Community: bloggers@brooklynmuseum

Last Thursday we welcomed over 900 members to the opening of Yinka Shonibare MBE. The weather was perfect, the galleries were packed, and the glass Pavilion was pretty in pink, with festive tablecloths to complement the hot pink walls of the exhibition.

Video via Urban Art & Antiques blog.

Speaking of festive, members received a special surprise when the artist showed up. While having an artist attend the exhibition opening is always a treat in and of itself, Shonibare made an entrance that we wouldn’t forget:  he walked in arm in arm with two companions who were impeccably dressed in full Victorian costume−it was as if they had just emerged from one of Shonibare’s photographs right into the museum!

Photo courtesy Trish Mayo via Flickr.

After walking through the exhibition with these lovely attendants by his side, Shonibare spoke with his good friend and author, Dr. Anthony Downey of the Sotheby’s Institute in London. This was truly the main event, as 450 members packed in to the auditorium to have this special chance to hear the artist speak about his work in conversation with a leading expert on contemporary art. Their engaging conversation centered on the “authenticity” of Shonibare’s work as an “African” artist working in the UK. A tutor of his initially recommended he focus on his African heritage instead of other themes he was exploring at the time. He went to Brixton market where African print fabrics are sold and found out that Dutch wax fabric as it is called, is actually produced in Europe and imitates Indonesian Batik patterns. Initially made to sell in Indonesia, they ended up being sold in West Africa because Indonesians preferred their own fabrics. At the time Yinka realized this would be the central theme that would run in his works: the idea of authentic versus inauthentic.

Photo courtesy Trish Mayo via Flickr.

Following questions from the audience, Shonibare graciously signed exhibition catalogues for members on stage until he’d gotten through the very last person in line. Members flocked to the galleries afterwards, particularly to the museum’s Period Rooms, where Shonibare’s works are whimsically integrated into these 18^th and 19^th century settings.

As this exhibition is the first major U.S. survey of Shonibare’s work, the opening last night was meaningful for everyone involved, and we thank everyone who came out for this special evening. Yinka Shonibare MBE is now open to the public and will be on view until September 20.

If you’ve checked out the Museum’s calendar in the last twelve hours or so, you may have noticed how different (or, really, how not different) it is. That’s right, our calendar now looks like it fits with the rest of our Web site.

Remember what our old calendar looked like? Let’s give it one last hurrah:

Starting today, we are rolling out some calendar upgrades to improve ease of use and allow us to disseminate event information more flexibly. Today I mainly want to talk about ease of use.

The Museum’s calendar actually has two distinct sets of users. On the front end we have visitors to our Web site (and, hopefully, to the Museum itself). But behind the scenes, our ever-patient editors comprise another group with very different needs. We tried to keep the user experience of both visitors and editors in mind over the course of the calendar upgrade.

What’s new for visitors
Many things, big and small. Let’s start with the big stuff:

New layout
We switched to a wider layout and ditched those blocks of color. And, on pages that display a range of dates (like the week, month, and weekend views and the “browse by category” pages), we’ve now grouped the events under easy-on-the-eyes date headings. No more “2009-04-18″ above each and every event title. Suddenly the calendar is readable! I’m hoping this will encourage people to stay and explore what we have to offer.

Featured events
With the switch to the wider layout we were also able to add a right-hand column that we’ll use to highlight upcoming featured events, such as the Brooklyn Ball coming up on April 23.

Permalinks and bookmarking tools
Every event now has its own permalink, to display that event and only that event. This opens up a lot of new territory for how and where we use event information. And for how you can use our event information. Taking a tip from the good folks at the Walker Art Center, we’ve added a “Share This” link below each event that lets you post it to Facebook, tweet it, or save its permalink page to a variety of social bookmarking services.

And now the small stuff. With a data-driven page like the calendar, the devil truly is in the details. These are the kind of things that individually, ultimately, should be almost invisible to anyone looking at the page, but that work together to make things feel natural. Effortless reading is what we’re aiming for here.

So, for instance, we made sure times were formatted to read the way we would say them out loud: 6—8:30 p.m. instead of 6:00 p.m.—8:30 p.m.. We moved query-specific information from its old spot at the top of the page’s main well into the page title, and programmed the titles to use more English and fewer dates. Instead of saying “Events from 4/12/2009 to 4/18/2009″ we now say “Week of April 12, 2009″.

We’ve tweaked the listing of current exhibitions to call out which events are opening and closing during the requested date range, and changed the heading on that exhibition list from “Current Exhibitions” to “On View” to reinforce the fact that the list shows what exhibitions will be open during the selected time period.

