A Web site intended to provide art-loving Net surfers with more than an overview and a calendar debuts in San Diego on Sunday during a traditional opening complete with complimentary beverages.
But instead of new paintings or sculpture, art patrons at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego in La Jolla, California, will check out the first of about a dozen official sites designed and maintained by the California Culture Net (CCN) initiative.
"Our goals," says Marisa S. Olson, who serves on CCN's executive advisory committee, "are to not only provide wide access to the arts, but also to sneak art through the back door of school curricula, to teach the arts community that partnering with the private sector does not mean they are 'selling out,' and to provide more meaningful content."
CCN is a complex, year-old collaborative effort between the California Arts Council, the state's arts policy and funding agency; the Getty Information Institute of the J. Paul Getty Trust, a recognized leader in developing databases of cultural information; and the California Assembly of Local Arts Agencies, the nonprofit organization representing the state's 150 local arts councils and commissions. CCN's goal is to build awareness of California's creative capital (its high tech, entertainment, and art industries) via an online network.
The San Diego museum site, which is in both English and Spanish, illustrates what Olson means by "more meaningful content." It offers more than the mere calendar of events and collection of brief blurbs and scanned images that Web surfers typically expect from an arts organization's home page.
Designed by Australia's hot Spike Wireless Information Futurists (the team behind Toyota's Web presence), the new Web site allows visitors to take a Quick Time VR gallery tour as well as send a free virtual postcard anywhere in the world. The site has already been nominated for a 1998 Global Information Infrastructure Award – even before it went live.
Launching the museum's site is just the beginning of the manifestation of CCN's ambitious plans. Future goals include the production of an online network with the domain CaliforniaCulture.net; creation of interactive content, such as online fund-raising training and online discussion "workshops" led by artists; development of interactive curricula for arts education; and the establishment of physical "hubs" in public libraries where the public can access art Web sites via public Internet stations.
The company also hopes to "brand" California's creativity.
"Yes, branding is a new concept in the arts," says Olson. "But CCN wants to give California art a face. It will be a logo that constantly changes, yet a sign of familiarity that will allow the greater public to feel more comfortable when visiting – and re-visiting – art organizations' Web sites."
To some of California's art journalists, the idea of branding makes sense. "No one wants to be labelled as 'parochial,'" observes Meredith Tromble, editor-in-chief of Artweek, a print magazine dedicated to covering West Coast contemporary art. "But California art deserves to be looked at as its own phenomenon. And using new technology to do this makes perfect sense, since it started here."
Glen Helfand, who writes about culture and technology for both the San Francisco Bay Guardian and the LA Weekly newspapers, agrees. "LA and San Francisco have been quickly taking some of the fire from New York. This is a sign that California is tooting its horn to be taken seriously as a culture capital," he says. "Plus it's a step toward a real virtual global village, since this is actually culture-based, although some might argue that the concept of 'branding' might take away from the individual spirit of the Internet."
According to Olson, the first stage of the planning process for CCN should take three to five years. A prototype that was spearheaded by the Getty Information Institute, entitled LA Culture Net, was launched in 1995 along with a series of demonstration projects such as community "Web raisings" – essentially free training for artists, arts organizations, and institutions in how to use email and how to establish a presence on the Internet.
A series of events follow the San Diego museum's site kickoff. During the CCN road show, scheduled for May 26-29, CCN committee members will demonstrate the project, offer Internet education classes, and design websites throughout California. And on December 10, the CCN project will be officially unveiled at a December 10 gala event at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
