Culture: Podcast Tours

If you upload it, they will come. At least that’s what many museums are banking on by replacing the cumbersome audio-guide batons with mp3 files of gallery tours, which visitors can download before their visit and play on their iPods. Known as podtours or, more generally, as part of the podcast phenomenon, this trend provides a new use for popular technology and allows visitors more control over their experience.

Podtours originated in the classroom: in 2004, David Gilbert, professor of communications at Marymount Manhattan College, and several students recorded their own interpretations of objects at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), trading in the typically dry narration for humor and occasionally even musical backing. These projects were uploaded to the group’s website, with an invitation for others to add their own recorded tours. A few months later MoMA instituted its own podtour narrated by its curators, giving visitors a choice between the museum’s official and the bloggers’ unofficial interpretations.

Museums of all types have been quick to pick up on the technology and its potential for drawing new visitors to the galleries. In April 2005, the Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia (in the San Francisco Bay area) began offering a tour of its small exhibition space through podtours.com. Other tours focus on celebrity voices. For instance, Winterthur Museum & Country Estate recruited Leigh and Leslie Keno, of PBS’s Antiques Roadshow and Find!, to narrate an iPod tour of its extensive collection of American decorative arts.

While this technology brands museum space with an indelible Apple logo (the downloadable files work on most mp3 players, but the nomenclature suggests they’re primarily intended for—and played on—iPods), the benefits are numerous. The only costs are time and bandwidth, although some museums are now stocking iPods for less tech-savvy visitors. Perhaps most crucially, the tours target a younger demographic—a coveted audience that ensures survival for the next generation.

Museums with Podcast tours:

Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia (Burlingame, Calif.)
Château de Chenonceau Castle (France)
Frist Center for the Visual Arts (Nashville)
Grace Museum (Abilene, Texas)
Mori Art Museum (Tokyo)
Museum of Modern Art (New York)
Orange County Museum of Art (Los Angeles)
Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum (Canyon, Texas)
Winterthur Museum & Country Estate (Winterthur, Del.)