Sociable Museums

In our former blog (disappeared at the end of August because of the mysteries of technology) we were telling that the organization National Museums Liverpool (United Kingdom) had organized a Web2.0 photographic project to document Liverpool. The project was called “Stewart Bale 2.0” and it was based in the Stewart Bale Ltd. Photographic Collection owned by National Museums Liverpool.

The organization invited both amateur and professional photographs using Flickr, to recreate the photographs of its collection. The project is currently an online photography exhibition.

This initiative is a wonderful example of how Web2.0 (a new generation of internet services which make use of collaboration, shared participation and tagging to crate 'social software') not only can engage new audiences to art museums, but also can get their collections being revisited by contemporary visions.

As it can be seen, it is not necessary having a contemporary art collection to understand new audiences and their relation with technology. Fortunately, there is an increasing number of museums understanding it in this way.

Images: Stewart Bale: Pier Head, 1959 (original) (left); Pete Carr: Pier Head, 2006 (right)