To The Museum and Beyond Final

THE GETTY CENTER IN LOS ANGELES
December 22ND, 2049
From the desk of Dennis Matthews, Director;
PRESS RELEASE & STATEMENT TO OUR MEMBERS

Apple has taken upon a partnership with the Getty Center in Los Angeles, tentatively titled the GettyApple Project. After the success of the Ipod, Iphone, and Itunes at the end of the last century, which led to the incorporation of all types of media not only at the home but also in the hand wherever one would go. We now see an opportunity for a grander experience.
The newest innovation of Apple will be called the Iglasses for the museum goer. The Iglasses will effectively replace the audio tour we have all become way too familiar with, the disenchanted and most often misinformed musings of the curator in question of the exhibition relayed through a clunky set of headphones and a bloated remote control one had to carry through the show.
In what will become the most exciting innovation since mandatory moving sidewalks in our cultural institutions, the Iglasses will give the museum goer the option to literally choose their own adventure.
Originally developed early this century as a webcam utility device, the Iglasses have dabbled in every area of our lives from keeping us awake on late night drives to digitally replacing bad actors with your favorites in the movies of your choosing.
The steady decline of museum popularity in the last fifty years has led Apple to reinvent this technology for the sanctity of our disappearing sense of culture. For example in recent years, many forms of cultural expression such as poetry and photography have disappeared entirely, due to their artistic and societal irrelevance and all around depressing nature of their subject matter most of the time.
Today the culturally inclined will be able to load a program for visitation of any institution at home, teleport to the institution, see exactly what they’d like nothing more nothing less, and the moving sidewalks will be programmed by your Iglasses to tour the viewer around.




Providing only generalized factoids that can’t be recanted by some book, wall text, or some delectable curator, the Iglasses will tell you what it is without telling you that its only that. Remember TiVo? Similar but with culture whatever that may be to you, well its all up to you!
Taking a cue from TiVo, the Iglasses will also allow the patron to fast forward past drab blockbuster shows like After Whistler at the High Museum and Homer & Hopper at the Art Institute of Chicago. By fast forward we really mean that the moving sidewalks will speed up and strap you into your chair, dumping you off at either the gift shop or the next art work in your program.
Enhancing a viewer’s experience is no longer enough; our mission is to exaggerate the experience. Anticipating the desire for and providing for an easier trip to the museum, all tours of the collection will be now self-directed as programmed through the visitor’s Iglasses.




Never-ending arguments about what to go see and in what order will disappear entirely when the Iglasses allow each member of your family to create their own tours. The Getty Center in Los Angeles and our new Now Art Wing will be the first testing ground for this new technological incorporation and remixing of the collection.
Since the opening of the Getty Center in 1997 the next ways of viewing art has been at the forefront of our mission. We even went to the lengths of building a Tram that divorces any “walk-on” viewers that wander in from the street level; it is to be an experience. For us it is our patrons’ nervous anticipation of what lies upon the hill that we offer.
The exclusive art museum you ask? Well of course there’s no VIP list, only wonders awaiting for those that climb the hill to come discover their own sense of culture in visual actualized form expressed through unique art objects.
The stakes were raised from this move, the resort museum was invented, and we could not allow let downs in the hearts of viewers. The art museum as the next hot vacation spot was here. Therefore the experience of the museum couldn’t let the illusion of escape to break even for one moment.
This idea had to pertain to the collection also, genres had to adapt, such often misused tropes of art like Realism and Figuration had to be forgotten and moved back to storage or sold off, literally swept under the rug never to be seen again. Seeing a still-life and feeling hungry would interrupt the escape that art, especially abstract, non-committal art offers.
The structure of the Now Art Wing will be a series of pods similar to garden conservatories encased in kaleidoscopic glass with moving sidewalks complete with benches ala the Jetsons that drop the viewer off at their next destination of culture. Taking advantage of the lush landscape and proximity to the Pacific Ocean and the city of Pasadena, the Tram has been extended in many directions to tether other destinations to our institution.
Imagine this, after a long day at the museum you can vacation at the beach or shop the beautiful streets of Pasadena. Of course all routes are one way, from the museum only. A city bus can take viewers back to the parking garage where they must have left their cars, at the foot of the hill the Getty Center stands upon.




