CLICK!

A current exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art (BMA) called CLICK! is a great example of the creative role that museums can play in utilizing the web to involve users.  Click! is a multi stage project.  First, there was an open call for photographs for the exhibit on the theme of the “Changing Faces of Brooklyn.”  Then an open call for evaluation of the submitted photographs online was issued.  Finally an exhibit at the museum of the top 20% of the 389 photos submitted was assembled.  But that isn’t all.

There is also an exhibit of all the photographs, and multiple statistical views of the voting.  These results include very interesting data about the relative ratings of the raters (self-identified in 5 categories from naive to expert), along with a host of other data. I found this information as interesting as the exhibit itself.  Begging won’t help.  You’ll just have to visit the site yourself to find out how the ratings of experts compared to the ratings of the non-experts.  The site has lots of other great features, including an intelligent commentary, a look into the process of mounting the physical exhibit, the comments of raters about the photos, a blog, a podcast, and, novel to me, a print-on-demand catalog!  Of course, there are also the photos themselves.  There are some terrific ones here including this one courtesy of  Elyse Taylor. CLICK! is well worth the visit.

Historical Note on these Images

As I’m a Brooklynite, and as this site is about the subject matter of images, I will add a historical note about the SUBJECT of Elyse Taylor’s shot above.

The monument on the left is   the Soldier’s and Sailor’s Memorial Arch (Brooklyn’s answer to the Arc de Triomphe) which was built as a memorial to the Union soldiers after the Civil War is located at the center of Grand Army Plaza.  The building in the distance is the new Richard Meier building at the intersection of Eastern Parkway and Plaza Street (now denominated “1 Prospect Park” in a new application of architectural branding) which is just a short walk from the BMA.  Whether you love the Meier building or hate it, and I know folks of both persuasions, it is worth noting that the site of this building, on an especially beautiful and prominent corner right on Grand Army Plaza,  the intersection of Union Street, Flatbush Avenue, Vanderbilt Avenue,  Eastern Parkway, and Prospect Park West was a blacktopped parking lot until sold by Union Temple, which has occupied the plot next door and owned the Meier building site since circa 1925.  By the way it is pure coincidence that Union Temple is located adjacent to the memorial to the Union Army; the name Union Temple was  chosen to denominate the merger of two older synagogues.

The original plan for the site where the Meier building is situated called for the construction of a sanctuary for Union Temple.  Unfortunately, shortly after the erection of the Temple House came the stock market crash of 1929.   The site remained undeveloped for 90 years as a result of the depression of the 30’s, WWII, and then the massive migration of people out of New York City to the suburbs during the fabulous 50’s and 60’s.  Here is a rendering by the architect of the original design for the sanctuary on this site next to the Temple House which was constructed  and continues to serve as Union Temple’s home on the left, and a similar view today.

CLICK!’s Image Retreival

What makes this exhibit interesting from the standpoint of image retrieval is that the results of the rating process are made available to everyone.  Probably because I had recently been visiting some of the research focused CBIR sites I couldn’t help contrasting this level of information disclosure to the minimal effort given to providing similar data to the user/contributors to the CBIR data collection sites I am familiar with.  Granted the purposes are different, and the other museum sites may want to keep the raw data of their research private.  But some level of sharing would be interesting.  Perhaps they would do well to take a lesson from BMA.  On the other hand, even the CLICK! exhibit could have done more.  As far as I could see, there was no opportunity on the CLICK! site for the raters (or for that matter the photographers) to tag the images.  That would have generated some interesting results as well, and perhaps would lead to more visibility online.

Here is a better view of the magnificent Soldier’s and Sailor’s Memorial Arch and a link to it’s source which provides further information.   I’m a big fan of different points of view.  Yours are welcome too.

Tagged as: Brooklyn, Brooklyn Museum, Eastern Parkway, Elyse Taylor, Flatbush Avenue, Grand Army Plaza, New York City, Prospect Park, Richard Meier, Union Army, Union Temple, Vanderbilt Avenue