Ancient meets modern at Webstock

Brooklyn Museum may be a bit of an old-timer, but it has seized on modern-day technology to build a following.

The museum's chief of technology Shelley Bernstein – who was speaking at Wellington's Webstock conference – says the days of deathly silences and bewildering exhibits at museums could be numbered.

"Museum visitation is changing and so is what people expect of us."

Brooklyn Museum is one of the largest and oldest museums in the United States, but its visitors are the youngest and most diverse of any art museum in the country, and Ms Bernstein has turned to social networking tools such as Twitter, YouTube and photo-sharing site Flickr to engage them and build a community.

The museum allows visitors to photograph and film exhibits whenever it can, and ran a competition on YouTube to see who could make the best video about the museum, she says.

Visitors' comments are uploaded to the home pages of exhibits to make them feel engaged, and the museum has used their feedback to improve exhibits.

"There was one exhibition that had sound effects at the end and people just hated them."

People following the museum on Twitter received live updates during CT scans of the museum's mummies and pictures of the procedure were posted on Flickr. The museum has created interactive blogs to breathe life into "less accessible" exhibits, such as ones about archeological digs, she says.

Visitors attending an exhibition of photographs of famous African American people were invited to record their own videos at kiosks in the museum about what race meant to them and these were uploaded to a dedicated YouTube channel.

These methods of engagement are not just for the very young, Ms Bernstein says.

"You're primarily looking at an age range of 18 to 45 but people as old as 90 are commenting on the blogs."

The museum has also used technology to draw people in through its doors. An exhibition on graffiti included a wall of blank canvas on which visitors could add their own graffiti.

"We put the pictures up on Flickr... local graffiti aficionados could see this.

They became engaged online and then came in and drew their own graffiti."

It is not enough to be on a whole host of social networking sites, she says, and the museum has worked to engage people through its own website. Members of the museum's online "posse" can create tags for the museum's online collection to help visitors to the site find them easily, and can recommend objects and exhibits to others.

"If someone helps us, we can say `It was this user and this is who they are'."

Brooklyn Museum is not the only museum to have snapped up social networking tools, and New Zealand's Te Papa is something of a pioneer in the space, Ms Bernstein says.

"It's one of the best examples of a community-focused museum. They were out there in the social space so early and they've been doing it in an organic way."

- © Fairfax NZ News