The Art Institute of Chicago collects, preserves, and interprets works of art of the highest quality, representing the world’s diverse artistic traditions, for the inspiration and education of the public and in accordance with our profession’s highest ethical standards and practices. (relevant phrases bolded)
The Art
Institute of Chicago (AIC) has a fairly comprehensive social media presence,
with accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, Pinterest (which I was
only able to find after seeing a link to it on AIC’s Youtube page), and Flickr
(which I found only through a Google search) as well as a blog, ARTicle. The accounts have a large
number of followers/likes, as well—over 400,000 on Facebook, 140,000 on
Twitter, and 71,000 on Instagram. The public is especially engaged on Facebook,
where many people like and comment on posts and the museum’s staff reply within
a couple of hours to any questions asked.
While the
museum has no official social media policy, its use is mentioned in a few
sections on the website. For example, on the main About page, the President and
Director of the museum, James Rondeau, explains that “we continually adapt to
the world around us and find creative and relevant ways to engage our global
audiences” and that the website, blog, and social media help the museum to
extend its reach. One engaging feature is a social media feed on the right side
of most pages on the site. Users can choose different tabs—Facebook, Twitter, and
Youtube—and see the most recent posts there, which gives quick access to these
sites.
A good
practice AIC follows is posting different content on the different social media
sites. A lot of the content, though, does not really do much to inspire or
educate the public on its own, rather to bring the public into the museum, so
they can be educated and inspired there. Facebook and Twitter are mainly used
to advertise current exhibitions or special events and programs, as well as
update people on wait times for entrance to the museum or the current popular
exhibition, Van Gogh’s Bedrooms. “Throwback Thursday” posts seem to be one of
the few times they don’t post something that is specifically related to a
current or upcoming exhibit or event.
Instagram does a bit more interaction
with the public by posting photos of people in the museum, at special events or
just in the galleries.
They have created boards on Pinterest that group objects
in the collection by different themes (Dinner is Served, Modern Masters, Dress
to Impress, Strike a Pose, etc.). And on Flickr, they mainly post photos of
people at special events at the museum.
A recent
April Fool’s Day prank on the blog demonstrates how the museum is fulfilling
its mission to educate and inspire the public (even jokingly). Staff selected a
theme—flowers—and matched up depictions of flowers in the collection to pieces
of music, as a way to enhance their experience in the museum (http://www.artic.edu/blog/2016/04/01/sound-and-vision-flowers),
although as a couple of commenters point out, the music does not actually match
the images. Done seriously, this idea could engage the public in a new way and
educate them by allowing them to experience the art with different senses.
One thing
AIC could improve on is the variety of content posted on sites like Facebook
and Twitter. Most of the posts are about current exhibitions and events—which
is important information—but museums like the Met in New York also post many
images of items in their collection, not in conjunction with any specific
exhibit or event, with accompanying information about the item or the process
used to make it, etc. This would go a long way in supporting AIC’s mission of
educating the public. They could also do a better job of tagging content. They
use a few tags occasionally, like #TBT (Throwback Thursday) on old pictures,
but more tags could be used without overwhelming the posts, perhaps the name or
creator of a piece of art in a picture, etc.
Another way
the Art Institute could fulfill its mission through social media would be to
encourage followers to post something in response to a prompt (similar to Play
#2 on this list of social media plays for business marketing - http://www.exacttarget.com/products/social-media-marketing/social-media-marketing-best-practices/social-media-marketing-quick-plays),
e.g. the museum posts an image of an object in the collection on Twitter and
asks users to post their own versions of the object with a specific hashtag.
This would inspire the public to think about the essence of pieces of art and
then create their own art.
The Newberry, open to the public
without charge, is an independent research library dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge,
especially in the humanities. The Newberry acquires and preserves a broad array
of special collections research materials relating to the civilizations of
Europe and the Americas. It promotes and provides for their effective use, fostering research, teaching, publication,
and life-long learning, as well as civic engagement. In service to its
diverse community, the Newberry encourages intellectual pursuit in an
atmosphere of free inquiry and sustains the highest standards of collection
preservation, bibliographic access, and reader services. (relevant phrases
bolded)
The
Newberry, a private research library in Chicago, does not do as well as the Art
Institute when it comes to social media. This is what I expected, as the
Newberry seems to be a more conservative, traditional sort of institution that
may not be on the cutting edge of technology and social media. They have
accounts on three sites, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, where they have
about 12300, 8400, and 4200 likes/followers, respectively. Links to these sites
are a bit more difficult to locate than on the AIC website, where they were
part of the footer at the bottom of every page. On the Newberry website, users
can find the links on the “Follow the Newberry” page which is linked on the
homepage (https://www.newberry.org/follow-newberry-0). The lack of obvious
icons for each site presented right away adds to the difficulty.
In addition
to the three social media accounts, they also have multiple blogs covering
different topics (https://www.newberry.org/blog)—the Newberry Book Fair, genealogy, the Center for Renaissance
Studies, and the history of printing (which is actually on tumblr and could help reach out to a different community and audience).There
seems to be much more emphasis on the blogs on the website than on the other
social media pages. These blogs (although not perhaps “social media” in the usual sense) go a long
way to fulfilling the mission of the Newberry by sharing information about the
library’s collection and services, encouraging people to come to the library
and do research—the main goal of the institution.
Like the Art
Institute, the Newberry does not have an official social media policy. There
is, however, a statement at the top of the Follow the Newberry page:
The Newberry's official blogs and
social media pages bring you measured analysis and fleeting impressions
regarding the library's collections, services, and public programs.
This is a
rather strange statement to me—I’m not sure what “fleeting impressions” means.
Perhaps they intend their social media accounts to offer users small, quick
glimpses into the collections that will draw them into the actual library to do
research. This would be more in keeping with their mission to encourage
research and learning within the walls of the library, unlike the Art Institute’s
mission which does not necessarily require people to come into the museum to
fulfill it.
Unlike AIC,
the Newberry seems to post a lot of the same content on all three social media
sites, especially when it comes to images, and also does not post as frequently,
although the content is tailored to the platform in terms of the accompanying text (see image below). They mainly
post about events, along with images of items in the collections, which
fulfills the knowledge and learning portions of the mission by sharing bits of
information about the items.
They do a better job of tagging than AIC with at least two or three pertinent tags on each post. I do like the tone of the posts also. They
are also very casual and conversational, which is listed as a good practice by the
American Association of Museums in their Social Media Handbook (https://www.imls.gov/assets/1/AssetManager/AAHC_Convening_MAPSocial.pdf).
As a whole, both institutions do a decent job with social media in general: they have multiple, active accounts, which post the sort of information that would encourage people to actually visit the museum or library, which fulfills part of their missions to engage the public and encourage research and learning. They could both do better with using the social media, in terms of tagging posts to spread the content further, in the case of AIC, and posting different content on the different platforms to engage different audiences, in the case of the Newberry.
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