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Friday Night at the Moma
Photo by Eggman
I recently lead a workshop called Social Media for Arts People. I've covered arts organizations and social media here and there over the past three years and last winter co-wrote a cover story article with Rebecca Krause-Hardie for ArtsReach. So, thought I'd take an opportunity to query my network viaTwitter and Facebook and see what's new and share it with you.
Everyone is a Curator
One of the best projects that illustrates the basic idea of Web2.0 - listening and conversation and stakeholderscreating their own experience with your organization - comes from the Brooklyn Museum of Art. They're now running a compelling experiment in crowd-sourced exhibition creation and curation via the photography exhibition Click.
Here's how Nina Simon described it on her insightful post analyzing the tactics used.
1. The Museum solicited photographs from artists via an open call on their website, Facebook group, Flickr groups, and outreach to Brooklyn-based arts organizations.
2. On the web, anyone can evaluate the photographs in terms of aesthetic quality and relevance to the exhibition theme. All evaluations are private; all artists are unnamed. It's very easy to sign up and judge... and you can do so now by registering here.
3. The photographs will be installed in a physical exhibition running for six weeks this summer. The art will be displayed in order of the average juried scores. Visitors will be able to see how different subgroups (including art experts) ranked and responded to the art. The exhibition will coincide with programs about art theory, online communities, and crowd theory, providing a forum for public evaluation and discussion about the process.
Nina observes that the following makes this project really special:
- It is 100% community-based
- The internal team is led by a non-curator.
- They kept the interface simple
- They make it easy to evangelize
- They are sensitive to the artists who are being judged.
- They ask judges to self-define their art knowledge.
But as Nina notes, they are doing research from this experiment about the role of independence and influence in a participatory experience. Note that this is a research/learning approach that is key
to success of Web2.0 projects.
More at TechCrunch and Technology in the Arts Blog.
Another theme of web2.o is Transparency - and the best example of that is what the Indianapolis Art Museum has done with its pubic metrics on its web site.
Blogs
Elizabeth Perry, an artist in Pittsburgh and pioneer of "sketch blogging" reported that local arts organizations have been good at integrating
social media without having to create or maintain anything new. "They have begun inviting local bloggers as press to openings and events -usually they get in touch with Mike Woycheck or Cynthia Closkey, two of
the co-founders of Pittsburgh Bloggers, who then re-blog the invitation and spread it via Facebook or their own Twitter streams. Lindsay Patross runs the blog, and people get hold of her, too.
Similar strategy to what the San Francisco Symphony did with its blogger outreach event. ASOL gives a write up and some pointers for holding your own blogger outreach event.
What Should Artists and Arts Organization’s Blog about? An excellent question posed by Beth Dunn of Small Dots.
Most people are fascinated by the interior life of artists. Many people are
turned on by the chance to peek backstage at a theater. Almost everyone I know thinks they can curate an art exhibit. Are they right?Artists: Write about your favorite kind of paintbrushes.
Write about where you go shopping for paintbrushes. Write about how hard it is to find decent studio space. Write about why you ditched that banker job to see if you could make it selling art. Write about
your crippling self-doubt and fears of failure. Write the truth. Not the press release.Arts Organizations: Write about your insides — what goes
on inside a theater, a museum, a historical home? Not the tedious soap opera that will get you fired if you share - the cool stuff we’re all dying to know! Where do your staff come from? What brought them here?
How much fun did you have striking the set over the weekend? Can I help next time?
Artist Blogs
For individual artists, a blog can also help sell or promote their work. Here's some artists personal blogs that support their gallery sites where they sell their work -- A Planet Named Janet, Self VS
