Monday, January 8, 2007
MoMA, Video, and Websites
MoMA now has a YouTube channel. I got excited when I first read this on Tylers’s blog, but I was naive. They only have two videos and nothing from their own collection. No plans to post their collection either. Their videos are too good for that. I have previously posted about my frustration with the artworld falling so far behind contemporary culture. Why do so many refuse to make their content available online, why? To keep it safe from the internets?
And while I support Tyler’s cause, this killed me:
“Another benefit of using a YouTube channel instead of putting this all on the museum’s own website: It costs MoMA virtually nothing to put video on YouTube. If MoMA had to host the video and pay for the bandwidth, who knows how much that could cost.”
Well, not much. Space is cheap and continues to ameliorate with time. I support MOMAs use of YouTube, but why not expand their own website to include video, online exhibitions, etc…? Most institutions underestimate the power of web presence, and their budgets reflect it.
Luckily, this upcoming generation demands that institutions not only be online, but completely transparent. Nothing could reap a larger payoff than spending a little extra money on a better website, and a little extra time participating in the web community.
posted by cjagers at 06:58pm
3 Comments Add your own
1. Grant MacManus | January 8th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
First: Of course they don’t have any of their videos up, they don’t have any videos. They don’t own the rights to the videos, they own a copy. It is not like a painting where you own it and thus own all the rights to it. With a video they own a copy that they can show in their galleries, that is all. So even if they were so inclined, they couldn’t do what you are wanting. Nor is it their place to. If a video artist wishes to have his work on the web, he can put it there himself.
Second: This announcement is no different than if MOMA had created a MySpace page. They are doing it to be hip and cool, not to actually provide content. YouTube is hot, so they are hopping on board. They are not using YT to avoid spending money or time on adding video content to their site, they are using YT because YT is what they are after. It was Time’s POY, lest we forget. They are not looking to “participate in the web community”, they are looking to cash in on YT’s hip popularity.
2. cjagers | January 8th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
1) I disagree with the law - it should be changed.
2) Good point about cost. It is not about cost at all, just hype.
3. Tim Barrus | May 6th, 2007 at 9:37 am
I wish I had run across this dialogue sooner. But I’m stupid. At any rate, it took a while to get MoMA to change. It’s been three months since these comments were written. And MoMA has changed some. The problem isn’t MoMA. The problem is how to move the notion of the Imperial Museum to a paradigm that has to do with reciprocity. ALL the museums fight this tooth and nail. But MoMA is now allowing video responses on le Tube and this was broght about by a great deal of angst and confrontation on our part (Cinematheque Films) and I think some confusion of their part, too. I don’t think they really knew how le Tube worked when they got involved. But by gearing the discussion toward the idea of The Museum being more open to the idea of artistic reciprocity MoMA did budge. In contrast to LA’s MOCA which will not budge one inch. MOCA is on le Tube to exploit it (and us) as an advertising mechanism period. There is no reciprocity; in fact, there is no small amount of hostility that gets focused on anyone who even dares suggest that le Tube itself is about reciprocity which is abhorrent to MOCA in the extreme. Sometimes I think these dinosaurs will never change and then one of them takes a step toward change that sort of drags our slow length along and there’s usually a lot of pain involved because you have to remove your focus from your work to a more culturally institutionalized perspective. The challenge is to tend to this lumbering pace and still have the stuff you need to do your art. We have definitely not figured that one out and we probably never will. How to Tend to The Museum and Your Art. It’s either or. I have never really run across both.
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