January ushered in a new year with sweeping disruptions in media, journalism, and public humanities. Technology-driven partnerships, staff cuts, and mergers have redefined the online media landscape kicking-off 2025, calling into question journalism’s position in an age of generative AI. Read the highlights below.
The grant narrative has become one of the most high-stakes tools of communication in the nonprofit fundraising space, driving more than $150 billion in global expenditures. As grant writers adapt their appeals in response to changing funder values, this narrative network gives shape to the nonprofit ecosystem in which many arts organizations operate.
Exposure to nature can positively influence one’s mental well-being. As VR technology seeks to recreate elements of life, its developers and prospective adopters must keep asking one very important question: how deeply can VR impact us? And, what might the implications be for museums?
It is always fun to take a moment as we close out a year to compare our favorite content to the popularity contest of the web. AI, Sustainability, and Preservation with technology led the charge. Keep reading for the most popular articles and podcasts.
As AI continues to integrate into our everyday lives, how does it impact our creativity? Many researchers and scholars agree that the technology may promote significant opportunities in this space. By introducing novel ideas and opportunities to users, it may be most effective as a tool to augment, rather than replace, human creativity.
Data visualization helps art institutions communicate with internal and external communities more effectively and efficiently. There are a numbers of quality data visualization tools available for free, but how arts managers use these tools defines how effective the data visualization. The following four strategies provide a guideline for arts managers to create data visualization with purpose and impact.
Are you curious about beacon technology? Perhaps you're wondering how you should go about choosing a beacon hardware provider. Or maybe you are considering how you would use this technology in your performing arts organization. AMT Lab Contributor Kate Martin has created an infographic to get you started answering these questions.
How do you learn best about art? Maybe you lightly browse, interact with friends, or get right in the middle of the action. There are multiple ways to engage with and explore art forms, however cultural institutions may not always program to meet these needs.
The Cleveland Museum of Art's Gallery One activities, on the other hand, were designed with people's learning needs and preferences in mind. In this article I apply WolfBrown's Making Sense of Audience Engagement Audience Typologies to the different initiatives to see how learners can interact with the the Art Lens App, Collection Wall, Interactives, and Studio Play at the CMA.
Contributors Aoni Wang and Giorgia Gandolfini recently attended Idealware’s webinar, Infographics for Outreach, Advocacy, and Marketing: From Data to Design . This talk delved deeply into strategies for successful design of infographics.
Per Idealware, an infographic is an image that presents data, transferring numbers into a comprehensive visual narrative. Infographics have become very popular among organizations, as they are generally easier to understand and more effective at communicating data to the population at-large than traditional spreadsheets and reports. Infographics attract attention and provide new ways for visitors to engage with data.
Two things I know are true: That Rachael Wilkinson's impression of SNL's Drunk Uncle rivals Drunk Uncle himself and that Art.sy’s Fan page is the best source on Facebook for wonderfully distracting food-for-thought. I recently came across yet another dynamic infographic of sorts- the "Graph of Ideas." It presents a beautiful, interconnected and thready web of “Every Big Idea, Ever.” According to Suzanne LaBarre in an interview with map creator Brendan Griffen,
Each node represents one historical figure, and the nodes are color-coordinated to represent specific eras or fields of expertise (red for 19th- and 20th-century philosophers; orange for fiction authors; purple for comedians; and so on). Like-minded people are grouped together, and linked to all their influences, as well as everyone who has influenced them. The more influential a person, the bigger his or her node.
Griffen includes in the map every profile on Wikipedia that has an “influenced by” or “influences” field. Though the map is well-stocked, some great thinkers are absent (athletes and sculptors for example) from it. Griffen explains in the interview,
“I was limited [by] the dataset. Most of the people are philosophers and authors primarily because these are text-driven endeavors. Presumably fans of philosophy and books have entered in the information which sort of makes sense given their overrepresentation in the graph. Sports fans are unlikely to enter these into Wikipedia and so they are underrepresented. Similarly with artists but to a lesser extent.”
Basically, it is a map of the people Wikipedia contributors care about/care to write about. Though this may be the case, it is no less fascinating to explore just how interconnected these great thinkers are. Griffen's final message is inspirational, retrospective, and forward-thinking:
"Everyone is the collective sum of everyone else. We often think great thinkers, scientists, and authors sit in isolation in some cloister waiting for that eureka moment to come to them in a lightning storm. The truth is, the process of discovery forces us to consciously or unconsciously draw on all of our known, and perhaps more significantly, unknown antecedents of knowledge and wisdom to come up with new solutions to the problems we’re facing today."
