Comment book in traditional form in the Asian and Islamic Art galleries.

One of the many goals of interpretive materials at the Brooklyn Museum is to consider the various ways that people learn (e.g. through text, sound, drawing, sharing, etc), to offer new ways for our visitors to experience and engage with objects and to keep the older methods current/relevant. If you’ve visited our permanent collections in recent years you may have noticed some unique labels which offer responses to and interpretations by our visitors to specific works of art – we call these “Community Voices.”

Community Voices label from the Egypt Reborn: Art for Eternity permanent collection exhibition.

It’s important to me that in addition to these practices in the physical exhibition, that such object interpretation and, really, education progress alongside technology; in the age of web 2.0 learning is essentially communal. Earlier this year my colleague, Shelley Bernstein, and I decided to try something new, replacing paper comment books with electronic comment kiosks for our special exhibitions Global Feminisms and Kindred Spirits. The overwhelming participation and positive feedback, both in the galleries and through our online comment forum, made it a very successful initiative.

Electronic comment kiosk for the exhibition Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art

As Shelley mentioned in her last post, Let’s Hear It, we are rolling out a new version of comment kiosks for the exhibition Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art. Now visitors have the opportunity to not only share general comments about the exhibition (as earlier offered), but also to comment on specific objects. In this, the Brooklyn Museum mission and subsequent tradition of Community Voice labels continues (and evolves). We wait anxiously to hear your thoughts.

An excerpt from our recently released exhibition catalog: In Denis’s video installation “Kawtchou”(Tires), 2006, the pile of tires, which are often burned in protest and used as barricades during social unrest, symbolize revolt. Footage on television monitors inserted into the tires follows two individuals, who reflect the psychological damage and trauma that have been inflicted on the people by Haiti’s instability, poverty and violence.

Our Curatorial Assistant for Exhibitions, Tamara Schechter, was instrumental in securing these tires for Mr. Denis. From Tamara: “We’d like to give a huge shout-out to Bernardo at Anton Junicic Ent. Inc. for his generosity in providing the tires for this piece. Bernardo and his team collected over 70 tires for us at no charge! We are thrilled and fortunate to involve Brooklyn businesses in the exhibition, and we extend our heartfelt gratitude to them for their support and enthusiastic participation.”

Infinite Island opens on August 31, 2007.

As an undergraduate student of art history at San Francisco State University, I studied with Dr. Bettelheim, who became and remains an important mentor to me and many others in studying visual art and culture of the Caribbean. No longer a student and now the Brooklyn Museum’s Manager of Interpretive Materials Manager, I have the privilege of being directly involved with Infinite Island, an exhibition that, I’m sure, will prove to be as important and influential as the former.

Stay tuned for more info about Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art opening August 31, 2007. More photos from the 1990 exhibition Caribbean Festival Arts can be found here.