approximately 500 feet under the Earth’s surface in a former missile silo…
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In the last year, we’ve seen a lot happening in the museum space with 3D printing. The Smithsonian is working on what looks like a enormous project,…
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Working together with the ARCE project team we got a great deal accomplished this season in preparing the site to open to visitors. Most of…
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Our last day of excavation was February 28, but we still have work to do. Since we are leaving Luxor next week, this will be…
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Jaap’s wife, Egyptologist Julia Harvey, arrived on February 15, completing this season’s small team. Julia has agreed to take on the pottery, with which she…
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According to the late French scholar, Agnes Cabrol, these 3 badly damaged sphinxes sitting east of Chapel D date stylistically to the reign of Ramesses…
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Our first day at the site this year was February 6, so most of this first posting will be about how the site has changed…
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As you may recall, we kicked-off a visitor study about Connecting Cultures back in May with an updated approach based on a bit of trial-and-error…
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Since the 1990s, Yoko Ono has created her work Wish Tree in locations all over world. In honor of Ono’s acceptance of the Brooklyn Museum’s…
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Jean-Michel Othoniel: My Way just closed here in Brooklyn a few days ago, but The Secret Happy End (2008) is still on view in the…
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It’s hard to believe we are here after dozens of artist and voter meetups throughout the summer; an exhilarating open studio weekend that resulted in…
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Once we had our group of the ten most nominated artists, Eugenie and I set out on our part of the collaboration. We visited the…
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You have been following us from the 1708 studios to 9,457 nominations to 10 nominees to the 5 featured artists. Let’s take a look at…
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If you want to see a fun window display go over to the Henri Bendel at 721 Fifth Avenue at 56th Street. Their designers used…
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Since our announcement of our top ten nominated artists in late September, Eugenie Tsai (John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art) and I have visited their…
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After more than a year of partisanship, pundits, and polls, as well as a seemingly never-ending stream of gaffes, accusations, and distortions, Election Day has…
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Jean-Michel Othoniel has noted that he is fascinated and inspired by fragile glass objects that have survived for centuries, imbued with the unknown histories and…
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After approximately 147,000 studio visits to 1,708 artists, and then 9,457 nominations, we have our top ten nominated artists. In alphabetical order: Aleksander Betko, Cobble…
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This fall, for the first time since the program began, Gallery/Studio is going to offer a class in art history… sort of. We refer to…
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As you saw in Shelley’s previous post, we were thrilled about the level of participation over the open studio weekend. At the same time, we…
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Our borough-wide open studio weekend is finally just days away! On September 8th and 9th, more than 1800 artists across 46 neighborhoods in Brooklyn will…
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GO is a project that’s rooted in community, but “community” is one of those words that can have a lot of different meanings. As Sharon…
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As we’ve noted in our posts, the inspiration for GO came from two primary sources: ArtPrize and the long and burgeoning tradition of open studio…
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As we continue to move forward throughout the summer, it seems fitting to talk about the inspiration behind GO. I’ve already mentioned that the Brooklyn…
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When you look up at the large, towering Abelam bark painting in our exhibition Connecting Cultures, you wouldn’t guess that it had been bedridden for…
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You may recall my previous post, which introduced our two-part visitor study about the Connecting Cultures installation. Well, we are a little better than half-way…
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When Sharon and I first started discussing the project that would become GO, one of our sources of inspiration was a map that the Brooklyn…
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Yesterday conservator Kerith Koss introduced readers to a late 16th- or early 17th-century Ottoman tile panel (39.407.1-.54), is currently on view in Connecting Cultures: A…
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If you’ve been through Connecting Cultures, you’ve probably wondered at the number of diverse objects. You may not be aware, however, of the planning and…
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Every museum strives to enrich its collection even further, but acquiring new objects is not always possible. Luckily, our storerooms have much to offer and…
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You’ve probably heard that if Brooklyn were its own city, we’d be the fourth largest in the United States. With a land mass of 73…
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When Shelley and I first started brainstorming the ideas that have now become GO, we were thinking about how to build upon some of the…
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Over the summer months you may notice an increased number of staff stationed in the museum lobby. One of these staff members may approach you,…
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All of us were a little sad to see “Bird Lady” go, even if it is only for a brief period of time, but we…
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Perched high on a lift in the fourth floor contemporary galleries, Brooklyn-based artist Santi Moix is drawing directly on the wall with charcoal to create…
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In my last post, I discussed the wall murals and the state-of-the-art photo enlargements in Connecting Cultures. Today, I’d like to talk about a few…
