LIKE vodka and fun-house mirrors and trips to Japan, the Internet can make you feel bigger than you are.
It persuades vitamin D-starved shut-ins to try their hand as webcam stars. It tempts the rude to imagine their impertinence catching global fire through that perfectly worded comment. It seduces the artisanal cheese maker with visions of a worldwide market beyond the alley boutique.
And it can make even the oldest-school art museum wonder: Could our collection reach the villages of China and the universities of Peru and perhaps a prison or two? Could it touch those who have no chance of entering our physical doors? Could it spread to the whole world?
This is an account about how two New York museums seized this dream — and how one of them clings to it still, while the other has found that the Internet’s true value isn’t in being everywhere but in enhancing the here.
They are the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum, both ambitious cosmopolitan art institutions but with rather different reputations: the Met an isle in the global archipelago of leading museums, the Brooklyn Museum more rooted in local soil. Yet, for all their differences, they shared a world-conquering dream some years ago.
To read the entire article on The New York Times, click here.
*excerpt and image from The New York Times website
