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Museum of Innocence

July 10, 2013
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No, sadly I haven’t been to Istanbul to see Orhan Pamuk’s ’Museum of Innocence’. I’ve read the book, though (it took me over two months to get through it, and frankly I found it a mostly boring and frustrating read, and yet it has stuck with me somehow).  Also I’m intrigued by the Gesamtkunstwerk that they form in combination, and by the concept of a museum of personal debris and knicknacks, so I hope to get to see it some day.

I’ve now come across Pamuks ’A Modest Manifesto for Museums’ (via an interesting post and discussion thread on empathy in museums on museumgeek’s excellent blog). In the 11 points of the manifesto, Pamuk proposes that

3/ We don’t need more museums that try to construct the historical narratives of a society, community, team, nation, state, tribe, company, or species. We all know that the ordinary, everyday stories of individuals are richer, more humane, and much more joyful.

and that

8/ The resources that are channeled into monumental, symbolic museums should be diverted into smaller museums that tell the stories of individuals. These resources should also be used to encourage and support people in turning their own small homes and stories into “exhibition” spaces. 9/ If objects are not uprooted from their environs and their streets, but are situated with care and ingenuity in their natural homes, they will already portray their own stories.

It is an interesting idea, but more as a polemic position than as a recipe for the future of museology.

On the on hand, it’s a very postcolonial, new-museology-in-the-extreme take on what museums should be, of not only telling the story of the peoples but letting people do it themselves. On the other the idea that objects tell their own stories, that the context is all the mediation they need, is really quite modernist, and does not consider the very different cultural capital we bring to the table when interpreting cultural objects. (In real terms, the objects in the museum are everything but unmediated, as they are accompanyed not only be a catalogue but also by a novel to explain their significance). But the manifesto is also flawed.

For starters, the proposition that the stories of individuals are, as a rule, superior to social narratives is not as self-evident as the rhetorics will have it. What’s more, whilst reflecting on our own stories, and ’thinking with’ the things that we have and hold dear, as suggested by Turkle (Evocative Objects), may be rewarding, studies of visitor’s response to user generated content (e.g. Rudloff 2013, Sanderhof 2012, my own first workshop) show that even though they may find the concept sympathetic, people are not necessarily that interested in other people’s memories.

The suggestion of home (made) museums also links into the debates about digital curation, the part about whether peoples online collections on Pinterest, Tumblr etc. can rightfully be considered curation, or whether the concept of digital DIY curation is just at misunderstanding or watering down of the concept of curatorship.

Having a collection, and being able to curate it, make it meaningful, is not one and the same. Similarly, having a story and being able to tell it does also not necessarily go hand in hand, rather, turning a life story into a narrative calls for the craft of an author. In fact, ’The Museum of Innocence’, the novel, is an example of just that, as it describes how the protagonist employs the author Pamuk to tell his story. It is a fiction, of course, a narrative, just as the objects in the museum are not personal belongings, but brought together from years of flea market scavenging (and, I suspect, an arrangement with a group of women agreeing to smoke their cigarettes wearing a particular lipstick. The display of butts pinned down like insects in a glass cage is absolutely wonderful, I must say). Again, a great concept as a Gesamtkunstwerk, but in no way indicative that anyone’s home and lifestory could function as a museum.

Also, the narrative of the book raises questions of whether we ourselves are in fact capable of understanding our own story. What stuck in my throat about this book (I still haven’t managed to find another reader to discuss it with, but would love to do so as I might have been getting it all wrong) is that is presents itself as a love story, but, for me, it reads like an extreme case of fetishisation, OCD and destructive self-deception. Rather than loving his beloved (and accepting defeat when losing her because he thought he could have it all), the protagonist (in my view) falls in love with his own infatuation, makes a martyr of himself and destroys the life of his one time mistress by taking possession of her life and her possessions. So it is his story, not hers, that is told in the book, and, by effect, in the museum, even though he would see it as a shrine to her. Not so innocent, after all.

Whilst this story is an extreme, a (long winded but) heightened reality as can only be produced by art (although I agree that sometimes real life comes up with something even more amazing), brought into the context of the museum, it is also a cautionary tale, reminding us that the ’authentic’ stories of the public are no less constructed by personal politics than the stories of the museum are constructed by national narratives.

