LACMA vs. blogs? *

Sean Bonner at blogging.la has a beef with the County Museum of Art. He says the museum put a firewall on its computer system that blocks staff members from reading many websites, including his (and his wife Caryn's) art.blogging.la and other art blogs. He has been emailing and calling the museum about it without response, and now he's on a mission:

The reason given (to employees) for this was to prevent internet viruses from spreading, however I would guess that pretty much anyone who has ever heard of the internet knows that you can't catch a virus from reading a website....

Apparently I'm not the only one getting the silent treatment on this matter. Employees were told they could submit websites and request for access to that domain to be reinstated. Several have submitted such requests and they too have heard nothing.

I made a commitment to get to the bottom of this last month and I'm not going back on that. I'm just going to keep calling, and keep posting about this until either they respond to me, until someone else with more weight takes note and steps in (causing them to actually respond), or until the #1 Google result for "LACMA" is this thread.

The site also has a helpful post on how to dispose of your old Christmas tree. Hint: If you leave it at the curb in Los Angeles, it won't be picked up.

* Two updates: One, I'm told by someone inside LACMA that the firewall is indeed capricious and that employees cannot see any blogs hosted by Blogger or many other websites—including the always-treacherous L.A. Observed. Two, Sean Bonner has posted an update that the Times is working on a story about the LACMA web policy.