A panel of four of the world's most distinguished museum directors will discuss and debate the challenges and opportunities facing museums as computers, the Internet, and other new technologies enter the arts arena. The program will take place on Monday, May 10, at 6:00 p.m. in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium.
The panelists for Art Museums, the Internet, and the New Technology are: Robert Anderson, Director of The British Museum, London; Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia; Pierre Rosenberg, President-Director of the Musée du Louvre, Paris; and Philippe de Montebello, Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The discussion will focus on a number of philosophical issues, such as the broader implications of technology on the contest of art museums, as well as more pragmatic issues, such as how museums utilize the latest electronic advances to support their mission of collecting, researching, and presenting works of art and educating the public; and what opportunities technology creates in audience development and service to the public.
This is the second panel discussion held at the Metropolitan Museum to explore issues related to the integration and use of new technologies in art museums. The first was held in April 1998 on the occasion of the opening of the Museum's electronic resource center – the Lita Annenberg Hazen and Joseph H. Hazen Center for Electronic Information Resources in the Thomas J. Watson Library – which provides scholars, the academic community, and the Metropolitan's professional staff with access to art historical and other scholarly material available through CD-ROMs, the Internet, and other electronic resources. The Hazen Center is the first of its kind in any art museum in the United States and abroad.
Limited tickets are still available for the May 10 panel discussion and may be purchased at $30 each through the Concerts and Lectures Department at (212) 570-3949.
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April 23, 1999
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