博物館使出技術殺手鐗 吸引千禧一代

If museums face an uncertain future, you wouldn’t know it from “Henri Matisse: The Cutouts,” which recently drew 664,000 to the Museum of Modern Art. The show was so thronged that MoMA kept its doors open round-the-clock on the closing weekend last month.

雖然博物館的未來充滿不確定，但最近足足吸引了66.4萬名觀衆的“亨利·馬蒂斯：剪紙藝術展(Henri Matisse: The Cutouts)”絕然看不出博物館的蕭條。由於這場在紐約現代藝術博物館(MoMA)舉辦的展覽太過火爆，館方不得不在上個月最後一個週末通宵開放展館。

But blockbusters like Matisse may be deceptive. Art museum attendance dipped 5 percent from 2002 to 2012, according to the National Endowment for the Arts. Museumgoers 75 and older were the only age group to increase over that period. The guardians of posterity must be concerned about the future, no matter how long the lines may be.

但像馬蒂斯這樣轟動的展覽畢竟是個例。據美國國家藝術基金會(the National Endowment for the Arts)，美術館的參觀人數在2002年至2012年十年間下降了5%，期間，去博物館的人中只有75歲及以上年齡段的人數有所上升。但不管參觀的隊伍排多長，子孫後代的監護者都得思考博物館的未來該怎麼辦。

Curators worry most about millennials. How do static galleries of canvas and artifact engage a generation raised on the reactive pleasures of right swipes and hyperlinks? How do you sell Goya when “Game of Thrones” is a click away?

館長們最最擔心的，就是千禧一代。怎樣才能讓從小就體驗着向右滑動屏幕和超鏈接這類互動樂趣的一代人，對安靜的畫廊和藝廊感興趣呢？怎樣才能在點點鼠標就能看《權力的遊戲》(Game of Thrones)”的時代裏，吸引大家去看藝術家戈雅(Goya)的作品呢？

Internet technology presents diversions, but may also offer new ways of engaging younger visitors in art, science and history. This year many museums will install a new form of Bluetooth technology known as beacons. Patrons who download a smartphone app can be tracked within a few feet as they wander the galleries. The beacons can detect whether they’re standing at a Warhol print or a Cartier-Bresson photograph and, like a digital docent, can beam them a rich feed of information about those works, including audio talks, videos and reviews.

網絡科技帶來各種消遣方式的同時，或許也能提供吸引年輕遊客關注藝術、科學和歷史的新思路。很多博物館都計劃在今年安裝一種新型藍牙產品——信標(beacons)。參觀者下載智能手機應用後，可以在展館中離信標幾英尺的範圍內被追蹤到。信標能檢測出參觀者是站在沃霍爾(Warhol)的畫作前，還是卡蒂爾-佈雷鬆(Cartier-Bresson)的攝影作品前，然後像數碼講解員一樣，輸出一系列與作品相關的信息，包括音頻、視頻講解和評論等。

“The beacons amplify the experience,” said Brendan Ciecko, founder of Cuseum, a Boston start-up that is testing beacons in the Neue Galerie in New York and the List Visual Arts Center at M.I.T., among other museums. “Tech can, and should, bring joy and enrichment to galleries.”

“信標能提升用戶體驗，”波士頓Cuseuem的創始人布倫達·扎艾克(Brendan Ciecko)說；Cuseum這家創業公司目前正在紐約新美術館(Neue Galerie)和麻省理工學院List視覺藝術中心等地方測試信標技術。“科技可以、也理應爲美術館增添趣味，豐富體驗。”

You can text or email the museum’s images to a friend, or post them on Facebook or Twitter. And visitors can navigate to works in far-flung galleries as they would with Google Maps — no small convenience in the labyrinthine halls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

參觀者可以把博物館的圖片彩信或郵件發給朋友或者發佈到Facebook和Twitter賬戶上，還可以用谷歌地圖導航，去往距離較遠的展廳看展品——這對於展廳如迷宮般複雜的大都會藝術博物館(Metropolitan Museum of Art)來說，可謂方便不少呢。

The technology “provides visitors with an effortless, rich mechanism that allows them to opt in or opt out for as much as they want to know,” said Elizabeth E. Barker, director of the Boston Athenaeum, which will begin using beacons in time for a show on the Marquis de Lafayette in June. Graphic panels can now be moved online, she added, affording a less cluttered encounter between patron and art.

這項技術“通過一種簡單有趣的方法，讓遊客能自主選擇他們想了解的內容”，波士頓圖書館(Boston Athenaeum)館長伊麗莎白·E·巴爾克(Elizabeth E. Barker)說，圖書館決定在今年6月關於吉爾貝爾·杜·莫提耶(Marquis de Lafayette)的展覽上開始使用信標技術。她補充說道，圖解面板現在可以移至線上，這就減少了遊客和藝術品之間亂七八糟的東西。

More important, beacons allow for an alternative to the old convention of top-down exhibitions, in which curators and other experts impart a single authoritative view. Visitors may now post a lively mix of reactions, reviews and rebuttals to exhibitions and individual works, just as readers do in online newspaper comment fields and restaurantgoers do on Yelp.