Backlog logbook

March 5, 2013
Inspiration, Logbog, Uncategorized
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Over the last few weeks, I have attended a handful of interesting events which deserve summing up for future reference, and because they presented insights worth sharing. Also they serve as a lesson in getting it down while it’s still fresh in your mind, as I realize that some of the (surely brilliant) thoughts I had after some of the earlier events I now can’t recall, like how inspired I was by Else Skjold’s research or the details of working with Cecilia’s probe. Which explains why the entries get shorter and shorter…

Loic Tallon open lecture at CIID: Adapting to mobile: a museum perspective (26/2)

Last week, Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design hosted an open lecture by Loic Tallon. Tallon is director of Pocket-Proof, a digital consultancy specialized in helping museums develop strategies for mobile media with some pretty cool projects under their belt; chair of the Museums and Mobile online conference; and producer of the annual Museums and Mobile Survey. He also co-edited Digital Technologies and the Museum Experience: Handheld Guides and Other Media with Kevin Walker and co-wrote the paper ‘Going Mobile?‘ with Isabel Froes for MW2011, amongst other things. So, in short, he’s cool, and has a solid knowledge of and experience with this field, and I’m thrilled that he agreed to do an interview when I get to New York. So more on that later.

Aimed primarily at designers, the presentation centered on six tips how to think about designing mobile projects for museums, reminding newcomers to the museum field that while smart phones may be the latest craze, mobile interpretation tools in museums go back a long way. Listed in the photo below, I’ve added my own notes on the six tips beneath.

Loic Tallon's top tips for museum mobile design

Loic Tallon’s top tips for museum mobile design

Be specific about what mobile is (and is not)
– Smart phones, tablets, audioguides etc. are not one and the same – explore the specific affordances
– Why do it on mobile (e.g. smart phone)?
– Central characteristics of smart phones: digital, personal, portable, connected

Forget about the technology
–Get past default ‘we need an app’ thinking or simply replacing audioguide # with QR codes
– Think about what experience you want to create, what content or what stories you want to share
– Mobile technology can now do far more than museums ask for (there was a really nice graph for this, but I didn’t get my camera out in time, and I haven’t been able to find the slides online) – but what is it we need it to do?

Mobile projects are not new for museums
As demonstrated in videos and audioclips from past museum tours, with some lovely examples like Stedelijks groundbreaking 1952 broadcast technology and a dramatic Tuttenkhamun tour narrated by Orson Welles.

Define who it’s for and what it does
– with reference to Falks situated identities: visitors motivations are key
– clearly defined objectives (the experience) for a clearly defined audience.

Support the museum’s challenge
#1 challenge: getting people to use them ( see museums & mobile surveys) (now, I think this is the wrong way to think about this issue, as it suggests that the goal is to boost uptake stats; rather, this kind of knowledge should not only make you wonder how to get people to use them more, but should also make you think about whether they are actually valuable for the visitor or if they are quite fine without them, thank you)
– so think about the experience from the visitor’ perspective – what do they need, what is the added value: forget about distribution of your products, think instead of supporting visitor needs, what kind of experience they want (which is kind of the point I was making above, except the assumed sollution in this context may be better experience design, whereas non-use, the non-scaffolded, unequipped skinnydip museum visit is at least not addressed as an option. Further to this rant here and here).

Bring capacity building, not just a product (or pilot)
-Work with museums, let their needs, ideas, perspectives decide the development

This advice should go out to museums as much as to designers. Sadly, I think one big problem is that because most museums do not have in-house development, they don’t build up much experience or understanding, and so are quite easily manipulated by flashy suggestions from design bureaus who, at the end of the day, are trying to flog a product.

Further on that note, I couldn’t help noting how many people were there; the small venue was totally crowded. This field is scarily popular. Were these people all museum-mobile-designer wannabes? And if so: are mobile museum experiences more a designer’s wet dream than a visitor need? Or a result of the museum folks’ desire to rub shoulders with the creatives? I’m not pointing any fingers here; this was exactly how I got to be interested in this field. Just speculating.

Either way, Tallon’s sound advice should come in handy.

MMCN network seminar: Methodologies of mobile communication and media research (22/2)

The Mobile Media and Communications Network is a newly founded network of Scandinavian researchers sharing findings, work-in-progress conundrums, publication possibilities and more around their research into mobile communication and media. Starting from last year’s ‘Researching Mobile and Locative Media’ workshop and PhD course at Århus University, the group met once in the autumn to establish the network and this time for a seminar focusing on methodology. The plan is to continue with biannual meetings as well as instigating mobile media sessions at relevant conferences. There’s also a website in the making, and an open invitation for other reserachers in this field to take part.

