Director Arnold Lehman greets visitors at the staff desk in Connecting Cultures. Each staff member at the Museum will act as a "connector" at the desk for two hour shifts once every two months. When you come visit us, you'll meet a different person each time and be able to give us your feedback about the installation and your visit with us.

At this desk, visitors will have the opportunity to meet diverse Museum staff and to interact with them about many different aspects of the Brooklyn Museum. Whether the conversation is as simple as getting directions to the cafe or as complex as discussing favorite works of art in the collection, the point is to provide a human connection between the visitor and the Brooklyn Museum. The conversation goes both ways. Not only can the visitor learn about the Museum, but the staff members, or “connectors,” can learn what it is the public needs to know, and what they are thinking about, so that we can better tailor what we provide to meet those needs.

Arnold reports that he had a great time during his term as a “connector.” Yesterday was a lively day at the Brooklyn Museum, and he talked to visitors from around the country and around the world. I happened to have a group of visitors from another American museum for a tour in the afternoon, and they were impressed to find our Director greeting visitors in the galleries, and they took full advantage of the opportunity to learn more about the institution. They went away astonished at the friendly and open spirit of the Brooklyn Museum.

Yesterday was a trial run for this program. It begins in earnest on Wednesday, May 2, when Brooklyn Museum staff “connectors” will rotate shifts at the desk in Connecting Cultures. You never know who you will meet, so come for a visit. I hope to see you there!

Art Handlers install Nick Cave's Soundsuit, 2008, one of several works by contemporary artists in the Connecting People section of Connecting Cultures. Soundsuit transforms the human body and allows the wearer to assume new identities by alluding to a range of rituals, from ceremonial African dances to Christian liturgy.

If you think about past visits to the Brooklyn Museum—or to any art museum, for that matter—you probably remember galleries divided into traditional categories. For instance, you might go to the Asian galleries or the African galleries, which are organized by geography. Or you might go to the ancient galleries or the contemporary galleries, which are organized by chronology or time; or you might visit paintings galleries or silver galleries, or period rooms, which are organized by medium or type. These organizational principles have been standard in museums for over a hundred years. We can learn a lot about objects and the cultures, eras and types they represent by seeing them organized in this way. But such a standard organization can also be limiting. It can prevent us from making new and exciting connections between geographical locations, time period and types of objects. It is these connections that often help us understand what it is to be human and how the arts express that.

Electricians test lighting in the wall of 90 pitchers in Connecting Cultures. These pitchers show the depth of the collections at the Brooklyn Museum and suggest what can be learned from assembling large numbers of objects together. The basic form of things is often defined by their purpose; pitchers, across time, place and cultures are meant first to hold liquid and then to pour it. As a result, pitchers have certain similarities no matter where or when they were made, but they also reveal, in their details, a great deal about their time and place.

So, Connecting Cultures breaks down traditional categories to challenge the viewer to see things in a new way and to make new connections. There are three very simple and straightforward themes in the installation—connecting people, connecting places, and connecting things. I hope that the new installation will do two things—first, introduce the visitor to the wide range of riches available at the Brooklyn Museum, and, second, stimulate some thinking about how to make connections between the museum galleries, as well as within them.

Many different themes could be developed using Connecting Cultures as a model: how does dance appear throughout time and among cultures; does the color blue mean the same thing in all cultures; how are concepts of death expressed in the arts? The possibilities are endless. Connecting Cultures can help us to begin to explore them.

Charles James (American, born England, 1906-1978). Dress, Evening, 1952. Silk. Gift of Mrs. R. A. Bernatschke.

I am taking questions about this collaboration this week via our blog. However, I am also on vacation, away from the Museum, with a slow dial-up connection. So please bear with me, as I try to respond as soon as I can.

So if the crowd juried the images, how was it curated? And what was the idea curated? The theme of the photographs submitted was “The Changing Faces of Brooklyn,” but that is not the theme of the installation that is presented in our galleries. Although the changing faces of Brooklyn is an idea that underlies each of the works of art in the exhibition, the exhibition itself is about the notion of selection, and, specifically, selection by the crowd. Both visually, and in terms of its written didactics, the installation supports that primary idea, put forward—that is, curated—by Shelley Bernstein. And that is what makes it such an unusual and thought provoking exhibition. It seems to me that an exhibition that was only about the changing faces of Brooklyn in photography might be interesting, but an exhibition that is also about the nature of selection, and all the questions it raises about taste, background, interpretation—and a myriad of other issues—creates a richer discourse. In Click! the theme of the work and the selection and installation process complement and mutually reinforce one another, forming a compelling snapshot of who we are and how we chose.

I am interested to know what others think about this, and I will be taking questions on the subject this week.