Welcome to MuseAmericas, a Virtual Museum for the Armchair Traveler

WASHINGTON — Lucy Duncan, the businesswoman who’s guiding the first steps of MuseAmericas, describes it by analogy: “The site is like a plaza. Everything emanates off the plaza.”

At this point, MuseAmericas is an online museum sampler that connects cultural centers from Montreal to Sao Paulo. It’ll be at least five years before a physical location with galleries will open in Washington. Right now it’s a virtual directory at https://www.MuseAmericas.org.

“The Western Hemisphere has been home to a multitude of peoples and civilizations rich with culture,” Duncan says. “However, these cultures have long been underrepresented in mainstream cultural institutions.”

Duncan, 46, is president of the Museum of the Americas Foundation, the group spearheading the virtual and physical projects. The museum originated from talks at the Organization of American States and the Inter-American Development Bank to start a museum of art, science and accomplishments in the Americas.

So far, the foundation has collected $15 million in cash and in-kind services. That’s a good pace, but far from the $250 million organizers say they need to construct a building and create an endowment. As a place holder, organizers decided to develop an online presence.

Some museums post pictures of works from their collections on the Web while the physical location is closed. Others put up items that the public doesn’t see because of a lack of exhibition space, or showcase normally hidden parts of the museum, such as the conservation labs at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

MuseAmericas is using the Web to ease access to a number of previously unconnected places, comprising 300 museums from 35 countries. It provides information and education, while giving a preview of the kind of materials that would fill a physical space.

The plan is to add 75 museums each month, Duncan says.

The site was designed in Mexico City and was officially launched in April in Quebec City by Aline Chretien, the wife of the Canadian prime minister.

The user’s journey into MuseAmericas starts in the plaza, where signposts lead to a choice of English, French, Spanish or Portuguese. The user then signs in as a student or other type of visitor and registers an interest in a country, historic period or subject.

Duncan is spearheading a collaboration with Caribbean museums on a conference and exhibition of 100 years of art and politics. The show will be mounted next year at the Museum of Charleston, S.C., site of a similar conference in 1902.

Also on the drawing board is Teach the Teacher, a program to give teachers in the United States a paid sabbatical to learn about the Americas.

Another project is training workshops for arts professionals, organized by Margaret Bernal, the wife of the Jamaican ambassador and the president of the Jamaica Artists Alliance.

The Web site is also developing its own exhibitions, including one on the ancient Maya civilization, developed by the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Mexico City.

Duncan represents a different breed of museum developer, a professional who brings experience and contacts from the business arena into cultural projects. “As governments are providing less and less, museums need an interlocutor that can speak to the private sector,” she says.

Her professional specialty was consulting on international projects to modernize banking, health care and telecommunications, and to help American companies work through the bureaucracies in Central and South America.

MuseAmericas has fewer than a dozen employees and had a $3.5-million budget last year. Support has come from Microsoft Corp., Telmex Foundation, Cisco Systems, Riggs Bank, Visa, Avaya, Lucent Technologies, Cisneros Television Group and Philip Morris Co., among others.

The permanent museum space is slated to be built by 2006 at the OAS headquarters in Washington. OAS is scheduled to vote formally on the project this fall.