Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition, June 27, 2008 through August 10, 2008 (Image: DIG_E2008_Click_001_PS2.jpg Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2008)
Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition, June 27, 2008 through August 10, 2008 (Image: DIG_E2008_Click_002_PS2.jpg Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2008)
Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition, June 27, 2008 through August 10, 2008 (Image: DIG_E2008_Click_003_PS2.jpg Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2008)
Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition, June 27, 2008 through August 10, 2008 (Image: DIG_E2008_Click_004_PS2.jpg Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2008)
Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition, June 27, 2008 through August 10, 2008 (Image: DIG_E2008_Click_005_PS2.jpg Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2008)
Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition
DATES June 27, 2008 through August 10, 2008
ORGANIZING DEPARTMENT
Special Exhibition
COLLECTIONS
Photography
RELATED LINKS
Main Exhibition Page
-
Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition
One of the striking things about the wisdom of crowds is that even though its effects are all around us, it’s easy to miss, and, even when it’s seen, it can be hard to accept.
—James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds (2004)
Inspired by James Surowiecki’s critically acclaimed book, The Wisdom of Crowds, this exhibition explores whether the author’s premise—that a diverse crowd is often wiser at making decisions than expert individuals—can be applied to visual art. Click! began in March 2008, with an open call for photographs depicting the “changing faces of Brooklyn,” a theme that allowed for a wide variety of interpretations by contributing photographers. After the submission period, there was a two-month online evaluation—the public assessed the 389 photographs that were submitted, using a sliding scale from most to least effective, and taking into consideration aesthetics, the photographic techniques used, and the work’s relevance to the exhibition’s theme. Evaluators were asked to self-select their knowledge level (from “none” to “expert”) and designate their geographic location.
The online evaluation tool was designed to promote fairness. Works were presented at random, and our algorithm ensured that all photographs were seen an equal number of times. To minimize influence, works were displayed without the artist attribution; evaluators were unable to skip past images or to forward links to individual works.
3,344 people participated in the evaluation process by casting 410,089 evaluations. Each of the 389 works was viewed approximately 1,054 times. What you see here are the photographs curated by the crowd—the top 20 percent of the 389 submitted works, which are displayed by size according to their relative ranking within this percentile.
A museum is rarely in the position of knowing so little about the content of an exhibition. In this case, the institution has provided a framework, but it was the collective effort of the crowd that determined which images should be on view today. Was the crowd wise in its evaluation? Do these photographs represent the “changing faces of Brooklyn”? We present the results here, and invite you to draw your own conclusions.
Shelley Bernstein
Manager of Information Systems
-
June 4, 2008
Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition, featuring photographs curated by 3,344 members of the public during an innovative online jury process, will be on view at Brooklyn Museum starting June 27 through August 10, 2008. Click! began in March with an open call inviting artists to submit a work of photography in response to the exhibition’s theme, “Changing Faces of Brooklyn.” Three hundred eighty-nine photographers responded by electronically submitting one image, accompanied by a 100-word artist statement, via the Brooklyn Museum Web site. At the conclusion of the open call, the general public was asked to evaluate the submissions during a six-week period using the Web site.
The inspiration for the exhibition comes from the critically acclaimed book The Wisdom of Crowds, in which New Yorker business and financial columnist James Surowiecki asserts that a diverse crowd is often wiser at making decisions than expert individuals. Click! explores Surowiecki’s central idea in the context of visual art.
In accordance with Surowiecki’s theories, the evaluation tool was designed to promote objectivity and minimize peer influence: each of the 389 photographs was displayed without artist attribution and at random for each evaluator, and artists were unable to forward links of individual submissions to friends and family. A diverse crowd of international evaluators—not only from Brooklyn, but across the U.S. and beyond—submitted more than 400,000 individual responses to the photographs and left more than 3,000 comments during the process. Click! will culminate in an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, where the photographs will be installed according to their relative ranking by the crowd of curators.
Brooklyn Museum clicks with the crowd at FIGMENT 2008, a celebration of participatory art creative culture held on Governors Island. A panel discussion about the process and outcome of Click! will be held on Saturday, June 28, at 11 a.m. Panelists include James Surowiecki, New Yorker financial columnist and author of The Wisdom of Crowds; Jeff Howe, contributing editor of Wired magazine, who coined the term “crowdsourcing”; Eugenie Tsai, Brooklyn Museum’s John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art; and Shelley Bernstein, Brooklyn Museum’s Manager of Information Systems and the organizer of Click! The panel will be moderated by Nicole Caruth, Brooklyn Museum’s Manager of Interpretive Materials and a freelance writer and curator based in Brooklyn.
Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition is organized by Shelley Bernstein, Manager of Information Systems, Brooklyn Museum.
View Original -
April 4, 2008
Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition is a photography installation that invites Brooklyn Museum’s visitors, the online community, and the general public to participate in the exhibition process. The installation will be on view from June 27–August 10, 2008, at the Brooklyn Museum.
Taking its inspiration from the critically acclaimed book The Wisdom of Crowds, in which New Yorker business and financial columnist James Surowiecki asserts that a diverse crowd is often wiser at making decisions than expert individuals, Click! explores whether Surowiecki’s premise can be applied to the visual arts—is a diverse crowd just as “wise” at evaluating art as the trained experts? Click! is an exhibition in three consecutive parts.
It began with an open call—artists were asked to electronically submit a work of photography in response to the exhibition’s theme, “Changing Faces of Brooklyn,” along with an artist statement. The open call was scheduled from March 1–31, 2008.
After the conclusion of the open call, an online forum opened for audience evaluation of all submissions; as in other juried exhibitions, all works are displayed anonymously. As part of the evaluation, each visitor answers a series of questions about his/her knowledge of art and perceived expertise. The online forum is open April 1–May 23, 2008.
Click! culminates in an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, where the photographs will be installed according to their relative ranking from the juried process. Visitors will also be able to see how different groups within the crowd evaluated the same works of art. The results will be analyzed and discussed by experts in the fields of art, online communities, and crowd theory. The installation will be on view from June 27–August 10, 2008.
Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition is organized by Shelley Bernstein, Manager of Information Systems, Brooklyn Museum.
Image Requests: Due to the fact that this is a crowd-curated exhibition, there will be no press images available for Click! until May 24, 2008. The Click! logo is available through the press office. If your piece is online, you can install the Click! widget at any time from the following Web address: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/click/promote/
View Original
