Adam Levine: Technology as museum power tools

While in Honolulu this month, Adam Levine, the Edward Drummond and Florence Scott Libbey director of the Toledo Museum of Art, is taking the time to talk about “Museums in Times of (Rapid) Technological Change: Past, Present, and Future” on Saturday, April 22 at the Doris Duke Theatre. Get your tickets here.

In a city of 275,000 and a metro area of 650,000, the Toledo Museum of Art averages 385,000 visitors per year, which makes it one of the top five visited art museums per capita in the United States. The museum began working with tech and media entrepreneur Ian Charles Stewart in 2021 on developing digital strategies around emerging Web 3.0 technologies. It is part of the museum’s aim to engage the international community of art-lovers who increasingly expect digital-first experiences.

Levine answered a few questions to give you a taste of what he’ll cover in this fascinating discussion.

The Toledo Museum of Art skillfully navigated the pandemic, staying open to the public and being a safe haven for residents. Did technology emerge in a new/big way at TMA due to the pandemic? If yes, how?

Yes, but probably not in the way you think.  My colleagues at other institutions did marvelous jobs of making the “pivot” to online programming in the early days of the pandemic.  While we at TMA followed suit—offering online classes, collaborating with our public school system for “remote field trips,” etc—we also felt that the organizations that were best poised to leverage technology in audience engagement were those who had been investing in digital content for years.

Rather than sprint to catch up, we took the opportunity to reflect on what structural changes we believed the pandemic would introduce in how we, as a society, relate to technology. That caused us to take a longer-term perspective, investing in more future-looking opportunities like web3 and the metaverse.

What is an aspect of museums’ use of early technology that you think will surprise people at your talk?

I think people will be surprised to know that while artists have proven early adopters of technology time-and-time again, museums have been resistant (for the most part), following a relatively predictable cycle of engagement.

Thomas Edison built his first electric lighting system in 1883. What did museums do for light before that?

As a general rule, before the introduction of electric lighting, public spaces typically had to structure their opening hours around the availability of natural light. Those Friday and Saturday night hours at HoMA would have only been available in the summer rather than year-round!

Is there a new technological offering that has piqued your interest as opening new possibilities for museum use?

There are several, but the most powerful tool, I think, is the emergence of blockchain technology. The media coverage of the very limited technological use cases of blockchain—so far—have unfortunately flattened the public discourse and created skepticism. There is a much more nuanced story to be told about the disruptive opportunities and potential of blockchain—I’ll trace some of those in the talk.

Posted by Lesa Griffith on April 17 2023