Even if I can feel like an outsider, even a bit of a leech, given that I probably will not be contributing to this field but only learning from it, it is still very interesting for me to take part in this network and learn from some of the leading researchers and shooting stars in this field. A mix of presentations and discussion, the atmosphere is nicely informal, meaning that rather than showing off people share uncertainties, allowing for a constructive dialogue. As we discussed that this could also be a forum for PhD students to get feedback on their work (rather than pushing for another PhD course this year), I should seize that opportunity at some point.

Both Bechmann, Ess & Waade ‘s project about Tripadvisor and the communicative functions of travel apps (as yet unpublished, but the abstract presents some very interesting points about key functions and significant tendencies in locative mobile apps, such as their visuality and connectedness), and Gunnar Liestøl’s presentation about establishing a methodology for design development of ‘Situated Simulations’, a kind of indirect augmented reality, were very interesting and relevant for my project. I was particularly intruiged by Liestøl’s notions on the value of negativity, of negation, pointing to what is not there, as essential to the design process, which counters the insistance of possitivity in design thinking ass advocated by Ided, Aalto a.o. Also here, a paper is under way, which I will look forward to reading.

I also picked up on the fact that Liestøl also used the term ‘mediation’ – but when asked, also confessed to some uncertainty as to the appropriacy of this translation. It seems that all Scandinavians share the frustration that there is no truly appropriate English translation for such a central term in museology as ‘formidling’ (German Vermittlung), only a host of related terms that convey some aspects, but not the complexity of meanings in the original term. And while mediation may be the correct term etymologically, and in accordance with ICOMs key concepts of museology, it is still not used by the anglophone museum community, as the common usage of the word has very different connotations. So, I too will have to keep circling around this issue, before tackling it head on in my thesis.

#SMWSMK: Social Media Week at Statens Museum for Kunst (21/2)

Social Media Week in Copenhagen inlcuded a string of events at Statens Museum for Kunst:
The art museum on social media – presentation by three different museums on Livestream

Allegra Burnette, creative director for Digital Media at MOMA, presented their social media strategy and a catalogue of initiatives across YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr and traditional blogs, all used in differerent ways to document, distribute or engage the public in ongoing exhibitions.

Jesse Righam, Digital Communications manager at TATE similarly laid out their social media strategies, which seemed to have a strong focus on the marketing potential of social media. An interesting aspect for me here was how fashion culture, via bloggers (e.g. Stylebubble), designers (e.g. Westwood) and collaboration with the industry (e.g. Topshop), was used to gain access to a wider public, quote RIngham: ‘it taps into that audience that we need, the visitors of tomorrow’. Perhaps this has been the inspiration for the newly founded Louisiana Channel‘s decision to feature Danish designers Henrik Vibskov, Peter Jensen and Anne Sofie Madsen as commentators on art (in relation to fashion, but still).

Finally, Sarah Grøn from SMK generously shared the ups and downs in the process towards ‘becoming social’, making the point that staff’s personal experience with and command of social media platforms is a prerequisite for using them succesfully as an institution.

After a panel discussion, which mainly revolved around sure-fire communication on Facebook (apparently, updates about artist’s birthdays and the weather never fail – the key is to give something the puiblic can personally relate to), the day concluded with presentations by Merete Sanderhoff and Unges Laboratorier for Kunst on ongoing projects at SMK. Not entirely convinced by ULK’s Tales App (perhaps I’m just not getting it, or perhaps it is one of interesting, but somewhat artyfarty concepts that work best as concepts only)  but I would recommend trying Hintme, the scanner/twitterbased concept which I have written about earlier, which is now open to the public in a beta version. So go check out the website, make sure your QR scanner is up to date and go try it out in on of the participating museums! Better still, let me know how you liked it.

Modesalon: Fashion, music & identity at Designmuseum Danmark (30/1)

During fashion week, and in conjunction with the current exhibition of vinyl album covers, Designmuseum Denmark hosted two fashion salons about the relationship between fashion and music. Sadly, I missed out on the second one, a conversation between designers Mads Nørgaard and Henrik Vibskov, but found the first, featuring music scholar Morten Michelsen and fashion researcher Else Skjold, very inspiring.

Following themes such as emancipation, experimental expressions of gender and marginalisation, they spoke of fashion and music as bodily media for cultural expressions, and of the problematics of the ‘subculture’ discourse, which has now gone out of fashion, to be replaced with concepts of scenes, tribes and genre as social phenomenon.

