The Arts
Archived article from Nov 12, 1999
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Each of these changes affects our business models and the division of labor. All of us in university publishing are daily reinventing the production and dissemination of scholarly communication.
Pictures at an exhibition
Dennis Cate, director, Zimmerli Art Museum
In the 21st century, museums will take on a much greater educational role than in the past. Historically, museums were a place for preservation and presentation of artwork The philosophy was that you put the works on view and the audience comes and enjoys them. And if the audience doesn't fully understand the art, it's up to the audience to do the research.
Beginning about 25 years ago, museums began to take a more proactive route to helping visitors understand intellectually what the artwork is about. In many cases, the works of contemporaries are shocking, either
aesthetically or in subject matter, so museums began providing a background, a context, to enlighten the viewer and let them participate in the discussion of what is art.
In the next century, as artists more and more work with nontraditional media or formats, museums will have an even greater educational responsibility. Increasingly, the museum is becoming the conveyor of the artist's message, especially since many pieces will be shown only in museums, rather than in homes or in public spaces.
For a university, this means that the museum is becoming a much more integral part of the school's educational mission. In the past, universities have often seen campus museums as luxury or prestige items. Now and in the future, however, the museum is and will be an important tool for learning and scholarship, a sort of visual library with artworks instead of books.
Technology, such as videoconferencing and computerized learning centers, will help increase this educational function. Just as we go to the British Museum today to learn about antiquities, we will go to museums, either in person or on the Internet, to learn about the past and better understand the present.
A meeting of minds
Marilyn Somville, dean, Mason Gross School of the Arts
The future challenge for the arts will be to integrate the digital and communications technologies and the ability to use ideas from any movement, from any culture and from any place to create art forms that are relevant and that resonate in the human mind and spirit.
We see this happening now in our school. Artists and teachers are finding ways to share information and ideas, and to create rich hybrid forms out of these meetings of ideas. Recent initiatives have involved Cambodian puppet theater, African printmaking, Japanese drumming and South Pacific dance.
There is an enthusiasm for different kinds of art we haven't seen before, one that expands the canon far beyond the traditional confines of Western art. With less irony than that which characterized postmodernism, we see that, once again, anything goes. The technological revolution surrounding us will create radical new opportunities for artists, but the aesthetic goals, however interpreted, will remain as they were.
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