News and Events Detail
News and Events Detail
Portland State Leaders Return from Istanbul with Mission to Design Museum of the City |
Multimedia Students Set to Create International Website for Urban Development When many of the world’s foremost city-museum experts met last month for their annual conference in Istanbul, Turkey, Portland State representatives took center stage for their work on the Museum of the City. The brainchild of Chet Orloff, adjunct professor of Urban and Public Affairs, the project has moved now from concept to design stage. With the support of an international body as well as other PSU departments, the Museum of the City is scheduled to break digital ground during spring 2010. Jennifer Portis, program manager of the Multimedia Professional program at PSU’s Professional Development Center, joined Orloff in Istanbul and presented the plan to have PSU students lead the museum’s online start-up phase. “I invite you to put on your creative hats and think beyond the borders of your physical museum space and about what inspires you and your audiences so that this can truly be a place where people will be drawn to learn and interact with the vibrancy of the city,” Portis said in her remarks during a plenary before 23 nations. The conference for the International Council of Museum’s Committee for the Collections and Activities of Museums of Cities (CAMOC) was held in Istanbul, the city recently named Europe’s cultural center for 2010. Portis outlined how students in the Multimedia Professional program will work over fall, winter and spring terms to complete the project’s discovery, architecture, and design phases. Students will develop the museum’s exhibit templates and other operational components of the website. Along with Orloff’s Capstone students, the multimedia students will create exhibit templates and sample exhibits to include in the website’s launch. “Museum of the City is about cities in general, not merely Portland,” says Orloff. “We want to put the city in context and serve as a modern museum by looking not just to the past but to the present and future.” The content-management system will allow individuals and groups to serve as guest curators for the completely online institution. Museum professionals, city planners, academics, students, and the general public will be encouraged to contribute to the museum. The Museum of the City is a project led by CAMOC, the Multimedia Professional program, and PSU’s Department of Academic Research and Computing, which will host the museum site. Other traditional brick-and-mortar museums, such as the Museum of the City of Sao Paulo, Brazil, will be involved and provide exhibits. Designers intend to use the open source Drupal architecture, supported in part by a small grant by the International Council of Museums (ICOM) with matching funds from CAMOC. The project’s initial website structure will be released by year-end 2009, with content guidelines designed thereafter. Orloff expects the first exhibit ideas to be presented in spring 2010 and that the website will go live before the international community later in the summer. Exhibits pertaining to sustainable buildings, the architecture of transportation, and the general history of cities are just some of the ideas being considered. “It’s my belief that the more people know about a place, the more likely they are to care for it,” says Orloff. “And Portland is the perfect city to host the project, given that over 52,000 citizens alone are regularly involved in planning this city.” For more information:
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