3rd of September 2010

After “ASK a CURATOR” : notes for avaluating a good idea

The 1st September was noteworthy in the museum world for an innovative initiative promoted by the untiring Jim Richardson, Ask a Curator. In short: 343 museums from 23 countries from all over the world put their curators at the disposal of the questions users wanted to ask them through Twitter.

The figure alone for the amount of participation is significant in itself. More than 9.000 tweets have been recorded. But I would like to highlight some other interesting factors. Read more »

20th of July 2010

Discussing Wikipedia & Museums at the Picasso in Barcelona

Do you remember my remarks about the Museums & the Web conference? Well, we’ve just had an informal mini Wikimedia session here in Barcelona. This was prompted by the happy coincidence of three factors: the arrival of Liam Wyatt, who has just concluded his stint as Wikipedian-in-Residence at the British Museum, the growing interest of local museums in what is a real outreach phenomenon, and the dynamism of the Wikipedia community of Catalonia (Vikipèdia). Read more »

9th of June 2010

Has it really been a year? The Museu Picasso’s 2.0 progress

It really feels like just a few days ago that we started this blog and the museum’s active presence on social media, but — believe it or not! — we’ve just had our first anniversary! To celebrate, we opened the doors of the museum to the online community one Monday, which is the day of the week we are closed to the public, to give our visitors the special privilege of having the place to themselves. Read more »

27th of April 2010

From mw attendant to stranded European: an exciting journey Denver-NY-Barcelona

Finally back to Barcelona, being one of the stranded Europeans (new word to me, now too familiar), I’d like to share with you some first impressions. The past week has been a great week for the Museu Picasso.

It began with the interesting Wikipedia –Museums Day which meant for both communities a first approach at such large scale. (I blogged about it, only in Spanish and Catalan). As a direct outcome of our twittering and blogging about it, we received an email from a local wikipedian offering to cooperate and asking about the possibility for a meeting, which of course we are delighted to schedule. And I intend to include some wikipedia monitoring and writing as a practice for our students of the new Postgraduate course about Museum Management that my museum and the University Pompeu Fabra are about to launch next Autumn (more details coming soon). Read more »

22nd of April 2010

The Museu Picasso wins a Best of the Web 2010 award for the most innovative social networks project

This post was going to be a report on and assessment of Museums and the Web 2010, the annual MW conference held in Denver, Colorado, from 13 to 17 April, about which Conxa already advanced some information in her previous post. The conference brought together over 600 specialists from around the world to consider issues such as the uses and design of culture websites, the management of online collections, the construction of social networks in 2.0 environments and mobile multimedia resources for cultural institutions.

That’s what this post was going to be, but something happened at the conference which made us decide to change the focus slightly — something we are very excited about: the Museu Picasso won the award for the best work in the social media! Read more »

12th of April 2010

The Picasso at the Museums and the Web Conference

For the third year running the Museu Picasso will be taking part this week (in Denver this time round) in the top-level international M&W conference, a real generator of knowledge and ideas about interactive museography, digital communication, mobile applications for museums, social media, the creation of content by the public and a host of related subjects.

In 2008 we ran a session at the Usability Lab presenting the then just revamped Picasso website. In 2009 we were asked to be part of the International Program Committee, which is responsible for, among other things, assessing and orienting the review of papers to be presented at the conference. And as we were going to be in Indianapolis, we decided to make a CRIT Room presentation of some of the improvements we made to the site in its first year of operation. This was an excellent way of publicizing the site — we even found comments on a blog from Sweden — and to cap it all we were given a prize for one of the best posts on the conference’s blog. You can read a report of MW2009 in Patrimoni Gencat blog. Read more »

23rd of March 2010

The users have the word: 8 months of the blog at Picasso 2.0

We’ll be giving details and figures in another article soon. In the meantime, today we’re giving the word to you, the users of the blog. We want to thank all of you that have dedicated a few minutes of your time to letting us know your opinion. You’ll find here some of the comments we’ve received in the blog.

Our visitors, online and in person, come from all over the world and comment on any aspect that we’ve highlighted over the last few months through the social networks. This internationality has been well reflected in the participation of the contest Become a fauvist!, just as Cristina says: “(…) What is really curious is seeing where these photos come from, and to check out the international spread of the Museum and its initiatives. Well done.”

Some congratulate us with just a few words “Fantastic!!!” (Olga) commenting on the new presentation of Las Meninas while others are a bit more expressive “The Picasso museum’s doing a great job, it doesn’t matter if you come back every new season. And las Meninas is the star attraction; pity about the colour of the wall, that doesn’t help such a fantastic legacy to stand out. Congratulations.” (José). Read more »

3rd of March 2010

The Picasso Museum on Twitter @museupicasso

Yes!!!  We have finally joined Twitter, the social network that we needed to complete the first phase of  our Social Media presence, launched in May 2009. Some of you are maybe wondering, but, weren’t you already on Twitter? And others may ask why weren’t you? Or even , why are you now?

I have answers for all these questions (sort of). The first one is a clear No. And there were several  reasons for that. First, to start small and grow from there. We opened this blog and profiles on Facebook, Delicious, Flickr, Youtube and Slideshare. The most time-demanding for us are the blog and Facebook. Twitter is tricky; it may seem that to post a short message now and then is not much time-consuming. Read more »

20th of January 2010

21 images of what happened in 2009 in the Picasso Museum

Looking back over 2009, what can we say we are proud of? Of the number of visitors? Of course that’s important but not more than other aspects, although naturally we value and are very grateful for the number of visitors we receive.

However, what we really are proud of is the fact of promoting the educational programme, of having produced some temporary exhibitions that, as a result of the research, have contributed new knowledge about the works of Picasso, of having renovated the museographic presentation of the series of Las Meninas, of having restored the ceilings of the Palau Aguilar, of the increase in loans of works to international exhibitions, of having started the works of the new building that will accommodate the new services of Knowledge and Research, of having put the collection online, of having renewed the spaces of security with leading-edge technology,  of having increased the acquisitions of the collection of the museum, of having diversified the offer of activities and with a multi-disciplinary vision, of having actively entered in the social networks or 2.0, of having invited international and national experts to collaborate with the museum.

Read more »

16th of November 2009

The Digital Museu Picasso in the World

Two notable activities have recently come along to assist the growth of the Museum’s Internet project. First of all, the Museu Picasso has been invited, for the second year running, to take a place on the International Program Committee of the worldwide conference on Museums & the Web and take part in the evaluation and selection of the proposed papers, forums and workshops. The forthcoming conference will be held in Denver, Colorado, and the committee includes representatives of such prestigious institutions as the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Van Gogh Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Walker Art Center and the Museum Studies Programme at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, with the Museu Picasso the only Spanish art centre on the committee. Visit the Museums 2.0 blog for a detailed account of the 2009 conference.

Read more »