The technology common room in the Blanton is available for patrons to explore.

Often overlooked, the lighting subtly improves the visual experience for visitors in the galleries.

Walking into an art museum, it is easy to just admire the paintings, drawings and sculptures as well as the talent that goes behind them. However, few realize the amount of technology utilized to display, maintain and catalog the art. At the University of Texas at Austin’s Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, technology provides a platform for employees to reach out to the community, as well as for visitors to gain understanding past the traditional art labels.

Blanton and the Community

The Blanton Museum’s Web site is one indicator of how the museum has integrated the advantages of technology. Averaging around 400,000 hits a month, the Web site includes interactive features such as videos, image galleries and a blog.

“A Web site is often the first impression you might have of an institution or organization before you go,” said Brady Dyer, the public relations and marketing manager for the Blanton.

Staff at the museum utilizes “pachyderms,” which are Web site templates that organize interactive elements. It enables Blanton employees who may not know HTML to create content for the site without going through the Web master, said Jennifer Garner, manager of school and family programs.

“It’s not a Web 2.0 experience as when you use Flash to build a site,” Garner said. Web site visitors are able to navigate between different photo galleries online, informational videos and audio pieces of poetry written about specific artworks.

“[Patrons] can see images side by side with contextual information about that, and that might be more in-depth information than they would get on the label in the gallery,” Garner said. “It’s an opportunity before or after they visit to go deeper.”

The Blanton Museum promotes and publicizes events through the Internet as well. Highlights for each month are uploaded to the Web site’s calendar and featured events page, and separate notices are e-mailed through an online newsletter. The e-mail notifications are sent to a list of approximately 12,000 people, Dyer said. They correspond with all other PR for events and work together in promoting for the Blanton.

Social media is also used for promoting the museum and widening the audience. “Social media has become hugely important in marketing and PR for museums,” Dyer said. In order to stay up-to-date with the newest social Web sites, the PR department hires an intern dedicated to monitoring social media and posting events.

“For me, or my generation, we’ve kind of grown up with social networking and Facebook…it’s just a part of my daily life,” said Nancy Nguyen, PR intern. Her position entails keeping up with new social Web site and posting updates and current events going on at the Blanton. The museum has a profile on Myspace and Facebook, and recently acquired a Twitter account.

Social media helps create visitor-museum interaction by getting people involved with what’s going on at the museum, Nguyen said. “The Blanton’s not this really huge museum like The Met, and I know I’ve heard them having trouble getting people to go to the museum and have that connection,” she said. “I feel like with our social networking we’ve managed to do that.”

Technology and the Works of Art

From illuminating the art on the wall, to preservation of ancient pieces, to cataloging the story behind each work, technology is responsible for it all. Two main components monitored by technology in the building are lighting and climate control. The lighting of the Blanton is integral to the appreciation of each piece, and is monitored by light meters, with different standards for each medium of art. Works on paper usually have dimmer lighting to ensure the longevity of the work, while paintings are given more exposure. Climate control becomes a major factor when dealing with the preservation of the art, with electronic censors throughout the building geared toward keeping a steady, unchanging temperature at all times.

“The electronic censors around the building are supposed to compensate for any changes. The temperature is going to change a little bit. As long as that change is gradual it is fine,” said Sue Ellen Jeffers, registrar of the Blanton. “However, paper is very susceptible to humidity, and when you have paintings on wood, which expands and contracts with humidity, you have paint that cracks and paper that gets buckled.”

Jeffers is charged with the preservation and care of the Blanton’s pieces. To keep track of each of the works Jeffers uses EmbARK, a collections management database software designed specifically for museums. An in-house tool, EmbARK helps catalog the information behind each piece, including where it came from, research done on it, its location in the museum and images.

Next: Patron Experience