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Museum Archipelago

Museum Archipelago

Written by: Ian Elsner
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 A tiny show guiding you through the rocky landscape of museums. Museum Archipelago believes that no museum is an island and that museums are not neutral. Taking a broad definition of museums, host Ian Elsner brings you to different museum spaces around the world, dives deep into institutional problems, and introduces you to the people working to fix them. Each episode is rarely longer than 15 minutes, so let’s get started.© 2025 Ian Elsner Art Social Sciences Travel Writing & Commentary
Episodes
  • 111. Why Software Hasn't Eaten Museums (Yet)

    111. Why Software Hasn't Eaten Museums (Yet)
    Dec 15 2025
    Museums today are filled with software, yet they've largely avoided being "eaten" by the tech industry. Unlike music or movies, exhibitions can't be downloaded or scaled infinitely. There's only one Mona Lisa. But if the wrong platform finds the right leverage, that immunity may not last. Which is why the kind of software museums choose matters. TilBuci (https://tilbuci.itch.io/tilbuci) is a free, open-source tool used by museums to build touchscreens, kiosks, and projections. It was created by Brazilian software developer Lucas Junqueira after watching too many digital exhibitions quietly break down once the opening buzz faded. Designed to be usable by museum staff long after developers leave, TilBuci treats software not as a product, but as infrastructure. In this episode, Lucas Junqueira talks about what it takes to build museum software that lasts. Through the story of a projection still running on the facade of the Space of Knowledge museum in Belo Horizonte over a decade after it opened, we explore how open, locally controlled tools extend the life of museum systems, and what's at stake if a tech platform ever inserts itself between museums and their audiences. Image: A projection animates the façade of the Espaço do Conhecimento (Space of Knowledge) museum at Praça da Liberdade (Liberty Square) in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Lucas Junqueira's software Managana, a previous version of TilBuci is running the projection. Topics and Notes 00:00 Intro 00:15 The Rise of Software in Museums 00:56 Software Eating the World 02:19 Why Are Museums Different? 03:16 Lucas Junqueira and TilBuci (https://tilbuci.itch.io/tilbuci) 05:09 Challenges and Innovations 08:09 The Flash Apocalypse 10:12 What's at Stake 11:48 Jurassic Park on Club Archipelago (http://jointhemuseum.club/) 13:00 Outro | Join Club Archipelago 🏖 (http://jointhemuseum.club/) DIVE DEEPER WITH CLUB ARCHIPELAGO 🏖️ Unlock exclusive museum insights and support independent museum media for just $2/month. Join Club Archipelago Start with a 7-day free trial. Cancel anytime. Your Club Archipelago membership includes: 🎙️Access to a private podcast that guides you further behind the scenes of museums. Hear interviews, observations, and reviews that don't make it into the main show.🎟️ Archipelago at the Movies, a bonus bad-movie podcast exclusively featuring movies and other pop culture that reflect the museum world back to us.✨A warm feeling knowing you're helping make this show possible. Transcript Below is a transcript of Museum Archipelago episode 111. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, refer to the links above. View Transcript Welcome to Museum Archipelago. I'm Ian Elsner. Museum Archipelago guides you through the rocky landscape of museums. Each episode is rarely longer than 15 minutes. So let's get started. If you've been to a museum lately, any museum big or small, you've probably noticed ever more software-driven experiences. Interactive touchscreens, projections, buttons, videos are all controlled by software. Lucas Junqueira: I've seen mostly all exhibitions have at least some kind of interaction or some pieces of the exhibition that require some kind of software to enable it. This is Lucas Junqueira, a Brazilian museum professional and software developer. Lucas Junqueira:  Okay. My name is Lucas Junqueira. I've been working on this exhibition museum scene for quite some time right now. It's tempting to see the increase of software in museums as another example of software eating the world. This phrase, "software eats the world", was coined by investor Marc Andreessen in a 2011 Wall Street Journal opinion piece. The idea isn’t that software replaces everything. It’s that software absorbs the value layer of company after company, industry after industry. In the "software eats the world" thesis, traditional music labels only exist to provide software companies (like Apple Music and Spotify) with content. The software, everything from how the app looks on your phone to what song is recommended next, sits higher on the value chain than the music itself. Even the network effects of which app your friends use, matter more than what you listen to. Netflix, Salesforce, and the game Angry Birds are some examples Andreessen mentioned back in that 2011 essay, plus plenty of other companies I barely remember. But the core of the thesis, even if it's not explicitly mentioned, is the zero-marginal cost nature of distributing software. Whatever the up-front cost of developing Angry Birds is, it doesn't actually matter since the company can distribute it to every phone on the planet for zero dollars. Once it exists, it can be copied endlessly, instantly, and globally. Which is exactly what museums can’t do. And this is where museums are different. Museums aren’t infinitely scalable, and they aren’t frictionless. You can't really download an exhibition in the way that you can ...
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    13 mins
  • 110. Revisiting The ‘Enola Gay Fiasco’ Today

