Museum Design

This morning during our "face-time" we talked about the museum setting. This summer I've been to the MET and I've seen archaeological finds, earlier century sculptures, and other works of art - basically the things you expect to find in a museum - dating from the time of the Egyptians, the medieval times, and all the way to the present.

I always thought that museums tell people stories. Stories that may be historical like the remnants of a civilization that existed hundreds of years ago, the evidence of a culture in a certain part of the world, or even the personal items of famous persons. But it's not just those stories; there are stories told by artworks about the artist. It's like showing us a glimpse of who those people are. This, I think, is an example of the reality that these institutions have that can't be found, say, in a Facebook profile that may or may not contain truthful information at all.

In this "age of rating" we are in, we are heavily influenced by what other people think or even what a computer algorithm produce (e.g. Google search result). Take online news for example; we tend to only read (if we ever read the news) the articles on top of the list which is determined by the number of views or "likes" - yes, I'm talking about websites like digg.com. And because of this, we sometimes miss the more important things.