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Peer One Video Tour Injects New Perspectives and Interactions with the Walters Art Museum’s Permanent Collection

Tour launch date Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012, with 2 p.m. presentation

Baltimore – The Walters Art Museum announces Peer One, a video tour curated by staff member and artist Kari Altmann, using the museum’s new works of art website as a starting point. A group of contemporaries, including artists, curators and bloggers, will respond with videos to objects in the museum’s permanent collection. Altmann invited her online peers to participate and encouraged them to place the museum’s objects into a contemporary context. The final videos will be available as a tour of clips correlating with specific museum objects or galleries. The results will range in form from experimental video art to critical audiovisual essays.

“The museum’s founders, William and Henry Walters, often traveled from pier to pier collecting cultural treasures in object form and sending them back to Baltimore,” said Altmann. “In contemporary times, this translates to a virtual sea of content where a new peer-to-peer outpost is established—one that is open for exchange and subject to the same conditions and issues as other trade routes.”

Visitors are encouraged take the Peer One video tour on Saturday, Jan. 21 and attend a 2 p.m. presentation in the Graham Auditorium. A reception with light refreshments will follow. The tour will be available at www.thewalters.org for download, starting on Friday, Jan. 20, 2012. A limited quantity of handheld devices with preloaded video tours will be available to check out at the Walters.

Video creators will include Aleksandra Domanovic (aleksandradomanovic.com), Aude Pariset (audepariset.net), Jamillah James (frntrs.tumblr.com), Bradley Benedetti (safarinon.com/mappy), Oliver Laric (oliverlaric.com) , Patrick Dyer (ununu.tumblr.com) and Altmann (karialtmann.com) among others.

This year Altmann won the Apgar Award, a fund established in 2001 by Ann and Sandy Apgar, to honor Walters staff who make a significant and innovative contribution to the use of technology to further the museum’s mission of bringing art and people together for enjoyment, discovery and learning. Each year 5% of the $100,000 endowment is made available to the award winner.

Image Credit: Still from a video for Peer One by Aude Pariset, 2011

The Walters Art Museum
The Walters Art Museum is located in downtown Baltimore’s historic Mount Vernon Cultural District at North Charles and Centre streets. Its permanent collection includes ancient art, medieval art and manuscripts, decorative objects, Asian art, and Old Master and 19th-century paintings.

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