Tour of San Francisco Museums

As part of our Museums and the Web conference, Chris and I had a tour of some of the museums of San Francisco. We visited the SF MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), the de Young Museum, and the Exploratorium.

The SF MoMA had a concept similar to Oriel 1's (St Fagans' new Belonging exhibition) 'Read and Reveal' - these were called 'Learning Lounges', which included computer workstations (with a custom made user interface to access all online materials), books, and graphics on the walls and panels. Both Chris and myself liked the design of the Flash-based user interface.

At the de Young Museum we had a chance to try out their PDA based tour developed by Antenna Audio. The interface was robust and easy to use. They also showed their digital signage system - which was a Flash display accessing the Museum's web-based CMS (Content Management System).

Then finally we went to the Exploratorium, which was similar to Techniquest - but they had an array of web feeds and microsites within their massive 17,000 page (I think!) web site. 

The conference continues tomorrow with pre-conference workshops, and we are attending the blogging workshop presented by staff from the Walker Art Center, in Minneapolis which we are visiting next week.