Museum Podcasts

You know those dorky headsets you can rent for ten bucks at the museum desk that give you some dusty old professor giving academic blah blah about the paintings?

Well replace headset with ipod, replace ten bucks with free, replace dusty old professor with anyone, and replace blah blah with poetry, music or humor. Several museums across the country have started putting their art tours as mp3 podcasts online where visitors can download them before they visit. At SFMOMA they'll even give you a discount on admission if you show them your loaded mp3 player.

A group called Art Mobs has taken museum tours out of the museum's hands entirely. Instead of just giving listeners history, they may give them feelings. Working with university students the group has made a collection of podcasts touring the Marymount Manhattan College's 8th floor gallery. Their next target? The New York MOMA.