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Biomedicine in museums

The Smithsonian toward a Smithsonian 2.0

By February 2, 2009No Comments

Seems like museum 2.0 has already come of age. Because the Smithsonian Institution has just hosted a two-day conference titled “Smithsonian 2.0: A Gathering to Re-Imagine the Smithsonian in the Digital Age”.

A stellar group of keynote speakers and experts from the web and digital worlds met with a group of Smithsonian staff on 23-24 January to take a closer look at the museum´complex’s current level of engagement in new media — with the aim to “identify how to move the Smithsonian forward toward a ‘Smithsonian 2.0′”.

Read more here. Lots of interesting comments from staff and outsiders on their blog. There’s also a readable journalistic report in the Washington Post of 26 January. And best of all, the four keynotes can be viewed as webcasts.

It looks like most of what they call museum 2.0 is good old 1.0, however, that is, how to put the collections on the web, on Flickr Commons, etc. Real 2.0 — for example, seriously engaging the public in collecting and exhibition making — is still largely a vision for a distant future.

It also makes me wonder if museum 2.0 is just New Museology in digital clothes? Or is there something ‘post-new museological’ going on here? I’m just asking …     

Thomas Söderqvist

Author Thomas Söderqvist

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