This proposal was made in 2018 to the University of Oregon administration, by Greg Bryant and a coalition of stakeholders within the university community. The motivation and the story are recounted in the RAIN Magazine article: "A Pattern for Reversing Privatization".
Building a Museum.exchange
The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art as a global technology leader
Perpetual self-funding
The JSMA is raising money for an ambitious new
We want to offer a unique, useful, public-interest, research-driven, reasonably-priced software service, tailored to help museums around the world.
Its purpose is to increase engagement and drive
The software also provides unique opportunities for
We call the service museum.exchange ...
Connecting people
It integrates with other social media.
Its goal is to increase the community-focus of any museum, and thereby raise the level of artistic awareness, artistic achievement, and educational value of museums in a community.
It allows curators, researchers, students, and anyone in the community, to join forces to create successful projects.
Projects
The software helps people to create projects. Projects can be exhibitions, traveling shows, art classes, events, research, new museum technologies, new museum partnerships, and cooperative initiatives with artists, scholars, teachers, communities, and museums around the world.
A project is successful, world-class, and innovative in direct proportion to the support raised from large numbers of people. That network of support is what museum.exchange helps its projects to discover and build.
Software as a public service
In general, a public university is trusted by the public. And by other institutions.
Any software it creates is differentiated in the marketplace by its commitment to research and support for the public good.
A university has a special relationship with the public.
Technology is shaped by the goals of those who create it, so public-interest software is rarely created. But this can be done, successfully, by a university.
An example at the UO
One web service, at the UO College of Education, helps to support a unit of 40 researchers, earning over $4 million a year in subscription income. It is a useful, public-interest service. 12,000 schools subscribe to it around the world. At an average annual subscription of $350, this is a high-value, low-cost purchase for these institutions. It has no competitors in the private sector. Businesses are not tempted to enter this market, because potential returns would be far too low for investors. But, for the College of Education, this is a major source of financial stability, a success in terms of science and practice, and a unique source of data for countless well-funded studies. Again, the service leverages the reputation of a public institution, which is trusted to maintain privacy and deliver features whose utility is verified by active research. The unit is the world leader in this small niche.
The path to sustainability
Leveraging existing relationships, we project 1,000 institutional subscribers within a year. This will make the service self-sustaining.
There are over 50,000 museums worldwide that could pay a $300/year base subscription. The project could earn millions each year for the museum and the U of O.
Other income: industry, institutional and private grants; partnerships; consulting; customization; and a marketplace platform. Artists, galleries, and collectors will also find it useful to subscribe.
A new center of gravity in the art world
With this practical technological leadership, the university and the JSMA will become a center of global discussions and research regarding technological support for the arts, public museum and institutional administration, arts education, and quality curation. And this service will provide opportunities for the students and faculty of the new museum practice program.
Computing research for the arts
Museum.exchange is Greg Bryant’s initiative, and he brings the first version of the software with him to the U of O, ready for deployment, research, outreach, and subscribers.
Greg was a technology trailblazer for decades in Silicon Valley. He’s also an experienced community organizer.
He starts at the JSMA on July 1, 2018.