Click!

“Click! is a photography exhibition that invites Brooklyn Museum’s visitors, the online community, and the general public to participate in the exhibition process.”

In a Web 2.0 era where museums’ visitors (on and offline) are more and more solicited to suggest, participate, improve, generate content, etc. it was a natural progression to ask them to “curate” a museum exhibition.

Based on James Surowiecki’s acclaimed book The Wisdom of Crowds, in which the author declares that the mass is often wiser at making decisions than experts individuals (doesn’t that sound like Wikipedia’s moto?), Click! tries to understand whether this principle can be effective in the visual arts, whether a crowd-curated exhibition can be valuable.

How does it work?

“Click! is an exhibition in three consecutive parts. It begins with an open call—artists are asked to electronically submit a work of photography that responds to the exhibition’s theme, “Changing Faces of Brooklyn,” along with an artist statement.

After the conclusion of the open call, an online forum opens for audience evaluation of all submissions; as in other juried exhibitions, all works will be anonymous. As part of the evaluation, each visitor answers a series of questions about his/her knowledge of art and perceived expertise.

Click! culminates in an exhibition at the Museum, where the artworks are installed according to their relative ranking from the juried process. Visitors will also be able to see how different groups within the crowd evaluated the same works of art. The results will be analyzed and discussed by experts in the fields of art, online communities, and crowd theory.” (http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/).

Hack the banners with art!

Do you want to get rid of those banners that spoil your browser? What about replacing the advertising by a curated art-image?

That is exactly what Add-Art offers. This free FireFox add-on not only blocks advertising on webpages but replaces the banners with curated artworks. Chris Ware, the Fountain by Marcel Duchamp, or the Electric Chair by Andy Warhol (on the left) are displayed instead of advertisings.

The image database is enriched every two weeks with 5-8 artists selected by emerging and established curators. The selection of curators is made through recommendations, word of mouth and solicitations to the Add-Art site.

As said on the Add-Art website “with the overwhelming popularity of adblockers, if Add-Art were to attract 5% of existing users, the numbers would be in the hundreds of thousands. Add-Art can bring contemporary art to the desktops of all types of people at home and in their workplace - all over the world” (http://www.add-art.org/).