23 pagesAt a moment when technological participation seems to
promise to bring innovation and democratic access to the
contemporary museum, the results from one community-curated
exhibit suggest that conservative cultural biases continue to
shape the American public’s taste in art. In 2013, the Michener
Art Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania collected more than
10,000 online votes for their People’s Choice exhibit. Voters were
invited to choose their ‘top’ three artworks from among 125, and
the twenty-five artworks that received the most votes were then
displayed, while those that didn’t make the cut stayed tucked
away behind closed doors. Rather than promoting diversity by
making curatorial practices interactive and accessible however,
the People’s Choice voting process rendered difference invisible.
The result was an exhibit that appealed to the largest number of
voters, yet excluded artwork that challenged dominant norms of
gendered or racial privilege. Voters consistently chose realistic
paintings of landscapes and white female subjects over abstract
works, pieces by women, and images of people of color. The
People’s Choice exhibit serves as a valuable lesson about the use
of participatory media in museums, and about the potential
pitfalls of crowdsourcing in new media cultures more broadly,
demonstrating the importance of self-reflection as a key
component of participatory cultural programming.University of Oregon Librarie
