artmarks

i just discovered the museums and the web conference website, a creative commons site containing all the latest developments in trying to market art to the masses through internet portals to museums. many museums have opened on-line portals, and some of them even exist in second life or their own on-line versions. once a museum has a virtual presence, it becomes possible for visitors to take the art home with them, in a way, by bookmarking virtual versions of a piece. in Bookmarking in Museums: Extending the museum experience beyond the visit? filippi-fantoni and bowen explore the failure of most museum web portals to captivate people by allowing them to bookmark and build personal blogs of the art they enjoy. the paper points out that while a number of prominent museums have created ways for users to pick and collect their favorite pieces online, less and less are doing so prompting the cancellation of the programs. the problems cited are poor design and the remoteness of media rooms in museums. it seems like for something like this to work, it would have to be more engaging, perhaps tangible (in-museum), social (like facebook) and annotative (like a blog). in the end, there could even be a market-based system (like openstudio) that allows people to invest in the popularity of pieces, trade and defend their purchases.