Editors’ Choice: The API at the Center of the Museum

Beneath our cities lies vast, labyrinthine sewer systems. These have been key infrastructures allowing our cities to grow larger, grow more densely, and stay healthy. Yet, save for passing interests in Urban Exploration (UrbEx), we barely think of them as ‘beautifully designed systems’. In their time, the original sewer systems were critical long term projects that greatly bettered cities and the societies they supported.

In some ways what the Labs has been working on over the past few years has been a similar infrastructure and engineering project which will hopefully be transformative and enabling for our institution as a whole. As SFMOMA’s recent post, which included an interview with Labs’ Head of Engineering, Aaron Cope, makes clear, our API and the collection site that it is built upon, is a carrier for a new type of institutional philosophy.

Underneath all our new shiny digital experiences – the Pen, the Immersion Room, and other digital experiences – as well as the refreshed ‘services layer’ of ticketing, Pen checkouts, and object label management, lies our API. There’s no readymade headline or Webby award awaiting a beautifully designed API – and probably there shouldn’t be. These things should just work and provide the benefit to their hosts that they promised.

So why would a museum burden itself with making an API to underpin all its interactive experiences – not just online but in-gallery too?

Read More: The API at the center of the museum | Cooper Hewitt Labs

This content was selected for Digital Humanities Now by Editor-in-Chief Amanda Morton based on nominations by Editors-at-Large: Cinzia Pusceddu-Gangarosa, Cynthia Kristan-Graham, Emmanuelle Chaze, Silvia Stoyanova, Matt Bernico, Patrick Wingrove, Amy Williams, Penny Johnston, Alicia Peaker, Dominic DiFranzo, and Mary Catherine Kinniburgh