Digital

New York’s New Museum is embarking on a bold experiment that brings together museums and technology. New Inc is a “museum-led incubator” – a dedicated space for culture-oriented technology start-ups to create digital products under the museum’s auspices.

Museums are often implored to emulate start-ups, by embracing new technology, taking more risks and “failing forward”. The New Museum experiment, however, prompts questions about museums’ relationship not just with digital technology, but with technology companies themselves.

Google’s Cultural Institute offers aggregation of cultural artefacts into online exhibitions. Apps such as Artsy and Artstack promise to revolutionise our social discovery of art and artists. All of them look to museums and galleries as vital partners.

However, longevity is not guaranteed. Google regularly ditches projects that no longer meet its corporate aims. 

Yahoo’s deletion of the Geocities community leads many to fear for the future of Flickr, where many museums present photographic collections. Not only digitised collections, but sometimes the history of whole digital communities is at risk.

Older technology companies happily discard the past, but new start-ups boast of savagely “disrupting” old economic models. 

The technology economy is a high-stakes game offering huge rewards. But for start-ups to succeed, others must fail. Museums should proceed with caution. Start-ups come and go, but we are in it for keeps.