What’s new for editors
Okay, technically, it’s been about week since we finalized upgrades to the intranet tool that our editors use to manage all this event information. But I think they’ll agree that it still feels new enough to merit mentioning here.

For them, the biggest change is that the new calendar tool offers a way to batch edit groups of recurring events, like Museum Guide tours, that are offered at many different times. We also integrated some related tools for managing our lists of locations and event categories. And finally, we reorganized the main page of the calendar tool to make it easier to find the events they need to edit. All of these changes should make calendar updates go more smoothly for them.

Finally, I’ll note that the new tool was designed as an alternate interface for the same underlying data that the old tool worked off of. Of course, we added significantly to the original data structure, but we were able to keep the core unchanged. Essentially, the old tool then offered access to a subset of the data and functionality that the new tool could handle. This meant that both tools could be used simultaneously — I could use the new tool for development and testing while the editors continued to use the old tool. And it meant no data migration before launch. Which is a thing of beauty.

So, that’s it. Welcome to the new calendar. Now go explore.

What would Erin and I do for love? Freeze, apparently (it was really, really cold and windy getting this pic)! We hear the weather is going to warm up this weekend, so it should be perfect—the Wikipedia Loves Art Brooklyn Museum meetup is scheduled for this Saturday. Come to Target First Saturday (2/7/09 5-11pm) and when you get to the lobby, look for our table with this sign. It should be a great opportunity for us all to say hello. And, hey, if you register in advance and bring your camera we’ll make sure you have a box of Conversation Hearts with your name on it!

If you’ve been in Times Square lately, you may have seen this already, but we were waiting to post until we had some good photos. Tash put out a call to the Brooklyn Museum Members group on Flickr and Trish Mayo and Stephen Sandoval took a field trip to the square to get some shots. Trish, Stephen - thanks, these are awesome!

Photo by Trish Mayo. All Rights Reserved.

Video by Stephen Sandoval (with awesome Times Square street noise). All Rights Reserved.  [Hey, you need at least IE7 to see the vid, but use Firefox because it is better]

If you are in Times Square, check out Gilbert and George on the MTV 44 1/2, the high def screen on Bway between 44th and 45th Streets. The series curated by Creative Time show early works by Gilbert & George, A Portrait of the Artists As Young Men and The Nature of Our Looking, are from 1970 and 1972, respectively, and are timed to correspond with the Gilbert & George exhibition, on view from October 3 to January 11.

Schedule (subject to change) as follows:

Monday AM: 12:00, 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, 7:00, 8:00, 9:00
Monday PM: 5:00, 6:00, 7:00, 8:00, 9:00, 10:00, 11:00

Tuesday AM: 12:00, 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, 7:00, 8:00, 9:00
Tuesday PM: 9:00, 10:00, 11:00

Wednesday AM: 12:00, 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, 7:00, 8:00, 9:00
Wednesday PM: 12:00, 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, 7:00, 8:00, 9:00, 10:00, 11:00

Thursday-Sunday AM: 12:00, 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, 7:00, 8:00, 9:00, 10:00, 11:00
Thursday-Sunday PM: 12:00, 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, 7:00, 8:00, 9:00, 10:00, 11:00

Paint brushes? Too obvious. A Brooklyn Museum Membership? Almost perfect. During the Members Preview & Reception for Gilbert & George this past Thursday, Museum Director Arnold Lehman seems to have gotten it right when he gave the artistic team this unique gift:

Photograph © Adam Husted

In an effort to find the most authentic souvenir of Brooklyn, the Director joked about having gone down to the “heart of Brooklyn,” otherwise known as the Fulton Mall, to find these classic hooded sweatshirts for his visitors. He was obviously having a little fun with his guests since these sweatshirts (with lettering in the Brooklyn Museum’s signature Cyan Blue, of course) are in sharp contrast to the double-breasted tweed suits Gilbert & George always wear in public. Nevertheless, they both seemed delighted with their new matching apparel and to receive this very special memento of their visit to Brooklyn.

Following this very insightful—and entertaining—discussion, Gilbert & George headed down to the lobby where they were met by a long line of Members eager to get their exhibition catalogues signed by the artist. In addition to these catalogues, Gilbert & George amiably signed everything from invitations to prints, and even one Member’s tie…while he was still wearing it!

The final highlight of the evening was the raffle drawing for a limited-edition Gilbert & George print which Members could enter by making a donation to the Museum’s Annual Fund. Although only one Member walked away with this special edition, over 800 Members attended this event and had the special opportunity to get up close and personal with the artist! If you didn’t make it to the Preview, you can still get to know Gilbert & George in our special exhibition galleries until January 11.

Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Museum Member, Stephen Sandoval.

Also, be sure to check out more photos from this event in the Brooklyn Museum Members group on Flickr.