    110. Revisiting The ‘Enola Gay Fiasco’ Today
    Apr 14 2025
    For the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum planned to display the Enola Gay, the Boeing B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The plane was restored to be part of a full exhibit, presented alongside context about the atomic bombing's mass civilian casualties. But that exhibit never opened. Instead, after years of script revisions and intense pressure from veterans' groups and Congress, the museum displayed the restored bomber's fuselage with minimal interpretation. The exhibit was primarily dedicated to the technical process of restoring the aircraft; as one visitor noted, "I learned a lot about how to polish aluminum, but I did not learn very much about the decision to drop the atomic bomb." In this episode, historian Gregg Herken, who served as Chairman of the museum's Space History Division during the controversy, recounts how the exhibit went from reckoning with the bomb's full impact to re-enforcing a patriotic narrative. He recalls the specific moments that led up to one of the museum industry's cautionary tales, like when the director agreed to remove evocative artifacts like a schoolgirl's carbonized lunchbox from Hiroshima from the exhibition plans, and how the Air Force Association demanded the exhibit say the bombing saved 1 million American lives and other assertions that have been challenged by generations of historians. Today, as a new presidential executive order (https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/restoring-truth-and-sanity-to-american-history/) dictates how the Smithsonian interprets American history, we realize the "Enola Gay Fiasco" isn't just a cautionary tale—it's the blueprint for a more aggressive campaign to justify anything. Topics and Notes 00:00 Intro 00:15 The Enola Gay in the 1980s 01:07 Gregg Herken 02:21 Initial Planning 02:40 Martin Harwit 03:48 Herken's Visit to Hiroshima 04:39 'The Lunchbox' (https://hpmmuseum.jp/modules/exhibition/index.php?action=DocumentView&document_id=362&lang=eng) 05:32 Initial Exhibit Script 06:26 Opposition and Controversy 07:15 Revisions and Criticisms 10:49 Air Force Association's Demands 11:59 Exhibit Cancellation 13:37 "Pale Shadow" 14:10 Reflecting on History and Censorship 20:55 Outro | Join Club Archipelago 🏖 (http://jointhemuseum.club/) DIVE DEEPER WITH CLUB ARCHIPELAGO 🏖️ Unlock exclusive museum insights and support independent museum media for just $2/month. Join Club Archipelago Start with a 7-day free trial. Cancel anytime. Your Club Archipelago membership includes: 🎙️Access to a private podcast that guides you further behind the scenes of museums. Hear interviews, observations, and reviews that don't make it into the main show.🎟️ Archipelago at the Movies, a bonus bad-movie podcast exclusively featuring movies and other pop culture that reflect the museum world back to us.✨A warm feeling knowing you're helping make this show possible. Transcript Below is a transcript of Museum Archipelago episode 110. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, refer to the links above. View Transcript Welcome to Museum Archipelago. I'm Ian Elsner. Museum Archipelago guides you through the rocky landscape of museums. Each episode is rarely longer than 15 minutes. So let's get started. By the late 1980s, the Enola Gay – the Boeing B-29 Superfortress that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima – had been sitting disassembled at the Smithsonian's Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration, and Storage Facility in Suitland, Maryland for decades. What was once a beautiful shiny machine with four powerful engines, just powerful enough with the right banking maneuver to escape the hell it unleashed, was scattered and severed, with disheveled tubes where the wings used to be and the remains of birds nests in the turrets. Gregg Herken: It was shortly after I joined the museum and I went out to the restoration facility that the Smithsonian operates in Garber in Maryland. And they wanted to show me around. And since I was the new chairman of the Department of Space History, they said I could get into the fuselage of the Enola Gay. This is Gregg Herken, retired professor of American Diplomatic History at the University of California, and Chairman of the National Air and Space Museum's Space History Division from 1988 to 2003. Gregg Herken: Hello. My name is Gregg Herken. I'm a retired professor of American Diplomatic History at the University of California. Herken was part of the team planning the exhibition at the National Air and Space Museum that would feature the restored Enola Gay and of course he accepted the invitation and climbed up into the fuselage. Gregg Herken: So I sat in Tibbets' seat, in the pilot seat for a second, and then I sat in the bombardier seat. And off to the left was a panel that had, I think it was five toggle switches. And one of them had the label "bombs." And actually on the day of the ...
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    21 mins
  • 109. The Rise and Fall of Enterprise Square, USA

