The fruition of galleries and museums is among the changes that the Covid-19 pandemic is destined to accelerate. Today, it is the exceptionality of confinement that has pushed some institutions to migrate their content to online platforms; tomorrow, thanks to the renewed habits of users, this process of virtualization could impose itself as the new norm. The passage, certainly not to be taken for granted, is a strong stimulus to rethink the curation of museum proposals, not only as regards the organization of content but also the vehicles chosen for its dissemination: from the hosting platforms – open or proprietary, native or in partnership – to the computer languages used to transform online experience into a detailed and plausible discovery.
10 online design exhibitions to visit this week
The pandemic renews the opportunities to explore online the content of the exhibitions, laying the foundations for ways to experience them in the future. A guide to ten design paths to rediscover on the platforms of museums and galleries around the world.
MAK Exhibition View, 2019, „SITZEN 69“ REVISITED, MAK Permanent Collection Historicism Art Nouveau, © MAK/Georg Mayer
Pablo Reinoso, Spaghetti Bale
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- Giulia Zappa
- 27 April 2020
This is a challenge that design museums should perhaps take up before others – isn’t the web one of the most widespread design interfaces? – and that shows the first development trials through the online exhibitions available in these days. In the meantime, forced idleness is an opportunity to return to the great archives of numerous institutions and galleries: opportunities of precious rediscoveries during these special days of quarantine, but also a way to renew, even without the physical presence inside a common space, the bonds that bind the global design community.
Browse the gallery to discover the ten online design exhibitions to visit this week.
Among the most eagerly awaited exhibitions of the year, Cambio by Formafantasma is a collective survey of the wood supply chain: an invitation to rethink the production culture in a systemic way, anticipating sustainability issues and facilitating the forests’ resilience. It can be visited on mobile via Bloomberg Connect App.
The creator of one of the most interesting paradigms of the 21st century, that at the intersection of architecture and synthetic biology, is celebrated at the MoMA in New York with the first solo exhibit dedicated to her work. "Neri Oxman: Material Ecology" can be browsed through the photos of the installation and through focuses on some selected projects. Nevertheless, this is not the only opportunity to dwell on the site of the great American museum. In these days MoMA opens to public all its content, from the first exhibitions of the "Good Design" series, to other milestones such as "Design and the Elastic Mind", up to cult catalogues such as "Italy the new domestic lanscape achievements and problems of Italian Design": a reading to discover or rediscover in these long days of confinement.
Britain's largest museum institution dedicated to design, the London Design Museum, updates its proposal to rediscover its archives on a weekly basis. "Setting the Agenda: From Art&Industry to Fear and Love" is the first exhibition organised in 1982 at its first location, the old V&A boiler room. An opportunity to go back in the history of the institution, discovering the ways in which design found its first space, and its first legitimacy, among the rooms of great museums.
In addition to exploring the permanent collection of the great Viennese museum, the Mak Lab App gives access to the contents and research of the Mak Design Lab. A dive into the contemporary world that allows to reflect on themes that are crucial to design and its social impact, such as "Privatsphere", "Biohacking" and "Deepfake".
Two exhibitions curated by the New York museum are hosted on the Google Arts & Culture platform: if "Nature by Design: botanical expression" is an accurate and richly referenced survey on the influence that natural forms and themes have had in the applied arts, "African American Design" gives voice to some of its major interpreters, with a focus on contemporary jewelry.
The emuseum section is vaunts a huge archive where you can discover or rediscover the identity of Swiss design culture, get to know the protagonists of twentieth-century graphics, or explore material culture by themes, materials or seasons of design.
An inventive exhibition that is not constrained to the rooms of the museum, which should welcome it to establish itself as a travel experience in the company of objects. Four bags filled with famous and iconic Swedish products are entrusted to visitors to enslave a specific travel direction/tour, to be chosen from the four cardinal points. Visitor reservations are now suspended, but it’s possible to explore virtually the objects that make up each bag as well as the proposed travel itinerary.
A selection of the gallery designers' works is an invitation to look with hope at the times ahead, but also to reconsider the power of art to lift our vital instincts.
"Utopia Now – The Story of Finnish Design" is a journey through the museum's permanent collection, which allows you to observe its acquisitions and, by clicking, read its description.
Long-running project of the city of Chicago, "Great Ideas of Humanity: Passing the Torch" commissions artists and underrepresented communities to interpret "great ideas" through new visual artifacts, now to be found in virtual mode.