Whilst the material available on the web for my topic, the Guggenheim Foundation’s ambitious globalisation strategy, is reasonably extensive, in attempting to broaden the issue to understand the implications for museum practice around the world, I found the web ultimately lacking.
There is no shortage of material related to the Guggenheim Foundation and its museums, including the comprehensive Guggenheim Foundation website. Its activities have been well documented by the media, particularly the New York Times, and I found a range of articles via their website. Two other very useful sites for accessing press articles on this topic were the Arts Journal and Look Smart. These sites provided extensive access to both the popular media and arts publications including the Village Voice, The Guardian, the LA Times, The Independent, The Art Newspaper and Art in America.
Going beyond the activities of the Guggenheim to better understand whether other museums were pursuing similar strategies led me to the websites of the Tate, Louvre and Centre Pompidou.
However, in seeking more critical analysis and commentary, I tended to find the web somewhat limited.
I looked to museum association websites for discussion connected to this topic, seeking material which related to the changing nature of museum management and challenges for the future, the commercialisation of museum practice and museums in the age of globalisation - but came up with very little. There was a reasonably useful bibliography on the ICOM website, which may assist as my research is expanded to text based publications, but otherwise its usefulness was limited. Similarly other association websites, such as the American Association of Museums, bore little fruit.
The arts media provided some analysis and probably the most comprehensive commentary I found was Douglas Davis’ The museum of the Third Kind: in which the author "envisions new directions for the art museum as audiences change, architecture evolves, institutions subdivide and electronic resources expand our capabilities and expectations". This article appeared in Art in America in June/July, 2005.
I also found a paper published on the internet by Michael Scott, a Winston Churchill Fellow at Cambridge University titled, Museum and Gallery in the 21st Century which looked at art museums in the United Kingdom and the United States and compared the various models of funding and the consequence this would have for how museums would need to be managed and structured in the future. Whilst this was useful to some degree, it did not address the issue of the global museum brand which is really at the heart of what the Guggenheim is doing and tended instead to focus on the shifting dynamics of the museum organisation and on the relationship between the museum and its audience.
In the end, the web was certainly useful in giving me an understanding of the current activities and strategy being pursued by the Guggenheim Foundation and its affiliates. I could not have found more current information from any other source other than visiting the museums themselves. And there is no question that I got a good feel for the public debate surrounding the rather controversial Guggenheim director, Thomas Krens, and his ambitious plans. However these discussions were journalistic of nature rather than academic. Little in the way of academic treatise was found. I think it is now appropriate for me to supplement this initial research with a literature-based analysis of the broader issues.