Sackler Turns To Podcasts

When Ptolemy I founded the world’s first museum at Alexandria in 280 BC, he could have had no idea museums would one day be so prevalent—or so high tech. If only he could see the museums of today, complete with automatic temperature and lighting controls, computer catalogs—and, now, iPods?

Yes, iPods. Alexandra M. Hays ’08-’09 is creating a podcast for the Arthur M. Sackler Museum—a twenty-first century audio guide geared towards the student body. The project, funded by a grant from the Office of the Arts, is intended to encourage student visitorship at the Sackler.

Students who volunteered to contribute to the podcast were asked to choose an object in the museum and reflect on what makes it most interesting to them. They were then to summarize their interaction with and thoughts on the object in a two- to four-minute segment.

“The podcast is not meant to be an authoritative art historical review of the Sackler,” says Hays. “There are alternative narratives and stories to be told about the objects, things that the museum doesn’t say.”

Surprisingly, many of the students who contributed to the podcast were not history of art and architecture or visual and environmental studies concentrators. Rather, the approximately twenty undergraduates who participated range in concentration from Near Eastern languages and civilizations to biology. According to Hays, this diversity of academic backgrounds, is crucial so that listeners will be able to relate to the objects regardless of the extent of their prior study of art.

“The podcast is about the experience of the museum. It’s about how we move through space,” Hays says. “We have no pretense of curatorial legitimacy, so we can say what we want.”

Meg Howland, director of public programming and visitor services at the Fogg Art Museum and Hays’ museum liaison, says she thinks the project will help increase the number of non-art students who visit the museum.

“I think that having students present the information is the way to go,” she says. “It’s very effective to have an interactive discussion about art with people who are at your level.”

One challenge facing the project is that the Sackler, like most museums in the Harvard University Art Museums system, experiences a great deal of turnover in the objects that are on display. As a result, the podcast Hays and her team are creating will have limited longevity at the Sackler; the guide, which Hays expects to complete by Arts First weekend, will cover objects that will be on view only through the summer of 2007.

The podcast medium itself has drawbacks as well. Because a visitor to the museum must already have the podcast on his or her iPod, visitors must anticipate their trip to the museum and download accordingly, requiring a degree of planning unusual among many student visitors.

Moreover, there is the question of whether the podcast restricts its audience to only those who can afford a digital music player. But Hays says the popularity of iPods among students at Harvard is high enough that no student should have difficulty borrowing one from a friend.

Due in large part to these limitations, museum podcasts are still a very new concept. Hays speculates that they are offered in only about 25 museums across the country.

She says her project was inspired by a 2005 podcast for the Museum of Modern Art in New York that promoted a more personal approach to canonized art. Hays felt this approach was particularly appropriate for a museum like the Sackler.

“A lot of people, fairly so, think ancient art is pretty boring. Often the objects are exhibited mostly as a testament to their own survival,” she says. “Many objects [in the Sackler] don’t have wall text, so you don’t have any idea about them, and you should.”

Howland thinks the podcast will help the Sackler in particular, which sees fewer student visitors than either the Fogg or the Busch-Reisinger Museum.

“The first thing you have to do is to get people into the museum, and once they’re here they’ll see that there’s a lot to learn.”

For Hays, the podcast explores fundamental questions in museum education. “The idea of an audio guide to a museum is already a little contentious. It’s a controlled, directed experience. My question was, what kind of flexibility can you incorporate into it?”

If the podcast is popular with students, both Howland and Hays hope podcasts will be adopted for future exhibits at the Sackler and other Harvard University Art Museums.

“The question is how to make it cohesive,” says Hays. “The point is to make it engaging and interesting to everyone. I want to bring a different audience to the museum.”