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The presence of three books in the new Connecting Cultures installation gives me a welcome opportunity to talk about these key works that are in the…
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It’s been roughly three and half years since Will Cary and I started the 1stfans Membership program at the Museum; come July, the program will…
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Many of you may be wondering where our beloved Female Figurine, nicknamed the “Bird Lady” is. One of the stars of our Egyptian collection, she…
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As Kevin mentioned in his last post, Connecting Cultures is presented in thematic sections: Places, People, and Things, in addition to an Introductory Center. Since…
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In Shelley’s previous post, she announced the installation of QR codes installed in exhibitions that lead visitors to Wikipedia articles for further information. These QR…
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You may remember my blog post a while back, QR in the New Year? In it, I talked about our QR code testing and reported…
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Connecting Cultures, a new installation that includes works from the Brooklyn Museum’s many diverse collections, has now opened on the first floor in the Great…
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One of my favorite discoveries since Keith Haring: 1978-1982 opened is how much Haring thought. Journals dating back as far as his middle school years…
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If you’ve visited us sometime over the last year, you probably noticed a lot of construction activity that is part of a multiphase transformation of…
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Starting today, you can find the Brooklyn Museum in Google Art Project. I’m here in Paris at the launch for the second phase where more…
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In the exhibition Playing House four artists, Betty Woodman, Ann Chu, Ann Agee and Mary Lucier, install their own artwork into and around several period rooms…
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The Brooklyn Museum Library collection has recently been enriched with the donation of several rare items of African American art given by Camille and Luther…
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On the first floor of the Museum, if you look to your left while waiting for the double elevators, you will notice two wide green…
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A while back, I reported that we were in the process of a trial period with QR codes. We’ve just taken a look at the…
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One of the questions people always ask me is how web differs from what happens in the building and that’s a difficult thing to get…
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I’ve had a lot of time to mull over the results of the Split Second, so here are a few of my thoughts—roughly one week…
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I am listed as a contributor to the Split Second project, but I really wasn’t the brains behind it; I’m just the person who okayed…
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One morning in late September, I went to Lan Tuazon’s studio in Bushwick with Pierce Jackson, who is making the videos for Raw/Cooked. Lan was…
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A big part of experiencing art is talking about it. Sometimes (or, uh, frequently) artworks are successful because they provoke disagreement, and along with that…
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In preparation for the paper rotation that recently went on view in our second floor, the works were examined and, if necessary, stabilized before going…
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When most of us think about the roaring twenties, we envision scenes of flappers cutting loose on the dance floor, bustling cities filling with new…
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If you’ve visited The Latino List exhibition, you may have wondered how Timothy Greenfield-Sanders creates such monumental photographs. It all starts with the camera. For…
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In the previous post I closed by noting that depending on what participants were asked to do, visual complexity could affect their ratings. Indeed, we…
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Get ready for some surprising encounters when you visit the Brooklyn Museum’s beloved period rooms this February, when several of the rooms will be the…
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Sculptors and painters draw constantly. Architects, botanists, designers, and many a traveling student have been known to constantly have a sketchbook in hand. But what…
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The Institute of Museum and Library Services has been an important supporter of several initiatives to make the Brooklyn Museum’s collection much more accessible to…
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Complexity is an important factor in the evaluation of art. In all of the previous Split Second blog posts I’ve talked about how the complexity…
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If you have walked through Raw/Cooked: Kristof Wickman then you have probably noticed the abundance of cast pumpkins. As the Coordinator for Raw/Cooked, I had the…
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As Eugenie noted in her post, The Moving Garden is installed in our Rubin Pavilion and the artist invites the visitor to take a flower…
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A long granite table top filled with roses now welcomes visitors as they enter the Brooklyn Museum on Eastern Parkway. You might be tempted to…
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I’ve long been a critic of QR Codes. When I look around, I see low adoption rates, technical hurdles for end users and some really…
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As Jenny mentioned in her previous post, we had an interactive running on a series of iPads in Vishnu: Hinduism’s Blue Skinned Savior and now that…
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In previous Split Second blog posts, we looked at the effects of thin-slicing, textual information, and gender. Put another way, we were studying the effects…
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All eyes will be on you this fall when you enter the Great Hall and encounter the twenty-five massive photographic portraits by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders that…
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In preparation for the exhibition Sanford Biggers: Sweet Funk—An Introspective, conservators took part in preparing and installing Blossom, 2010, a recent acquisition to the collection….