Skjold is currently finishing up her PhD research on men’s fashion, a very interesting project exploring the potential and developing the methodology of wardrobe studies for cultural studies into fashion as well for market oriented developments in the fashion industry. I had a brief chat with her after the session about our shared interest in how fashion is not just products on a catwalk, but a complex mix of utility, identity, style and culture when used in real life. I expect that her thesis will provide some useful insights into these aspects as well as into considerations on design methodology in cultural studies, and might try to hook up with her at a later stage.

Responding to someone else’s probe

Thanks to Cecilia, a master student from the IT University of Copenhagen, I have been getting a chance to ‘taste my own medicine’. For her master thesis just finished, she explored how to design for sensory experiences in digital media, focusing on the potential for the fashion industry; a very interesting project and field, and highly relevant to my own research. During her process we’ve had some inspiring conversations and I am curious to learn of her findings. What’s more, she used cultural probes in her empirical research, and I had to fortune to one of her informants.

IMG_0005

Her beautiful probe package consisted of seven activities exploring various sensory expressions – I was asked to produce sensual forms in clay; to create a colourscheme, to articulate my thoughts on sensual expereinces on a series of postcards etc.

Apart from inspiring my own thinking around the importance – and complexity – of sensory and aesthetic experiences, and how to translate that into digital designs, it was interesting to be an informant and experience the very subjective interaction between designer and informant when performing her probe activities. Like the blurred boundary between what was her research interest and what was mine, and between my personal and academic understanding of the sensory, brought on in part by an overlap in project foci, and in part by engaging myself in her probe. Or the time issue, as in how much you can ask of your informants. For my part, I enjoyed working with the probe and also had a sense of obligation, meaning that I completed all tasks, but even so I can see how the demand on the informant’s time must be taken into consideration in the probe design, and may also account for some of the lacking responses in my own research.

Bard Graduate Center

October 15, 2012
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Last week, I received an invitation from Bard Graduate Center in New York to become a short-term research fellow for a six week period next spring.

Having waited anxiously for their decision since applying in August, I was (am!) exhilarated to receive this news, and feel truly privileged to be given to opportunity to take part in the strong research community at the BGC.

The Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture, is a graduate research institute of Bard College. As implied by the title, the institution studies cultural history through its material manifestations, or, in the words of Dean Peter N. Miller:

At the Bard Graduate Center our focus is on Cultura. This ancient Latin word referred to the class of activities in which human beings acted on, and so transformed, their natural surroundings. Studying the traces of this effort is, of course, cultural history, but of a specific sort. It directs our attention to the substances intervened upon, the processes used to make these interventions, and the consequences of these interventions.

Museum theory, fashion history and media/materiality matters are all represented in the course offerings, making it a perfect institution for research into my project field. The library and Digital Media Lab look simply brilliant, and the symposia and seminar series – open to the public – very inspiring – hopefully the program for the course of my stay will be as interesting. The institution publishes the book series Cultural Histories of the Material World and the journal West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture as well as publications related to their exhibitions. Yes, there is a gallery too! opening up the field to the general public and making the insititution a vibrant part of NY cultural life as well as hub for intellectual discussion.

So this really is a remarkable institution. What excites me the most is the prospect of taking part in the academic community, and really immerse myself in its approach and discourses as well as in my own project. I find BGC’s ‘emphasis on object-centered, question-driven work [which] unites the best approaches of the museum curator and the university professor’ (as put by founder and director Susan Weber) most inspiring, and look forward to take that lead. I will also be doing a presentation to staff and students, hoping to receive some critical feedback and just get stuck into some brilliant eyeopening conversations along the way.

It goes without saying that I am also exited by the prospect of spending six weeks in New York. I look forward to explore the world class museums, pick out a couple of good plays, find a favourite second hand haunt, and just wander through the city like modern day flâneur (or flâneuse, I guess), reserving the touristy bits for when my husband and boys come to visit. This will be my first visit to NY, and studying at the BCG and living in Bard Hall, both in Manhattan, I really get the chance be a part of it (New York, New York). Awesome news indeed.

Move over mobile, here comes Glass?

September 10, 2012
Fashion, Uncategorized
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New York Fashion Week, just ended, saw a merge of fashion and technology with models sporting Google Glass eyewear on the runway for Diane von Furstenberg. The #DVFthroughGlass project/stunt caught the attention of both tech community and the fashion world, and will result in a short film of the runway show as captured by the model’s augmented reality glasses.

