Prelude:
I started planning this event, well last year, but really in the past 3 months. I still worry no one will take part at first or get bored. Than closer to the event, I get all giddy with excitement like it’s Christmas!

This year is no different.

But here I am, technically the eve before and we have 41 countries and 634 museums signed up. I’ve been interviewed in 6 different languages (Wired.com article).  The sign up sheet continues to grow… [by end of play, 721 museums in 43 countries!]

Stats
I’m often asked why I do it as I don’t get paid.  The stats from LaMagnetica are why:

47,546 Tweets
13,000 DIFFERENT users

That is a HUGE community we have built together. How could I not do it? I’m seriously blown away by those numbers. These numbers represent the thirst from the #AskACurator Community for access to behind the scenes at museums/galleries.  The thirst for learning. The passion for our cultural sector. And most importantly, the yearning to share.

Please Note: LaMagnetica will be sharing the report and I”ll update this page when it’s done.

UPDATE:  I’ve a Feedback form and would love to hear your opinion Read the rest of this entry »

CultureThemes was looking for a theme for July and put the idea of cats out to people.

Cats and the Internet and Museums… what could possibly happen? 

I reached out to Curatorial Cats who run a few cat related tags every week to see if they would like be part of it.  We decided to use #MuseumCats as that is something Curatorial Cat already used and it would be less confusing for people (and hopefully help build their profile up a bit).

Well.  On July 30th 2014 CATS RULED!  We had over 14,500 tweets and trended worldwide.

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The Russian Twitter includes around 180 museum accounts from every region of the Russian Federation. These accounts feature both the great world famous museum complexes like the State Hermitage in Saint-Petersburg or the State Historical museum in Moscow and small regional museums like the Middle Kama Museum of History and Culture.

So we’d like to announce, that April, 25 is a #‎СпросиКуратора Day in the Russian twitter. It’s an analogue of the Internanational #‎AskACurator Day (with a kind permission of @CultureThemes and Mar Dixon). This tweet-event will be supported by the offical Twitter of Rissia (@TwitterRussia). It’s a unique opportunity to get all kind of museum information straight from the source.

Our challenge is to present the quite new sort of museum activity in the Internet for the Russian-speaking audience.

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I’ve been asked to gather a few of my favorite tweets from #MuseumWeek  – Impossible!
But I’ll start off with a few and hopefully we can add to it as we go – Just tweet me!

#MuseumWeek Stats:
+630 museums
+260,000 Tweets
@sharypic 20799 photos 
@lamagnetica Analysis
barriblog.com Analysis # MuseumWeek 2014
Antoine Courtin #MuseumWeek Analyses 

First:   A MASSIVE Thank you & 3 cheers to EVERY Social Media person/team/representative that took part in #MuseumWeek You must be exhausted! 🙂

Second: #MuseumWeek Collection of all pictures that were used with the tag via @sharypic 

Credit: @lamagnetica

MY OWN HIGHLIGHTS

NHM and V&A Tweet OFF – Both Natural History Museum and the V&A had a late night during #MuseumWeek.  What happened was social media being used in a fun, sharing and semi-competitive way.  I LOVED IT.

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Been trying to keep and eye out for all the press, articles and posts on blog sites.  If you know of any, please let me know.  

• #MuseumWeek – Why (and how) Everyone Should Get Involved
• #MuseumWeek Stats for first 3 days via @lamagnetic

 So many brilliant #MuseumWeek pictures have been shared (22,900+) & thanks to Sharypic they’ve been captured!

Press, Articles, Posts

• Twitter (March 31) #MuseumWeek: celebrating culture around Europe
• Twitter UK
• Twitter France
• Twitter Italy
• Twitter Teams Up With European Galleries In #MuseumWeek To Push Its Cred With Culture Vultures
• Twitter、ヨーロッパの博物館や美術館とのタイアップで「#MuseumWeek」イベントを開催
• #MuseumWeek gives Twitter virtual access to hundreds of museums and galleries across Europe  via @thedrum
• Read the rest of this entry »

The following information is shared with permission from the fabulous La Magnética who have been tracking stats for #MuseumWeek.  Please note: These are for Monday-Wednesday ONLY. 

FOR FULL REPORT SEE FULL La Magnética  REPORT HERE 

The graph has grown huge, so to get to an image than one can read we have to trim a lot of edges and nodes (otherwise we would have 57.000 nodes, and names and dots will overlay all over the graph). That means that only the most active profiles are included in the graph and there is less change from one day to the next than in the whole graph, but the whole graph is impossible to draw.

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Twitter UK, Italy, Spain and France are coming together this month for #MuseumWeek – a week long event to help encourage museums and potential visitors to use Twitter to share.

SEE PDF PDF Twitter #MuseumWeek PDF 

Now those that know me know this is something I’m a huge advocate of.  Anything that stops the stereotyping that makes museums stuffy and visitors feel they aren’t worthy is a good thing!

