The HRC thanks Ann Smith, museum consultant and former director of the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, CT, and the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, CT, for serving as guest author for the following entry.

Ann has recommended several articles for the HRC from The Art Newspaper online including one featured in the recent HRC post Recession: An Audience Booster? This past spring The Art Newspaper published articles on how the recession was affecting museums including Tim Shapiro's piece on the value of strategic alliances for stressed institutions and Jason Edward Kaufman's report on how large museums are responding to the recession. Both can be found in the April 15 issue.

Jim Richardson offered provocative insights into the use of blogs, Facebook and other social networks in his article, "Facebook is More than a Fad" (The Art Newspaper online, 23 Apr 2009). Pointing out that 2/3 of the world's online users participate in these kinds of sites, he urges museums to get with it, and to use these sites for more than just marketing or the delivery of information.

Instead, Richardson advises museums to take advantage of social networking sites to transform their relationship with audiences, allowing their users to select and share content. "Museums are well placed to appeal to this new generation of (user) "curators" because they offer rich and interesting content that can be [re-mixed] online to reflect the individual tastes of each user." He cites the re-launched website at MOMA as a model of this new thinking, allowing users to share information and participate in discussions.

Richardson cautions about the legal issue of copyrighted images on the web, an issue he thinks will be soon outdated, and the cost of this type of website, in terms of development and staff time. But he concludes that this is where the audiences are already going, and museums should be there too.

To read the full article, click here. 

By Cathy Fields