Is this the must have accesssory for SS13, or at least the near future, and how will that affect museums and mediation?

Social media was also playing a central part during NYFW, with Fashion’s Night Out (a night of ‘shopping and celebration’) offering lots of ways to take part via Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr etc., in order to win prizes (and create hype and spend money, of course).

Copenhagen Fashion Festival

August 10, 2012
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As part of Copenhagen Fashion Week, the big industry trade fair taking place this week, the fashion council has organised a fashion festival to give the general public a feel of the vibe. Although most events are poorly disguised PR stunts for the local fashion shops and big beauty brands, some have a little more substance.

Designmuseum Denmark, for instance, is hosting a pop up exhibition about sustainable clothing under the heading New Nordic Fashion. The exhibition showcases collections made for the recent NICE design challenge and ‘Zero Waste’ designs by David Andersen.

As a couple of young women I interviewed said (sadly my blog settings don’t allow for video uploads, so I can’t share the vox pop, or the video blog I did remember to do this time – but thank you, Marlin Sofie and Celeste), even if the outfits were somewhat lacking in colour, the information about the horrific waste and pollution of the fashion industry was an eye-opener, and the novel materials were interesting.

So even if the commercial constraints of the context and the quick and dirty nature of the exhibition set up did not allow the museum much space for really addressing the woes of the sartorial world, the exhibition still managed to inspire and educate, if just a little.

The mini interview also revealed that it was the fashion week that drew them to the museum, so from a PR perspective it seems to be a good idea for the museum to team up with the fashion council and be part of various events.

Sustainability, or CSR, was also a theme for another exhibition at Skuespilshuset, and even H&M had jumped on the bandwagon with a display of outfits made from recycled H&M garments. It’s a nice thought, an environmentally savvy and sound fashion industry. But I cannot help thinking that whilst green may be the new black this season, fashions will come and go.

Response from a respondent

July 10, 2012
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Interviewing my respondents has been such a cool experience. As expected, demographic homogeneity has not meant a lack of diversity in the group, and I have had a string of interesting conversations and met many different takes on fashion and media.

I get the impression that my respondents like the project too. I hope they do, it’s meant to be fun for them to take part. And I was really happy to see that Tina, a 25 year old design student who I met yesterday, was so into it that she even shared the experience on her blog.

Already, I have collected a rich source of inspiration in the form of voxpops, friendship-book entries, and keywords from the interviews. On top of that, the probe returns are already trickling in. I’m lovin it! It is such a thrill to recieve an MMS from a participant, knowing that right then, someone was engaging in my project, and getting a glimpse into their lifeworld and their perception of the themes I’ve asked them to depict. Their returns are full of surprises and inspiration.

So, in case you’re reading this, Tina, Nanna, Stine, Kia, Cecille, Cecilie, Cecilie or Judi: Thank you so much! It’s great what you do, and it really means a lot. So keep ’em coming, and have fun with it. Looking forward to see what more you’ll come up with and to seeing you all again in the late summer.
Have a nice one till then ❤

Musetrain

July 2, 2012
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Looks like the brand new site Musetrain is one to watch. Launched only yesterday with an opening post that reads like a bullet-point cluetrain manifesto for museums, already it’s causing ripples on Twitter and around the museum-(blogo)sphere. And with the promise of further deliberations on each point and an open invitation for discussion, it could just turn into an interesting debate forum for museum folks. For unknown reasons, however, the people behind the site remain anonymous, stating only that ‘We’ve been working in and around all kinds of museums (art, science & technology centers, history, cultural sites, zoos and aquaria, and others) long enough to have seen, experienced, and led a couple of cycles of change’. Now, come on guys – why hide behind a mysterious group identity, especially after declaring that ‘Individual voices should be heard and recognizable as such’. As Lynda Kelly points out in a comment, knowing who’s speaking would set a useful context for the discussion and – hopefully – strengthen the voice of the speaker(s). Failing to come out, the project might just fall flat. Still, the ‘manifesto’ itself seems to pretty much sum up the ethos of a ‘new museology’ in a neat list form. No surprises, then, in suggestions like ‘Make visitors part of the experience. Ask them to participate in your ideas and stories’; ‘Create frameworks that let visitors do more with your collections and ideas than you can imagine’ or ‘Create iteratively, these aren’t finish lines, just landmarks along the way’. But then again, these suggestions bear repeating and the summary format really is quite handy. museum geek, in a response post, proposes that you ‘Print a copy off, and revisit it regularly. See where the ideas in it sit with you over time’. Good point, and I will, inspired by the good sentiments but also wary of the somewhat simplistic certainty of such statements. And I do hope that the debate will take off, and perhaps get to a deeper level of considerations, pro’s and con’s, concrete experiences and academic reflections to back up -or question – the snappy rhetorics.

