Seattle Art Museum’s World-Class Technology

Calvin Hunt (Tlasutiwalis), Thunderbird mask and regalia, 2006
You’d expect no less from a museum whose director’s name is Gates (as in, stepson Bill Gates), but the Seattle Art Museum, which I visited a few months ago for the Wall Street Journal (here and here), has the most sophisticated and sensitive use of technology in its galleries of any museum where I’ve touchscreened.
Mimi Gardner Gates wanted technological enhancements that aided visitors unobtrusively, without detracting from the art, and that’s what she got. The computer stations are tucked discreetly into areas that don’t compete with the main attraction, and they are loaded with user-friendly, layered information about the artworks and the artists. I particularly liked the material about a Native American mask and costume (above) that presented its creator, Calvin Hunt, talking about his work and showed footage of him wearing it while dancing in a ceremony.
I also appreciated something that I’ve never heard before, but which should become standard equipment in any museum that employs audio: It’s something relatively new, called a “sound shower.” One of my pet peeves in museums is the use of sound, be it music or speech, that pertains to only one part of the exhibition but is heard throughout the larger space. More than once, I’ve experienced the cacaphony of competing audios, making tranquil contemplation of the art nearly impossible.
The speakers of the sound showers pinpoint the sound to the one spot where it is relevant to what you are seeing. For example, the sound from a video being shown in one gallery is directed at the bench stationed directly in front of the screen. During my visit, before the public opening, one or two speakers did need some fine tuning: They were broadcasting their sound in the wrong direction—a problem that I assume has been corrected.
My favorite technological moment at SAM was the state-of-the-art digital presentation of one of the museum’s great treasures, a “Poem Scroll with Deer,” 1610s, by Tawaraya Sotatsu and Hon’ami Koetsu. Although only a small section of the scroll is revealed in the display case at any one time, the entire work (including sections not owned by Seattle) can be “unscrolled” on a large wall screen controlled from a freestanding computer station. The program also translates the poems displayed on the screen and provides information and images about the recent conservation of the work.
I was not surprised to learn that the mastermind behind this project was Curtis Wong of Microsoft, whom I’ve interviewed several times over the years, and who first came to my attention as the creator of the then pioneering CD-ROM, “A Passion for Art,” about Albert Barnes and the Barnes Foundation.
If you want to see Wong’s latest tour de force (created in close collaboration with Yukiko Shirahara, SAM’s curator of Asian Art), you don’t have to fly to Seattle; you can go here.
The one thing I don’t understand, though: Why would a museum that is so technologically surefooted in its galleries put up with such a clumsy website?