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Repairing papyrus can be a little like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. In order to make sense of the many small pieces at hand, we…
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One of the projects I’ve been working on is Fine Lines: American Drawings from the Brooklyn Museum, an exhibition of about 100 of our pre-1945…
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Yes folks. The quake was felt here at the Brooklyn Museum. Unlike our colleagues in California, Tennessee and even Indianapolis, we Brooklynites do not live…
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In the last blog post about Split Second, I talked about how adding extra information about a work changed what people thought about it. In…
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After many months of object review, checklist creation, cross-departmental consultation, budgeting, conservation, design, research, writing, photography, editing, construction, painting, installation, and lighting, I am pleased…
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Elvis is at the Brooklyn Museum and not where you’d expect to find him—in the new installation of the Museum’s African galleries, African Innovations. Brooklyn’s…
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With the initiation of the project Split Second, Joan Cummins, Curator of Asian Art selected a very large number (185) of works from the Museum’s…
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Textiles are a crucial element to the story I wanted to tell in African Innovations. Immensely varied in media, form, content and use, textile arts…
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The Vishnu exhibition that’s on view here right now includes a large section on the god’s avatars. The show introduces the idea of the avatar…
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One of the many adaptations that moving the African collection into the South Gallery on the First Floor has required has been adjusting to a…
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Trying to track the history of the images of Brooklyn that we’re geotagging for #mapBK on Flickr and Twitter and then porting to Historypin reminds me of the…
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Recent visitors to the museum may have noticed some increasingly dramatic changes to the first floor—first, a new series of walls began to rise in…
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Last week I talked about our Split Second: Indian Paintings exhibition and Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. In the previous…
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A big inspiration for Split Second: Indian Paintings was the book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. Blink introduced the general…
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Watching Split Second: Indian Paintings get installed into the gallery this week has been a real thrill for me. I believe it is vital that…
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Thinking further about our unexpected cameo on Treme the other week, there are even further connections to our own collection that can be made to…
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I was recently alerted by Jenny and Shelley that our African collection got an unexpected shout out on a recent episode of Treme, HBO’s drama…
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Filmed in Yemen, The Oath is an extraordinary portrait of Abu Jandal, former body guard to Osama bin Laden, jihadist, father, mentor, and cab driver….
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If you know and love Brooklyn we need your help to get 300+ images from our collection pinned to Historypin’s map before their launch on…
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If you read Lisa’s post on the animal mummy field trip to the Animal Medical Center and got as excited as we did, follow us…
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Judging from the aphorisms “a penny saved is a penny earned” or “a penny for your thoughts,” the copper cent at one time possessed a degree…
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These past few weeks we have been steadily packing and preparing to transport a group of animal mummies to the Animal Medical Center (AMC) for…
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It’s been two years since we released our collections database API and since that time we’ve seen a variety of use from iPhone and iPad…
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When it comes to competition, visual artists and culinary chefs are some of the fiercest in the world. The intensity of sport, the drive for…
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This portrait by the British painter Thomas Hudson has just been added to American Identities, the installation of the Museum’s world-renowned collections of American art….