Objective:
Twitter has asked museums to sign up and  tweet each day using the different hashtag/theme.  Some of these are incredibly familiar (#AskaCurator #MuseumSelfie).  I was asked if I minded, which is a good question.  As a huge supporter of Museums and Twitter, how could I mind?  I was a bit worried as the topics chosen are something CultureThemes does on a yearly basis but when I stopped and really thought about it – does it really matter?  AskACurator will still happen on September 17th and MuseumSelfie will happen again in January 2015.  What is important is to hopefully reach more museums that might not be using Twitter or know how to jump into social media to feel comfortable throughout the week taking part. Also to bring more potential visitors/advocates into the mix.  I am really proud that Twitter has seen the potential with the museum sector – Go us! 

What and When:
March 24 Day 1 – A day in the life (#DayInTheLife)
March 25 Day 2 – Test your knowledge (#MuseumMastermind)
March 26 Day 3 – Your story (#MuseumMemories)
March 27 Day 4 – Buildings behind the art (#BehindTheArt)
March 28 Day 5 – Ask the expert (#AskTheCurator)
March 29 Day 6 – Museum selfies (#MuseumSelfies)
March 30 Day 7 – Constraint drives creativity (#GetCreative)

Who:
List of Museums in each country
Want to take part and from the UK?  Twitter UK Form
Want to take part and from Spain? Twitter Spain Form
Want to take part and from Italy? Twitter Italy Form
Want to take part but not part of the four countries?  I created a form here

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[EDIT TO UPDATE FOR 2015]

This post has been getting more hits so just to clarify:

#MuseumSelfie day is on January 21, 2015
Twitter: @MuseumsSelfie Day
Instagram: MuseumSelfieDay
Hashtag #MuseumSelfie
See CultureThemes write up: It’s back! #MuseumSelfie Day on January 21st @MuseumSelfieDay official account

 Objective:  A day to share selfies either in museums or around museums.  These can be on the day or ones from previous visits.  This is a FUN DAY to encourage people to visit museums and participate a bit with art or collections.  

Back to Write up from 2014

A little break from Google Explorer updates 🙂

On January 22, CultureThemes is running #Museumselfie.  I’ve been asked what it is all about so thought I’d explain the background a bit.

I’m a Cultural Snatcher – I can’t help it!  I take after my mom who is never without a camera (remember Kodak Disc?  I do.).  When I visit and explore a museum, I love sharing what I’m seeing.  While I’m not a huge fan of taking pictures of myself, I can see why people like a good old selfie.

CultureThemes is a monthly hashtag I help organize on Twitter (we’ll be 3 in March). The idea behind CultureThemes is to have a positive event once a month on Twitter to highlight the fun and ‘unstuffiness’ of museums/culture.  Previous tags included: #WhyILoveMuseums, #MusSocks, #MusMovember, and support #AskACurator day.

When I was coming up with new ideas for January, I happened to catch a conversation on Twitter with Adrian from Horniman talking about creating a Pinterest for Selfies with the Walrus.  Horniman has a lovely, but not-the-best-taxidermy Walrus which people love to see on a visit.  The idea of the Pinterest board reminded me how many people I see in my own travels taking selfies at museums and art galleries.

Suddenly, #MuseumSelfie was created. 

The idea is simple, people around the world have been asked to take selfies at museums for the past month and they will share on Twitter using #MuseumSelfie on January 22^nd.  The pictures could be current or from previous trips.

We’ve museums in Catalan, Russia, South Africa, America, UK, France and more who pledged to take part.

So if you’re visiting a museum this weekend, make sure you take a #MuseumSelfie and share with @CultureThemes this Wednesday!

I asked this question on Twitter as I read the Museum of London recently ‘retired’ (read that as got rid of) their Story curator after 20 years.  This got me thinking:

Is having the object more important than telling the story?

For me, I don’t expect to go to many museums/galleries and understand everything that is in front of me.  I tend to scan a room, see what object was the one that grabbed my attention and go to it.  However when I with someone that has a bit of knowledge then my experience is usually quite different.

Either way, the objects and paintings that have really good stories are the ones that tend to stay with me the longest (and are the ones I share the most).

The following are some of the responses I received on Twitter:

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This morning, I got involved in a conversation on Twitter that was lively, with a hint of debate and sadly, still no answer.

A little background:

Back in April, 2012, Peter Davies sent me a copy of Museums and the Disposal Debate: A Collection of Essays @pjdavies2000 @museumsetc.

As an archivist wife, I’m well familiar with the issues involved in decommission and disposal (as related to puppets). Every debate seems to be around money: storage, ownership, current economic issues, responsibility, etc.

The big issue for me has always been this:  Once an item or collection is disposed, it can’t be undone.  Our current economics should not be the reason, or excuse, to decommission and ruin any chance for future generations to have the art/collection because we couldn’t handle our wallet.

Reality is we mustn’t let economics be the assessor in evaluation of the works at that time.

And today’s Sunday debate with Peter Davies @pjdavies2000, David Craven  @davidjcraven and Tiffany Jenkins @tiffanyjenkins was no different.

I’ve Storified the Twitter conversation here (with permission). What are your thoughts?

*Please note, these are our opinions and not those related to employee yada yada yada 

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