Or just relax in our gardens now free of those indiscernible distractions that were popularized in the last century and called “public sculpture”. We don’t believe in that concept of letting art beautify through corrosion and exposure, we put it inside and keep it there, art is too important to allow it to deteriorate in the hands of nature. (Garden, Beach, or Shopping options only $150 per person!)
We, at the Getty Center aren’t here to tell you how it is. We are interested in what you think and what you want to see. So much so that we opened a research facility on the grounds from the very day of our founding, where you can tell us how it is (background as a verifiable scholar not longer required!).
The technology of the Iglasses also allows for an easier, more efficient tracking of statistics of the visitors and what they came to the institution to see and how long they viewed each art work in their program. If the question is what is more true now, well we are now gathering an answer from the public one validated through plain old pure statistical collection. The different works with the most of each category will be at the top in our hierarchy, (categories to be determined and altered as statistics change.).
It’s more than a surveying though in our minds, we will be rating art works in accordance to their popularity and relevance to other works in the collection. The Getty Center is a forward thinking, progressive institution and we are not afraid to let the public vote art works off the hill. We trust you and only want to learn about what do you want to see more of or in our next exhibition.
If Mondrian loses to Picasso, then Piet retires with no regrets, after all dead men can’t make for sore losers. And if Pollock and Durer are chums in the minds of the public then the wall texts and the installation of the collection will have to reflect that.
In this post-wikipedia age of editable history that only has to be agreed upon to remain published and available, the museum has to let the public create their own lineages and truth in art too.
This will also allow for works to reemerge from decades of storage room limbo due to popular demand. We have anticipated the problems that may arise from this such as the Art Institute of Chicago becoming the Picasso Institute of Chicago or the Met becoming the Matta.

It is indeed a slippery slope we have created but the most exhilarating ride to take all the way down. We at the Getty Center think you are smart, that you have your own sense of history that is undeniable to you and more excitingly so one that is unique to you as an individual. Other museums may ignore you but the Getty Center knows that you feel that way; your vote always counts with us.
Even the craziest vagrant on the street knows history and can quickly tell you how it all went down. Sure Old Saint Nick may have founded America just the other day. And with the help of Vice President Easter Bunny defeated the Commies in the Civil War. But who are we to say that the vagrant couldn’t see history, specifically art history, in the way he’d like.
Our belief is that the public has tired long ago of the miss musings of some defiant curator’s pet project always taking that familiar condescending tone with them. As for administrating and handling the usual business of an institution, we will maintain a committee board. Our committee functions as a group of delegates that can only cast the same vote that their districts tell them to for purchasing and in organizing every new exhibition.
Absentee ballots will be available and necessary in this situation for many of our members don’t live in Los Angeles. Sample images of prospective acquisitions will be linked to their corresponding check boxes as to avoid any confusion and the purchasing of work that didn’t receive the popular vote i.e. how we fixed the Electoral College system in 2012 by putting the candidate’s face next to where you put the check.
The New Acquisition of Now Art committee will be searching far and wide for art works that point elsewhere in the collection that have grown off the ideas of the Now Masters like Lawrence Weiner, Alan McCollum, Louise Lawler, and Joseph Kosuth.
In a way this will require of new acquisitions to be institution-specific to the Getty Center but will anticipate and allow for many works that are able to speak of art in general.
In the first decade of the century we witnessed an incredible achievement and invention in the form of “Personal Sound Amplifiers”. These wondrous devices allowed one to watch television without disturbing other people in the room.
It allowed people to spend time with their families without having to listen to them, you could be listening or the game could be on. The more particular users of this product would dim their television sets to a step before off and still be able to hear every play of the game.
The Getty Center and Apple thought long about this desire to immerse one’s self while seeming to be all there at home. Why not take a spin through the museum and see all your lost loves at your own leisure? Spending time with the family doesn’t have to involve television; you could all learn something over dinner.
Which brings us to our next exciting opportunity for advancement in the field of culture. The Iglasses will also have an option of home viewing, where you can tend your own garden while seeing the masterworks of the next generation. Can’t make it to the Getty Center? Our collection and your masterpiece mix list will come to you. (Do not operate heavy machinery, attempt to drive while using this product, or use illicit drugs or alcohol).
Debating where to go next summer? The Iglasses will now allow you to compare our institution with selected works of numerous other museums and cultural centers of the world. On that note you can even see the library at the zoo and vice versa, good luck studying with lions roaming the stacks!

Bibliography:
Iglasses
http://www.i-glassesstore.com/
TiVo
http://www.tivo.com/
After Whistler
http://www.docsnews.com/high.html#whistler
Homer
http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/exhibitions/homer
Hopper
http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/exhibitions/hopper/visitor
Wikiality and Agreed Upon History
http://spring.newsvine.com/_news/2006/08/01/307864-stephen-colbert-causes-chaos-on-wikipedia-gets-blocked-from-site
2000 presidential recount