——————————————————-

UPDATE January 5th 2015:

Screen Shot 2015-01-05 at 13.46.30

Great finds at Fashion Flea

June 9, 2012
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Today I got lucky at Fashion Flea: Yellow patent pumps, Stine Goya silk pants, Gucci shades… but the best part (and my professional incentive to go) was that this event gave me the chance to go and have a chat with some of the fashion bloggers that I have been eyeing up and would like to involve as ‘informants’ in my project.

So Kia, Cecilie, Cecilie & Cecilie (no, really!) – great meeting you ladies! I’ll get back to you shortly and really look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas on fashion in and outside the museum.

Meanwhile, I’ll get that recruitment snowball rollin’ and get going with the probes – more on that in an upcoming post.

Quick-guide to mapping, anyone?

May 30, 2012
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Having spent the last couple of months presenting, questioning and shaping/sharpening my project through a series of mostly great PhD-courses, I have to admit that I am now getting a wee bit tired of talking about the project, and very keen to get stuck in. Which is why I’ll skip the probably very useful post reflecting on the courses (for now, at least), and go straight to the problem I’m now facing: how to map the mobile and SNS-offering of museums as well as the multitude of fashion forums, groups, blogs etc.

Its a jungle out there – not in the jungle-law sense (or at least I haven’t come across that as yet) but in the messy, sprawly, buzzing, overwhelming sense. Where do you begin in the tangle that is YouTube embedded in Facebook referenced on Twitter about an app to support an exhibition?

And here I am, armed with an Excell spreadsheet, of which I only know the very basics. Not much of a machete, really. Too angular, demanding of the world that it can be neatly and accurately categorized. Surely not visual enough. Is there some other tool that I should be using? Create boards on Pinterest, set up a wiki, draw mindmaps, go all-out creative with pritstick in a journal? Try a bit of everything to work out what works for me?

Either way, I’ve got to start somewhere, simply collecting information, and hoping that at some point either a pattern will emerge, or I will realise that the process of research and reflection, and not the map, is the important part of this work.

But perhaps somebody out there has created a great overview of the mobile mediation tools currently offered by museums? Or maybe someone has a perfect concept for mapping that I could model mine on? If so, hints are welcome.

Engaging users

May 29, 2012
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This post was actually writen back in March, but never finished as I got caught up in a flurry of PhD-courses. Since then, it has sort of been blocking the blogging, and I therefore resolve to publish it in this unfinished form, to at least keep some of the references and thoughts that inspired it originally, but which are not at the forefront of my mind now. Hopefully, this way, I will make space for some of the stuff that is.

 

Once a month, I receive a report from Museum Analytics on the most engaging content from museums on Facebook and Twitter, as measured by the number of likes and retweets. The numbers aren’t that interesting in themselves, really – world famous, English speaking institutions like MOMA or the Met will always have a greater number of followers and can therefore generate more likes or RTs than, say , a local Danish Museum – still, it’s interesting to see what type of updates gets the best response.


My personal favourites when it comes to museum updates, are not necessarily the ones that score the highest numbers, however, but the ones that generate interesting response from users related to the institution’s subject matter. The Danish National Museum, for instance, use both Facebook and Twitter well to engage people with archives and collections, as in the weekly #natquiz; where people are asked to guess the objects pictured, right:

Another fine example is The Metropolitan Museums recent postings on Facebook, inviting the audience to imagine and share how they would wear one of the exquisite pieces from their couture collections, and getting some playful comments in return, below:

More elaborate is V&A’s recent Street Style Fashion Competition, an open call to upload a photo of your favourite look to celebrate London Fashion Week, which again generated some great shots and lots of user comments:

Admittedly, the prizes were neat. But judging from the comments from the winner, the best part was getting recognigtion on her style from the curators of one of her favourite museums. (For what it’s worth, here’s a thumbs up from me too: You look gorgeous, darling!)

http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2009/03/self-expression-is-over-rated-better.html

http://www.quora.com/What-kind-of-incentives-would-persuade-more-people-to-be-part-of-crowdsourcing

http://www.dr.dk/p3/programmer/radioens-efterretningstjeneste/2012/03/05/hvad-er-den-vaerste-modediller-nogensinde