Virtual Museum |
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With the enormous expansion of the public and its potential access to various kinds of cultural experiences, the resulting diversification of demand has been met by an inevitable diversification of supply. The traditional arts have fast broadened, crossing over into the fields of fashion, design, technology and in turn life. This diversification is clearly exampled by recently organized exhibitions dedicated to designer names such as Armani and Valentino, as well as those displaying everyday objects such as motorcycles and computers, which have subsequently been received with both great success and at times criticism. The millions of visitors that pack every kind of museum give testimony to the current shaping of these places, no longer as seats of culture alone, but also as places of meeting, recreation, and entertainment. The characteristics, specificities, necessities, functioning and uses of the museum should be given serious reconsideration, much more so than by simply inserting extra program. These supporting functions, usually commercial and located in strategic and localized areas, are rampant in the museum culture today - the media lounges, the bookstores, and the cafes. The additive and clearly 'other' nature of these inserted programs are based in the arguably already exhausted model of the museum that this competition rises up to re-think. |
eBay.com is very much a new kind of virtual museum, one that displays and sells just about anything and everything. A museum and shop all in one. And don't forget the democracy of the whole operation.
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Quondam © 2004.02.15 |