Jan 2, 2019 · 32m · a16z
a16z Podcast | The Living Museum
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of the a16z podcast, museum leaders Sarah Lombard, Adam Martin, and Rachel Goslins explore how digital technology is transforming traditional museums into dynamic, interactive spaces. The panel discusses balancing digital personalization with physical awe, emphasizing that technology must always serve core narrative objectives and foster human connection.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
The host as informed peer 2.5 Guest teaching 3.3 Guest disagreement 1.1 The host pushing back 1.9
speaking balance: gold is the host, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 15:46 Correction regarding museum IT challenge root cause
Lombard directly reframes Goslins' claim about understaffed IT departments, clarifying that the primary obstacle is institutional museum culture resisting rapid fail-fast development cycles.
Hardest push from the host ▶ 11:13 Refusal to write off isolated digital experiencesThe host resists Goslins' warning about screen isolation, arguing that inward-focused, insular tech experiences serve as a valid tool for visitor engagement.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 27:56 Ethical distinction between bodily remains and personal artifactsLombard educates the host on institutional ethical boundaries, explaining why shoes can be ethically displayed in a genocide memorial while human hair cannot because hair is part of the body.
The host holds their own ▶ 26:28 Informed counterexample challenging emotional manipulation in exhibitsThe host demonstrates strong conceptual expertise by comparing reflection booths to a 9/11 voicemail phone exhibit, challenging the panel on where the line lies between meaningful reflection and gratuitous horror.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The host as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The host pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Expanding Storytelling Beyond Physical Museum Walls | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 | The host facilitates the conversation by asking guests how technology expands museum storytelling beyond physical walls. The guests detail specific tech applications like augmented reality apps and personal curation pens. The host gently probes whether these solutions represent true transformation or mere gamification. | |
| Fostering Social Connections and Digital Toolbox Dynamics | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Guests explain how interactive exhibits foster social dialogue and present digital tech as just one tool in a museum toolbox. The host pushes the conversation forward by asking whether virtual reality renders physical museums obsolete. Goslins reframes the core purpose of physical museums around inspiring shared awe. | |
| Curatorial Tech Tools and the Risk of Isolation | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | Guests survey tools like RFID, NFC, and geolocation while Goslins cautions against visitor isolation from screen reliance. The host offers subtle pushback, noting that insular or inward-focused experiences can also serve as valuable tools in a museum arsenal. | |
| Purpose-Driven Tech and Low-Tech Interactive Solutions | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Guests detail practical constraints of museum tech, such as high hardware wear-and-tear and cultural friction with rapid tech design cycles. Lombard educates on how indestructible interactive tables installed in 2007 failed audience expectations once smartphones made swipe gestures standard. | |
| Decoupling Software and Leveraging Visitor Analytics | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Martin explains architectural decoupling of software and hardware to enable iterative updates based on visitor analytics. Lombard provides insight into how the Holocaust Museum purposefully uses disorienting spatial architecture to reflect societal collapse, which data analytics helps streamline. | |
| Data-Driven Iteration, Personalization, and Empathy | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | The host notes that museums historically center on encountering unexpected artifacts, prompting Lombard to clarify that data informs iteration rather than overriding exhibit vision. Goslins provides examples of RFID character tracking in Denmark and app profile personalization in Wales. | |
| Reflection Booths, Emotional Boundaries, and Tech Ethics | 5 | 4 | 2 | 4 | After Martin describes reflection video booths, the host offers a strong personal critique of a 9/11 exhibit voicemail booth that felt macabre and gratuitous compared to Holocaust exhibits. Lombard educates on ethical curation boundaries, highlighting why the Holocaust Museum displays victims' shoes but drew a line at displaying human hair. | |
| The Future of Museums and Integration of Digital Strategy | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | The host asks for 20-year predictions on museum interactions. Guests outline a future where digital is seamlessly integrated into general visitor experience rather than treated as a standalone strategy. |
Statements from this episode (25)
Lombard: Museums serve as safe spaces away from societal noise
“At a time when there is tremendous schisms in society, it is a place where people expect to be safe and to have issues, topics, stories, That they can talk about in a way that is interesting, provocative, eye-opening, and doesn't have the noise from outside.”
Martin: Museum visitors expect their own perspectives to be included
“Just as we've seen in media, people also have an expectation now that their stories are going to be part of that and looking for ways to Engage with museums in a way that they haven't in the past, where before it was a place where you went to receive informati…”
Goslins: Museum expectations have shifted from monologue to dialogue
“In general, the expectation has gone from the museum is a monologue to it's a dialogue.”
