If there's such a thing as "museum famous," Maxwell Anderson and former Indianapolis bro (now DMA's Deputy Director) Robert Stein, are that. The public adoration is due largely to their tag-team technological advancements at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, specifically with their creation of ArtBabble. AB is an interactive program that allows for simple virtual research by letting different institutions put videos of their collections, installations and artists interviews into one, easy-to-use cloud location. Which is fancy talk for "The YouTube of Art."
It isn't too surprising that the DMA is now a partner, but it is a little odd that it took us so long (DMA is the 38th museum to join). Beginning today you can check out Dallas' contributions to Babble. There isn't much up just yet, just 9 snooze-worthy video lectures, with most clocking in under three minutes -- proving our deficiency with online content generation. The act of joining Babble now is more a public reinforcement of Anderson's pledge to update our local art house and make it more attractive to an electronic generation. Besides, it's only Babble, Day One. I'm curious to see how this affects the methods DMA utilizes from here out regarding education. Webisodes, anyone? "Art: 214?" Let's see where we end up a year from now.