更重要的是，信標技術提供了一種有別於傳統的自上而下專制式展覽的新方式；在以前在展覽中，參觀者只能看到館方或其他專家的一面之詞，現在，他們可以把對展覽和藝術品的反應、評論、不滿貼出來，就像讀者在網絡報紙的評論區、去過某個餐館的人在Yelp上做的一樣。

The result is a cross between curating and crowdsourcing, a two-way conversation. “You shouldn’t have to be a professional curator to have a voice that matters,” said Robert Stein, deputy director of the Dallas Museum of Art, which has experimented with a variety of location-aware technologies but is not currently using beacons.

這是策展和衆包(crowdsourcing)相互融合、互相流通的結果。“不是說非得是專業的策展人才能發表意見，”達拉斯藝術博物館(Dallas Museum of Art)的副館長羅伯特·斯坦因(Robert Stein)說道，他進行了一系列定位科技的實驗，但目前還未使用信標技術。

Elizabeth Merritt, founding director of the Center for the Future of Museums, an arm of the American Alliance of Museums, pointed out that remarks written in virtual comment fields could relate shows to current issues in a way that curators usually cannot.

美國博物館協會(American Alliance of Museums)成員、未來博物館中心(the Center for the Future of Museums)創始館長伊麗莎白·梅里特(Elizabeth Merritt)指出虛擬平臺上的評論可以把展覽和當下的現實問題聯繫在一起，這是策展人往往做不到的。

“The time required to compose and print graphic labels makes it impossible to be of-the-moment,” she said, adding that an exhibition on race riots might prompt visitors to relate them to the recent unrest in Ferguson, Mo. “Now you have the historical echo,” Ms. Merritt said.

“撰寫和製作圖標是需要時間的，這導致這些圖標往往缺乏及時性，”她說道。她又補充舉例，說一個關於種族騷亂的展覽可能讓遊客聯想到最近密蘇里州弗格森市的騷亂。“這樣，歷史的共鳴就出現了，”梅里特女士說。

Apple and other companies started beacon technology two years ago with retail use in mind, but cultural institutions have latched onto the possibilities. Most major museums, including the Guggenheim and the Met, are in various stages of testing and installation — no small job. Coverage requires hundreds of puck-size transmitters. For the Boston Athenaeum, the cost is the equivalent of “throwing one gala fund-raiser,” Dr. Barker said.

兩年前，蘋果和其他公司就針對零售業開始推出信標技術，但如今文化機構也抓住了機遇。大多數主流博物館，包括古根海姆(Guggenheim)和大都會博物館(Met)，都紛紛進入了測試安裝的不同階段——工程量都不小。覆蓋工程需要數百臺冰球大小的發射機。對於波士頓圖書館，這一工程的費用用巴克博士的話說“舉辦一場籌款晚會”就夠了。

Inevitably, some museums, the Frick Collection in New York and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston among them, will choose to maintain galleries as places of quiet contemplation undisturbed by the jangle of phone alerts. “We all want to preserve the gallery as an escape,” Mr. Stein said. “We have to make beacons part of an elegant experience. If we fail, then the public gets annoyed.”

當然，某些博物館，如紐約弗裏克收藏館(Frick Collection)和波士頓的伊莎貝拉嘉納藝術博物館(Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum)，選擇保留美術館幫助人們逃離刺耳的手機鈴聲和陷入安靜沉思的作用。“我們都希望美術館能繼續像世外桃源一樣，”斯坦因先生說。“爲此我們不得不讓信標技術完全融入過去的典雅體驗，一旦融合得稍有偏差，遊客就會感到煩心。”

The benefits of audience data may be too great to resist. For one thing, beacons allow museums to send personalized messages based on visitors’ past behavior.

受衆信息的誘惑大概實在太難抵禦，而且，信標讓博物館可以依據參觀者過去的遊覽記錄來推送個性化信息。

Nobody knows if the guests’ collective likes and dislikes will influence curatorial decisions. “Does a museum deliver what the market appears to ask for?” asked Susie Wilkening, who, as senior consultant at Reach Advisors, specializes in audience research for museums. “Do they ignore areas that don’t test well?”

沒人知道顧客的集體喜惡能否影響策展決定。“博物館應該提供市場所需求的嗎？”Reach Advisors公司專注於博物館受衆研究的高級顧問蘇茜·威爾肯寧(Susie Wilkening)問道。“他們會忽視那些效果不好的地方嗎？”

Add to these hypotheticals the possibility of exchanging data with a company like Google, which would afford museums a depth of knowledge about patrons’ preferences. “These are the issues museums are now discussing,” Ms. Wilkening said.

除了以上假設下的問題外，博物館還有可能與谷歌這樣的公司交換數據，以更深入瞭解顧客的喜好。“這些都是博物館正在討論的問題，”威爾肯寧女士說。

As with many aspects of modern life, patrons who opt for beacon apps willingly trade a measure of privacy for the benefit of a more personalized interaction with art.

與現代生活的很多其他方面相似，選擇使用包含信標技術應用的客戶們願意犧牲適度的隱私來換取與藝術作品之間更個性化的交互體驗。

“My sense is that beacons aren’t a life raft,” Dr. Barker said, “but a bridge to the next generation of museum users.”

“我覺得信標技術不是博物館的救生筏，”巴克博士說，“只是一座連接下一代博物館參觀者的橋樑而已。”