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Yesterday, a team of curators, conservators, and art packers and handlers took the last of our human mummies to North Shore University Hospital to be…
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Like Coney Island and hot dogs, some things just go together. Such is the combined forces of the award winning documentary series, POV and the…
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With the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War it is a good moment to look back through time and how Americans have been depicted…
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Did you know that April is National Poetry Month? To celebrate, the Department of Cultural Affairs and the Mayor’s office is hosting Poem In Your…
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This is the final post in a tour through the Museum’s historical exhibition press releases, taking us up to the 1980s. If you’ve enjoyed this…
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The previous post on the Museum’s recently completed digitizing of historical exhibition press releases highlighted some excerpts from the 1920s, 30s, and early 40s. There…
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We’ve just completed digitizing and making available on our website the hundreds of exhibition press releases the Museum has issued since the 1920s. Though it’s…
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Image Courtesy of Sarah Gentile Remembering the Triangle Fire by Know Your Museum March 25, 2011 marks the centennial of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Brooklyn…
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Recently, the New York Times published a highly critical review of the Tipi: Heritage of the Great Plains exhibition. As one of its main points…
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About a year ago, inspired by LACMA’s Reading Room, we started thinking about digitizing some Brooklyn Museum publications. We were excited to learn that many…
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Our research to further understand the Book of the Dead of the Goldworker Amun, Sobekmose continues. Carbon-14 (C-14) dating was one of the first scientific…
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As Arty Facts and the Gallery/Studio program celebrates their twenty-fifth anniversary this year, I thought it would be a great time to sit down with…
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The Tipi: Heritage of the Great Plains exhibition provides us with a wonderful opportunity to showcase the Museum’s Native American collections and resources. As someone…
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Some may have seen my post in December about my visit to a drafty construction site in Manhattan to view Situ Studio’s full-scale mock up…
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This is the posting intended for January 28 but not sent because of the lack of internet service in Egypt at that time. Richard and…
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Installing a Tipi by Know Your Museum
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That’s exactly the question we were asking ourselves when Nancy Rosoff and Susan Kennedy Zeller organizing Curators for Tipi: Heritage of the Great Plains put…
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Another scientific analytical technique commonly used in art conservation is called Fourier-transform Infrared Spectroscopy, or FTIR. The Brooklyn Museum’s Paper Conservation Lab employed this technique…
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One of the many scientific analytical techniques used in art conservation is called X-ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy, or XRF. The Paper Conservation Lab here at the…
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On January 15 we finished removing the baulk stub over the remains of the southern boundary wall of the Taharqa Gate approach. In this view…
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For my second installment of Brooklyn’s Finest, I wanted to approach someone with whom I work closely with in the Director’s Office. Everyone knows his…
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Now that Seductive Subversion has closed, it’s time to look at the Wikipop project and report on what we’ve seen in the galleries over the…
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We began what will be mainly a study season on January 11 with the traditional cutting of the camel thorn. Fortunately there isn’t much as…
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One of the results of projects to bring our Libraries and Archives into the digital world is that we have boxes of cards—mostly typewritten or computer generated—available…
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The formal report on the 2010 season of work at the Mut Precinct, in English and Arabic, is now available online in the Mut feature…
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As many may know Situ Studio, a Brooklyn based architectural and fabrication firm, has been preparing for their installation reORDER, which will be presented here…
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One of the great things about doing an interview for Brooklyn’s Finest is the chance for me chat for awhile with a colleague whose path…
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Following Rachel’s previous discussion on pigments and inks used in our Book of the Dead of the Goldworker of Amun, Sobekmose, I will begin here…
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When I first saw Chryssa’s neon sculpture in storage in late 2004, the object was in an unexhibitable state, missing the two end pieces of the…
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