    109. The Rise and Fall of Enterprise Square, USA
    Feb 24 2025
    For the last few decades of the 20th century, if you visited Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, you could have been serenaded by a barbershop quartet of audio-animatronic portraits of America's founders, as framed on U.S. currency. This was one of the many exhibits at Enterprise Square, USA, a high-tech museum dedicated to teaching children about Free Market Economics. The museum, which found itself out of money almost before it opened, shut down in 1999. Barrett Huddleston first encountered these exhibits as a wide-eyed elementary school student in the 1980s, mesmerized by the talking puppets, giant electronic heads, and interactive displays that taught how regulation stifled freedom. Years later, he returned as a tour guide during the museum's final days, maintaining those same animatronics with duct tape and wire cutters, and occasionally being squeezed inside the two-dollar bill to repair Thomas Jefferson. He joins us to explore this collision of education, ideology, and visitor experience, and how the former museum shapes his own approach to teaching children today. Cover Image: Children watch audio-animatronic portraits of America's founders, as framed on U.S. currency, sing a song about freedom. [Photograph 2012.201.B0957.0912] (https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc465532/) hosted by The Gateway to Oklahoma History Topics and Notes 00:00 Intro 00:15 Buzludzha Again (https://www.museumarchipelago.com/101) 00:46 Enterprise Square, USA 01:32  Barrett Huddleston 02:05 The Origins and Purpose of Enterprise Square 03:09 The Boom and Bust of Oklahoma's Economy 05:47 The Disney Connection and Animatronics 07:54 The Decline of Enterprise Square 11:42 Huddleston's Reflections on Education 13:41 Outro | Join Club Archipelago 🏖 (http://jointhemuseum.club/) DIVE DEEPER WITH CLUB ARCHIPELAGO 🏖️ Unlock exclusive museum insights and support independent museum media for just $2/month. Join Club Archipelago Start with a 7-day free trial. Cancel anytime. Your Club Archipelago membership includes: 🎙️Access to a private podcast that guides you further behind the scenes of museums. Hear interviews, observations, and reviews that don't make it into the main show.🎟️ Archipelago at the Movies, a bonus bad-movie podcast exclusively featuring movies and other pop culture that reflect the museum world back to us.✨A warm feeling knowing you're helping make this show possible. Transcript Below is a transcript of Museum Archipelago episode 109. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, refer to the links above. View Transcript Welcome to Museum Archipelago. I'm Ian Elsner. Museum archipelago guides you through the rocky landscape of museums. Each episode is rarely longer than 15 minutes. So let's get started. Buzludzha comes up a lot on Museum Archipelago. The monument was built in 1981 to look like a futuristic flying saucer parched high on Bulgarian mountains. Every detail of the visitor experience was designed to impress, to show how Bulgarian communism was the way of the future. Once inside, visitors were treated to an immersive light show, where the mosaics of Marx and Lenin and Bulgarian partisan battles were illuminated at dramatic moments during a pre-recorded narration. But within a year of Buzludzha welcoming its first guests, all the way across the world in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, another museum opened to promote the exact opposite message. And it even had its own flying saucer connection. Barrett Huddleston: The framing device of the museum is you have these two alien puppets that crash down in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and they need to get fuel for their spaceship so they can go back.  I saw these animatronic puppets and I was like, oh, well this is just like Disney World, except they're talking about having to commodify their space technology so they can buy gold to put in their spaceship so they can get back to their planet or whatever. This is Barrett Huddleston, who first visited Enterprise Square, USA as an elementary school student in the mid-1980s, and later worked there as a tour guide. Barrett Huddleston: Hi, my name is Barrett Huddleston. I am an educational enrichment provider. I own a business called Mad Science of Central Oklahoma and Finer Arts of Oklahoma. I travel all over my state and a few others, delivering STEAM based workshops and assemblies to elementary school students. But In this instance, I also worked as a tour guide for Enterprise Square USA for over two years. The story of Enterprise Square, USA begins in a boom, actually a few overlapping booms. In the late 1970s, oil had been found in the nearby Anadarko Basin and energy companies and money were rushing into Oklahoma City. As Sam Anderson puts it in his excellent book Boom Town, which is also where I first learned about this museum: Excerpt from Boom Town: “Capitalism had blessed Oklahoma City, and the city wanted to express its thanks. At the height of the boom, local ...
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    16 mins
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