Museums and Technology

In the article “The Spirit of Sharing” by Carol Vogel of the New York Times, technology within the museum is discussed. The article views how various museums have used technology to gain audience and better connect with them. The article primarily focuses on the Brooklyn Museum, which uses social media websites like Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Four Square and Twitter to connect with over 180,000 followers online. It is with these social media sites that museums receive feedback regarding the museum and comments about how effective exhibits were. It is the main objective of technology officers like Shelley Bernstein of the Brooklyn Museum, to engage the museum audience with interactive projects, announcements, posts, blogs and many other elements that makes social media an effective communication tool.

Specifically, many institutions have used technology to increase audiences and promote learning. The Indianapolis Museum of Art allows web users to track the museums endowment, membership, number of visitors and how much energy the museum is using. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art took pictures of various behind the scenes activities in the museum and posted them on Facebook, so viewers could see what was happening. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s website, users can interact with a connections tab to talk to a museum educator and a media producer and discuss works in the collection. Similarly, the Met created an online date night to showcase various pieces of romantic art on Valentine’s Day.

Overall, many social media websites help to greatly increase the population of a museums audience. At the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 2010, the population which came through the doors was 430,000 visitors however; the website attracted over a million users. Another successful institution, the Guggenheim, started a YouTube Play project which took user submitted videos about art in their life. Then the Guggenheim took these videos and created a video-art Biennal, which was overly successful with more than 24 million views. Also, many museums are coming out with free apps that allow users to interact with museums quickly and very easily via a cellphone. These are overly successful as well, specifically the app for the Met, which has over 40,000 downloads at the iPhone app store.

As the article describes, there are numerous problems associated with implementing new technology. One example of this is how museums install wireless internet and computer systems in old buildings, so visitors can use their own personal devices such as a phone or Ipad. Another issue would be institutions getting caught up in fads. Getting too extreme in technology could cause an audience not to focus on what the museum contains, which could cause people to leave without being instructed. Secondly, getting too involved into social media could cause an audience to be less attracted to an institution as result of feeling overwhelmed by technology.