Social networks and blogs are the fastest growing online
activities, according to a report published in March by research firm Nielsen
Online. Almost 10% of all time spent on the internet is spent on these types of
sites, which Nielsen describes as "member communities", and they are visited by
more than two-thirds of the world's online users. This has not gone unnoticed by museums and galleries, with
many creating some kind of presence on sites such as Facebook, Twitter and
Flickr. But because this has primarily been done as a marketing tool,
institutions are missing a far greater opportunity. By treading gently into the
second generation of web development and design, known as Web 2.0, museums risk
achieving little, and are effectively paying mere lip service to online social
engagement. If they were to make a proper commitment to the enterprise, they
could transform their relationship with audiences, change people's perceptions
of them and vastly expand the reach of their collections. The Nielsen research shows that a major factor in the
success of social networks is that they allow people to select and share
content. This has become a hobby, even considered by some to be a serious
creative outlet, with web users spending time "curating" their online space. Museums
are well placed to appeal to this new generation of "curators" because they
offer rich and interesting content that can be virtually "cut-up" and stuck
back together online in numerous different ways to reflect the individual
tastes of each user. If remixing, reinterpreting and sharing interesting
content is, as Nielsen suggests, the kind of engaging interaction that draws
people to social networks, then museums should embrace the idea that "everyone
is a curator", both online and offline. Most of the institutions that are adapting their own
websites with those facets of the social networks that so many people find
attractive are in the US.
The Museum of Modern
Art (MoMA) in New York
relaunched its website in March. It now includes links to the museum's online
users on various social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Users can also create personal online accounts, which allow them to bookmark
upcoming events, create online exhibitions and "collect" works of art via their
mobile phone as they walk around the gallery and view them later on the website. Victor Samra, digital media marketing manager at MoMA, says:
"It's not enough just to broadcast information now. Sharing and participating
in discussions are becoming normal activities on the web, so I think people are
coming to expect it. People want to engage with content they are really
passionate about, and museums have a great opportunity to provide this for them.
This helps to change the perception of the museum as a building with four
closed walls to an organisation with personality and a human face." One potential obstacle to museums sharing content online is
the issue of copyright and how to protect images if they are put on the
internet. Legal implications aside, from a practical point of view this
approach is becoming outdated. For example, the Art
Museum of Estonia
has gone against convention by actively encouraging visitors to photograph its
collection; the MoMA website helps users to co-create content and share these
creations with friends. All museums want to create a dialogue with their audiences,
and most museum staff are well aware that the internet can be a useful tool for
doing this. But museums such as MoMA that have wholeheartedly embraced the new
digital environment are becoming part of the conversation, rather then just
pushing content or questions at visitors and then sitting back. Online activity such as MoMA's requires investment, both in
terms of web development costs and staff time, but if this is where people are
and how they are communicating, then, one can argue, museums should be there
too. Curators pride themselves on using their collections to
analyse issues, provoke reactions and ask difficult questions. But these
questions are no longer just being debated over a coffee or in the galleries
themselves; they are also being discussed online, whether it is on social
network sites such as Facebook, online discussion forums or the many blogs, and
the content prompting these responses is no longer restricted to the four walls
it actually inhabits. This means museums and galleries need to expand the sites
where they introduce, narrate and edit their programmes. The writer is the managing director of Newcastle-based Sumo,
a design consultancy specialising in arts and culture. He is a speaker at the
conference, "Communicating the Museum", in Malaga
(24-27 June). www.communicatingthemuseum.com
Source: http://www.theartnewspaper.com/article.asp?id=17207
İBy Jim Richardson
Posted online: 23.4.09 | From Issue 202 (May 2009) | 
