Photos that are not of Bucky

I am currently in NJ visiting my parents for the weekend. One of the reasons I made a point of coming up sooner rather than later (other than a dentist appointment) is to visit the Buckminster Fuller exhibit at the Whitney Museum in NY.

These photos are obviously not from the exhibit, or even NY. They are a couple of shots I took from the train between Newark Station and the tunnel to New York, as the rain started coming down and things got dramatically cloudy.

I would certainly have liked to share some photos of the exhibit with you, as there were some really fantastic drawings there that I have not seen before. And they even had the full sized prototype of the Dymaxion Car!

However, alas, you are not allowed to take photos in museum exhibits. Even though you pay for the experience of seeing these materials, you are not allowed to record that experience for personal use.

I think such policies, for the most part, work against the public good. If an artifact or work of art is important enough to be in a museum, it is likely something that would be worthwhile for our society to communicate freely about between ourselves.

While it is understandable for the institutions to prohibit any replication of a work for commercial purposes, and obvious that they should prohibit any direct contact that might damage primary materials, keeping patrons from sharing their experiences with the online public just acts to depreciate any value the works could gain through larger exposure.

Luckily, I think that museums will soon befall the same fate as conventional media industries (such as music and film), which have tried to create artificial monopolies by forbidding duplication of our shared cultural experiences, only to have their fiefdoms stripped away by advancements in personal technology.

As cameras get so small that the cyberpunk dream of always-available eyeglass-embedded cameras become reality, it will soon become impossible to distinguish between those who are closely looking at art and those that are capturing images for later digestion and communication.

Anyway, don't let the lack of inspirational photos in this post keep you from heading over to the Whitney and checking out this fantastic exhibit. I suggest going on Fridays after 6, when you can set your own entrance fee.