What if Google wrested all control of art from museums?
The plan is the same for everyone. On May 11, the museums will be able to open to the public after the break forced by COVID-19 . Officially they will be 59 days after the entry into force of the state of alarm decreed on March 13 . It is important to emphasize the officially , because in practice there may be more calendar dates, since there are many museums and cultural organizations that are unwilling to open their doors no security guarantees for workers and visitors.
“The main problem is that adapting to museums is not easy ”, assures Miguel Angel Cajigal , better known on social media under the alias of El Barroquista and a member of ICOMOS , a international non-governmental organization Dedicated to preservation of world monuments . “The format of the vast majority of exhibitions is incompatible with social distancing. Let's think, for example, of rows of pictures glued to the walls. How will visitors move? parallel to the wall? What about the outstanding works that all visitors will want to stop at?
What can happen, if we listen to the analysts in the sector, is that there will be a drastic drop in visitors which will directly affect the hegemonic power of museums as transmitters of art . “Even something as simple as the security controls at the entrances of large museums can now mean that it takes twenty minutes to pass 20 people, with which we would be talking about passing a maximum of about 500 or 600 people a day . If we take the Louvre as an example today the queue to get only a third of regular visitors it can occupy a good stretch of the Tuileries. It is an unacceptable situation. To this we must add a question that I think is the elephant in the room: who is going to dare to get into a museum next month? It seems that we can sense that very few people. Foreign tourists are not going to flow in a season and locals are not going to feel the fever of making endless queues to enter a museum that they already had next to home two years ago and will continue to be there in another two years, "he predicts. The Baroquist.
9.6 million people visited the Louvre in 2019. They are the latest official figures that can be consulted on the official website before the abyss. 'La Gioconda', 'The Wedding at Cana', 'The Victory of Samothrace' or 'The Venus de Milo' no lurking eyes. The most visited museum in the world deathly silence , with the monumental glass pyramid of the main entrance pointing to the sky, without the reflection of thousands of tourists with phones ready to take photos that they will never look at, without elbows pushing their way to get to the front row. “I think that art should start thinking seriously about the alternatives to face-to-face consumption , because in most cases only patches have been applied, waiting for a "normality" that today we have no idea when it will arrive. The uncertainty about tourism in general is very strong but it is very likely that we will never return to the previous situation or, at the very least, that it will be many years before we return to it”.
And the best positioned, or most logical, alternative, is google . The Californian company of Sergei Brin and Larry Page has partnered with over 500 museums and galleries around the world in an effort to increase access to the arts during the pandemic. Digitizing art is always good news for ensure its universalization without discrimination of any kind . But, Could turning Google into the world's great museum be dangerous for the status quo of museums? One of the first actions of the technology company was to create Google Arts & Culture , with a list of the 10 best museums that any curious person with a computer can visit. “Here and now”, announces a very clickable headline.
“Google has been working in this direction for some time, aware of a change in the model of cultural consumption that was only a matter of time. The pandemic has surely spurred this change in model but we still do not know how profound it can be, ”says El Barroquista. “The figures seem to suggest that, for the time being, virtual visits to museums do not hold up or maintain the interest of the public : They have started well but in a few weeks they have lost audience. Perhaps because of oversupply or, in my opinion, probably because of lack of originality in those proposals , which are still seen as specific resources and in many cases do not really contribute a differentiated experience”.
A very ingenious YouTube tutorial teaches how to draw the Gioconda during the dead hours of confinement . The best is saved for last, when Mona Lisa's enigmatic laugh is replaced by a mask . A symbolic and very powerful image that perfectly reflects a very particular feeling: art is still there, but art without people who love it is less art . "Either way, Google wanted to be at the forefront and has achieved it because, in addition, they have many years behind them with Google Arts & Culture. The situation is obviously risky, but it is no less so than the fact that the same company controls the vast majority of mail and information that circulates around the world, including research centers and leading companies that use Gmail and the different tools of Google to move the information of its activities”.
A control that reveals a much deeper paradox that can affect the art world in a very particular way. “ Some museums may end up asking Google for permission to use images of their own works . But this is not new either: all images of the Sistine Chapel belong to the Nippon Television Network Corporation of Japan , who paid for the restoration of the paintings in exchange for that right. At the time, it may have seemed like a good deal in the Vatican, but it is obvious that the Japanese company was smarter because the commercial exploitation of these images makes the cost paid for the intervention seem anecdotal. Google will do the exact same thing but much bigger. Now that there are countries like France starting to sell their public cultural heritage to pay pandemic bills , Google's help is going to be seen as a desirable compensation or a lesser evil that, in the future, will surely prove to be a round deal for the Santa Clara company”.
An example in detail. With the numbers on the table, the leaders of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York project a total deficit close to 100 million dollars . A figure that would be much higher if the museum does not open in July as predicted by the most optimistic forecasts. 100 million dollars that no virtual experience can amortize . “Surely the great museums will not open until the de-escalation allows greater capacity because, in addition, implementing physical measures with this uncertainty is something that few institutions can afford. Secondly, restaurants and museum shops they will have to remain closed for sure or with many limitations, and let's not forget that shops are one of the main sources of net income for many museums and monuments”, adds The Baroque.
Obviously there is the opposite analysis, the one who sees the glass half full of art defends that there is no better time to break bad habits . "Definitely, the change of model was urgent for museums in general . Because we had a scant handful of crowded museums while the vast majority received visits well below their capacity. This distribution is unsustainable because it harms both parties , especially to small museums. As libraries have done for decades, museums must become spaces to create community. The problem is that we have that handful of museums that live from overcrowding and to which the foreseeable drop in visitors is going to leave them literally ruined”.
In the meantime, in the United States they take for granted the definitive closure of many museums and cultural spaces . Since American Alliance of Museums they are aware of the extraordinarily challenging time for all of their affiliates. Not surprisingly, they have given voice to uncomfortable questions, How to start a new job as a museum director when your institution is closed indefinitely? And they have published a very complete guide to inform about all the possible effects on cultural institutions, taking into account that museums continue to be the main source of education for North Americans according to all the surveys carried out.
Christy S Coleman , one of the founding partners of this alliance and executive director of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, published a thread on her Twitter account with 3 fundamental points to encourage her colleagues who lead museums across the country during the pandemic world.
“Having led museums through significant national crises (such as 9/11, the Great Recession, and the current one), There are three things I have learned to come out of this with a stronger organization. …
1) Be transparent at all levels . This includes informing people about financial challenges, potential impacts, and long-term results. Not everything will be bad, it will just be different.
2) Be compassionate . Recognize the fear of workers, including your own. But concentrating on finding solutions together. That decisions are not reactionary, but based on as much information as possible.
3)Encourage creativity . In every organization there are talented people. They are the ones that can help shape solutions for a new operating paradigm. "We've always done it this way" should be discarded in favor of "we can do better."
“I would propose a strategy based on four elements” , concludes El Barroquista with an eminently social approach. “ The commitment to museum professionals so that their working conditions are decent , collaboration between different institutions to get ahead with joint plans between the different museums in a common geographic area , the enhancement of the own collection through new narratives to combat the famine that is going to close the tap of the great temporary exhibitions and the awareness of creating a citizen community around the museum , especially through the Internet and social networks, so that the social fabric close to each institution is the one that sees the museum as a reference cultural space in its day-to-day life and not as that elitist site that they only go to when someone comes friend or distant relative to show it to him”.