Smithsonian Natural History Museum uses AR app Skin and Bones
“In the digging deeper category, there's an app in our Museum of Natural History in our Bones Hall, which has all of our skeletons, and it's called Skin and Bones, and it uses augmented reality.”
Cooper Hewitt Design Museum uses interactive digital pen technology
“So at the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum in New York, we have the pen. It allows you to go into this amazing design museum and using a checkout device to capture information, in some instances to drag those objects onto an interactive table and manipulate them, o…”
Lombard: Digital media should no longer be called 'new media'
“Sometimes people call digital new media and I'm like, ah, it, it's been around for over 20 years so I think we need to Stop using the word new.”
Lombard: Use digital tools only when they best tell the story
“Digital is another tool in our storytelling toolbox, and so the question becomes, we have a story to tell. What can tell it best? Sometimes it's digital, sometimes it's film, sometimes it's an artifact or a facsimile of an artifact that you can touch.”
Goslins: Physical museums' core strength is shared awe at artifacts
“The thing that museums do better than anything else is inspire awe at being in the presence of something spectacular and sharing that with the people around you.”
Goslins: Museums relied on three tools for 100 years
“Museums have been using the same two or three tools for the last hundred years.”
Goslins: LACMA and SFMOMA lead experiments in visitor tracking tech
“Both LACMA and SFMOMA are engaged in very robust experiments on how to use that and are sort of the beta testing, I think, for a lot of us.”
Goslins: Location tracking will become a key museum tool within years
“The technology is evolving and evolving, and I have a feeling in a few years it's going to be to a place where it'll be a hugely effective tool in allowing us to both track and impart information to patrons as they walk through the space.”
Lombard: Physical museum visits will always surpass digital experiences
“The physical experience I believe will always be richer than a digital experience because the physical experience can hit all of our senses, and digital can be woven into that.”
Lombard: Interactive physical chalkboards in museums self-regulate visitor responses
“We did like a chalkboard, which, because we were asking people to respond, it's tactile, it's in museum, and Everyone can see their responses. The audience is sort of self-regulating. If there's something inappropriate, then people would erase it.”
Goslins: Digital technology enables museums to meet visitor demand for personalization
“I do think one of the opportunities that technology can help us solve in the museum world is this Desire for personalization. That is something that technology that we don't particularly do well.”
Martin: Museum explicitly avoids gamification in exhibit design
“You mentioned before, you know, gamification, and that's something we've actually stayed away from for those reasons, right?”
Lombard: 'Fail fast' tech methodologies are not part of museum culture
“I don't think it's being overstaffed that's our challenge, which is the digital culture has gone to things like designing a minimum bioproduct, going for lean design, and so it's looking to fail fast. That is not yet part of the museum culture.”
Martin: Rapid software development in museums takes two to four months
“From two and four week, you know, cycles to two and four months. Even that was, you know, a huge leap forward.”
Goslins: Free entry means the Smithsonian lacks basic visitor data
“Because we're a free set of museums. You know, we don't have a lot of information on our visitors.”
Lombard: Holocaust Museum was intentionally designed to be hard to navigate
“The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is built specifically to show a moment when a society was falling apart. It is supposed to feel slightly confused, what would you say, sort of shocking, chaotic, not necessarily chaotic, but more you think of the 19 thirties …”
Goslins: Horsens Prison Museum uses RFID cards for personalized exhibits
“There's the Horsens Prison Museum in Denmark, in which you come in, and this uses RFID technology, and you can pick A character, and it's a prison guard, or it's an inmate, or it's a cook, and as you go and you get a card with that person's identity, and as yo…”
Goslins: Welsh National Museums use apps and beacons to personalize content
“The National Museum System of Wales, where across all of their museums, before you go, you download an app, you put in all your preferences. How old are you? What are you interested in? You know, what level of information is interesting to you? And then as you…”
Lombard: Events cannot be treated as history until 25 years pass
“There is an idea out there that history really, you can't talk about it as history for about 25 years, that there needs to be some distance.”
Lombard: Holocaust Museum displays victims' shoes, but excludes hair
“The Holocaust Museum had a huge discussion about whether or not hair should be on display. And it is not on display. It is, but the shoes are.”
Lombard: Digital tech will be fully integrated into museum design in 20 years
“I think it'll be integrated. At that point, we won't be, you won't ask us to have a conversation about museums and digital. You'll just ask us to have a conversation about museum experiences. It'll just be completely, it'll be completely integrated.”
Goslins: Museums will have the same tech integration conversations in 20 years
“I think 20 years from now we'll be having the same conversation with different technologies. I do, you know. Museums, for many reasons, they're not leaders, they're laggers, and in some ways that's good because we really are so protective of our core experienc…”