Keynote I gave at MuseumNext 2013 in Amsterdam. It covers the journey I've been on since arriving at Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in its transformation from a historic house and decorative arts museum into a high tech, visitor-centred, 21st century design museum. http://labs.cooperhewitt.org

1. @sebchan
director of digital & emerging media
cooper-hewitt national design museum, nyc
labs.cooperhewitt.org | freshandnew.org
Monday, 13 May 13

2. formerly powerhouse museum, sydney
Monday, 13 May 13

3. “the virtual museum”
we (thought we) were in control
“an encyclopaedic resource”
2001:
“authoritative”
Monday, 13 May 13

4. “the museum without walls”
visitor is in control
“museum as service provider”
2011:
our authority is entirely contextual
Monday, 13 May 13

5. Monday, 13 May 13

6. historic house
offsite storage
design shop
~217,000 objects
~200,000 visitors pa
paid admission
Monday, 13 May 13

7. national design awards
national design week
design thinking workshops
for ~20,000 kids in nyc
schools
teen mentoring scheme
Monday, 13 May 13

8. public talks streamed live
and archived on youtube
robust twitter, facebook,
pinterest presence
active collection blog
Monday, 13 May 13

9. ~75 full time staff
Monday, 13 May 13

10. location
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11. technology acts as an amplifier.
Monday, 13 May 13

12. vectors of scale
geographic reach
temporal persistence
deepen context
Monday, 13 May 13

13. rebuilding the museum is an
opportunity to reinvent it - entirely
Monday, 13 May 13

14. “from a zero tech
museum to a high
tech museum. in a
historic house.”
Monday, 13 May 13

15. “we are not an art
museum. we are a
design museum.
there is a difference”
Monday, 13 May 13

16. cooper-hewitt collection has always
been a ‘working museum’
Monday, 13 May 13

17. Monday, 13 May 13

18. 0.3% on display
7% photographed
Monday, 13 May 13

19. Poster, "El Dominio del Fuego (The Domain of Fire)", Luis Vega .1972 Poster, "Otis Rush", 1967. Wes Wilson
Monday, 13 May 13

20. Drawing, "Striped Pattern, Textile Design", 1950–70. Tommi Parzinger.
Monday, 13 May 13

21. Birdcage In The Form Of A Church, mid-19th century
Monday, 13 May 13

22. Prototype For A Domestic Space Heater, 1973. Bill Moggridge
Monday, 13 May 13

23. Tassel. Medium: linen Technique: braided and knotted.Sidewall, "Germinal", 1968.
Monday, 13 May 13

24. Button Showing West Indian Scene, late 18th century.
Monday, 13 May 13

25. Cricket Cage, late 19th century.
Monday, 13 May 13

26. Figure, "Cat and kitten", late 19th–early 20th century.
Monday, 13 May 13

27. 1. declare intent
Monday, 13 May 13

28. “embed digital in
the organisation
and the fabric of
the building.”
Monday, 13 May 13

29. 2. form the team
Monday, 13 May 13

30. “hire people
smarter than you.
invest in training.”
Monday, 13 May 13

31. 3. take irreversible
actions
Monday, 13 May 13

32. richard littler’s scarfolk project
Monday, 13 May 13

33. Monday, 13 May 13

34. Monday, 13 May 13

35. data release on github.
metadata as ‘cultural source code’.
Monday, 13 May 13

36. visualising the ‘shape’ of the collection
Monday, 13 May 13

37. seeing acquisitions by time
Monday, 13 May 13

38. 4. accelerate
inhouse
production
Monday, 13 May 13

39. “any utopian project has failure
hardwired into it” (music writer john doran)
Monday, 13 May 13

40. “prototype as
the product”
Monday, 13 May 13

41. quick ushahidi-based event site
Monday, 13 May 13

42. quick collection viewer
Monday, 13 May 13

43. prototype collection explorer sept 27
Monday, 13 May 13

44. “show what is
possible with
minimum viable
products”
Monday, 13 May 13

45. data informed & paper protoyping
Monday, 13 May 13

46. 5. promiscuous
collaboration
Monday, 13 May 13

47. 1500+ works google art project
Monday, 13 May 13

48. 1500+ works on art.sy
Monday, 13 May 13

49. national design awards on behance
Monday, 13 May 13

50. national design awards on behance
Monday, 13 May 13

51. national design week on lanyrd
Monday, 13 May 13

52. 6. set a rhythm
of releases
Monday, 13 May 13

53. digitised old catalogues
Monday, 13 May 13

54. digitised old catalogues
Monday, 13 May 13

55. range of quick low cost ebooks
Monday, 13 May 13

56. unofficial collection experiments
Monday, 13 May 13

57. fun with berg’s little printer
Monday, 13 May 13

58. “institutional
wabi sabi”
see http://bit.ly/14MTYrK
Monday, 13 May 13

59. 7. maintain focus
on the long term
change
Monday, 13 May 13

60. “new forms of
curatorial
practice”
Monday, 13 May 13

61. “we no longer
traffic in unique,
rare, or naturally
interesting
objects”
Monday, 13 May 13

62. Chair, "Aeron", 1992.
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63. Monday, 13 May 13

64. Monday, 13 May 13

65. Monday, 13 May 13

66. making peace with interpretative differences
Monday, 13 May 13

67. using the network
Monday, 13 May 13

68. connecting the collection outwards
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69. Monday, 13 May 13

70. Monday, 13 May 13

71. Monday, 13 May 13

72. “give everything
and everyone a
stable place on the
network”
Monday, 13 May 13

73. Monday, 13 May 13

74. ‘discordances’
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78. Monday, 13 May 13

79. code is open sourced on github
Monday, 13 May 13

80. disambiguating undigitised objects
Monday, 13 May 13

81. Monday, 13 May 13

82. Monday, 13 May 13

83. “emerging tools to
curate the world”
Monday, 13 May 13

84. how do you put a
building on the
internet?
Monday, 13 May 13

85. what does a
building afford
that a screen
does not?
Monday, 13 May 13

86. “what sort of
experiences do
we desire?”
Monday, 13 May 13

87. social impact of device proliferation
Monday, 13 May 13

88. “understand the
desires of users”
Monday, 13 May 13

89. logistical impact of device proliferation
source: harald groven
Monday, 13 May 13

90. machine
readable
galleries?
Monday, 13 May 13

91. “the building as the biggest user of our API”
Monday, 13 May 13

92. new types of ‘object’ we need
to collect, preserve, exhibit
Monday, 13 May 13

93. how do you collect the interface
changes of facebook?
Monday, 13 May 13

94. digital vitrines
as first class
citizens?
Monday, 13 May 13

95. smart objects?
3d printing?
temporal persistence?
Monday, 13 May 13

96. increased visitor diversity
increased dwell times
repeat visitation
visitor satisfaction
internal innovation
collecting capacity
metrics of success for the whole museum
Monday, 13 May 13

97. 1. declare intent
2. form the team
3. take irreversible actions
4. accelerate inhouse production
5. promiscuous collaboration
6. set a rhythm of release
7. maintain focus on long term
Monday, 13 May 13

98. its the future.
not only of
cooper-hewitt.
Monday, 13 May 13

99. @sebchan
director of digital & emerging media
cooper-hewitt national design museum, nyc
labs.cooperhewitt.org | freshandnew.org
thanks
Monday, 13 May 13