Digital Interpretation: Screens and devices as didactic media

The Bard Graduate Centre

Recent innovations in digital display and interaction at leading institutions, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, and Cleveland Museum of Art, have made it clear that digital technologies are now firmly established as part of the museum-going experience.
These developments necessitate a critical and thoughtful consideration of how to deploy screens and devices in museum environments in a way that best supports the objects on display and the narratives that curators are conveying. This symposium will juxtapose the work of leaders in museum technology with efforts being made in the Bard Graduate Center’s Focus Gallery Project to pose a variety of different approaches and models that engage with these new developments, and to open up discourse about the best ways to integrate digital technology in the interpretive and didactic missions of educational and cultural heritage institutions.

Speakers:
Jennifer Foley, Director of Interpretation, Department of Education and Interpretations, Cleveland Museum of Art
“‘Oh, what’s this button do?’ Connecting Spaces, People, and Collections”

Koven J. Smith, Director of Digital Adaptation, Blanton Museum of Art
“Becoming Authentically Digital at the Blanton Museum of Art”

Focus Gallery Presentations
Kimon Keramidas, Assistant Professor and Director of the Digital Media Lab

David Jaffee, Professor, Head of New Media Research

Panel Discussion:
Jennifer Foley, Koven J. Smith, Kimon Keramidas, David Jaffee, Deborah G. Douglas, Jonathan Dahan