In the House and on the Web: 21st Century Strategies for Interpreting Historic Interiors.
On Friday, 3rd. October, Boston University’s Museum Studies Program hosted a symposium at the Boston Atheneaum, with Wellesley College’s McNeil Program for Studies in American Art, and the Nichols House Museum. Five speakers from Europe and the United States shared experiences of how their museums had successfully integrated technology into interpretations of their historic interiors and landscapes. Dr Lee Glazer spoke about the Freer Gallery’s use of digital technology to interpret Whistler’s famous Peacock Room as it appeared in London and Detroit:http://peacockroom.wayne.edu/visit.
Loic Tallon, Mobile Manager from the Metropolitan Museum in New York explained the processes behind designing the Met’s new app:http://www.metmuseum.org/visit/met-app. Annie Kemkaran-Smith, one of the curators with English Heritage, explained the changing use of digital technology in three properties in her care over the past decade, and Victoria Kastner described the development and use of apps at Hearst Castle. Finally, John Sibbald, Director of the Virtual Hamilton Palace Trust, described the virtual recreation of the collections at Hamilton Palace from inventories and accounts. The delegates made their way to the MFA for a tour of one of the Hamilton Palace rooms, now at the Museum, by Tom Michie, Curator of European Decorative Arts and Sculpture.
One-hundred-and-thirty-one people attended, comprising eighty-seven museum professionals from Massachusetts, Maine, New York, Florida and Delaware, and twenty-five students, mainly from Boston University and Wellesley College, as well as several professors from local universities. We ate at the Union Club, and an excellent day was had by all. This was the fourth symposium held in collaboration with the Nichols House Museum, and the eighth Museum Studies conference.