BROOKLYN, NY.- Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition is a photography installation that invites Brooklyn Museum’s visitors, the online community, and the general public to participate in the exhibition process. The installation will be on view from June 27–August 10, 2008, at the Brooklyn Museum.

Taking its inspiration from the critically acclaimed book The Wisdom of Crowds, in which New Yorker business and financial columnist James Surowiecki asserts that a diverse crowd is often wiser at making decisions than expert individuals, Click! explores whether Surowiecki’s premise can be applied to the visual arts—is a diverse crowd just as “wise” at evaluating art as the trained experts? Click! is an exhibition in three consecutive parts.

It began with an open call—artists were asked to electronically submit a work of photography in response to the exhibition’s theme, “Changing Faces of Brooklyn,” along with an artist statement. The open call was scheduled from March 1–31, 2008.

After the conclusion of the open call, an online forum opened for audience evaluation of all submissions; as in other juried exhibitions, all works are displayed anonymously. As part of the evaluation, each visitor answers a series of questions about his/her knowledge of art and perceived expertise. The online forum is open April 1–May 23, 2008.

Click! culminates in an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, where the photographs will be installed according to their relative ranking from the juried process. Visitors will also be able to see how different groups within the crowd evaluated the same works of art. The results will be analyzed and discussed by experts in the fields of art, online communities, and crowd theory. The installation will be on view from June 27–August 10, 2008.

Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition is organized by Shelley Bernstein, Manager of Information Systems, Brooklyn Museum.