View of Cadaqués

On the top floor of the museum, and on show here for the first time, are a large number of historic photographs of the town as it was when Picasso discovered it, at a key moment in his Cubist period. The two lower floors host a generous selection of oils and drawings by artists with close links to Cadaqués, such as Ramon Pichot, Meifrèn, Durancamps, Burmann, Roig i Soler, Matilla and the very early Dalí, alternating with photographic reproductions of the pictures Picasso made in Cadaqués, which bear witness to his time there.

The Museu de Cadaqués

The Museu de Cadaqués is housed in a splendid building in the historic town centre, the façades of which have recently been restored. The exhibition will be open until 11 January 2011, and is yet another reason to visit this beautiful location which has inspired so many artists from this country and abroad.

The rooms of the museum

The Museu Picasso has provided the exhibition project with scientific and logistical support under the collaboration agreement signed with the town of Cadaqués in 2009, as part of our ongoing commitment to furthering links with all of the places in Catalonia associated with Picasso and his work.

Cadaqués. Photos: Lluís Bagunyà

Lluís Bagunyà
Contracting and Institutional Affairs

During the session at the Museu Picasso

All of these energies resulted in a session that marks an important step towards opening up new lines of collaboration. Until quite recently, the world of Wikipedia and the world of museums ran along parallel paths. Our different starting points and a manifest lack of communication led us to forget that we have a common bond stronger than all these differences: serving our users. Wikipedia’s goal is to make contents and knowledge available as many people as possible, which is exactly the same objective as that of the museums! If we focus on that, on the user’s interest, then it is clear that active collaboration is the best formula for offering such contents with the highest quality and the greatest accessibility possible.

Wikipedia has come a long way in a very few years, with a significant improvement in the quality of its contents and with very precise editorial criteria. There’s still a lot to be done and a lot to improve? Of course! From entries that have still to be written and errors to the uneven depth and quality of the contents in certain languages, and so on. This is precisely the reason for collaborating with, and not disparaging, a free encyclopedia that already receives more hits than Google, that comes up first on many search engines, and exists in 250 languages (Catalan is the third oldest, after English and German, and 14th in the number of articles!).

Difficulties along the way?! Of course there are obstacles to be overcome: the academicism of some versus the ‘populism’ of others, freely usable and reusable material versus copyright-protected text and images, paid work versus volunteerism, the vulnerability that comes from anyone being able to edit and modify entries without even having to register, the removal of the occasionally self-promotional content submitted by bodies and institutions without explanation because it was in breach of editorial criteria, etc.

Now, if we are all willing to make each a serious, sustained and combined effort, there are a lot of cooperative actions within the capabilities of any museum: let me mention just some of those outlined by Viquipèdia Catalunya (thanks, Alex Hinojo and Joan Gomà) and one or two others added by me:

· To provide a museum contact for any Wikipedist who has doubts about content which relates to the institution or its collection.

· To provide a list of the most significant pieces in the museum for inclusion in the relevant article.

· To give a little advance warning to the local Wikipedist contact of any words or individuals on Wikipedia with whom we are thinking of making a link, giving them time to revise or expand the content.

· To set concrete goals for improvement and temporary thematic projects.

· To monitor Wikipedia contents from the museum and point out areas where these could be improved.

· To establish prizes (as the British Museum has done) for better quality articles on pieces in the museum

· To contribute to the discussion pages on each article before the introduction of changes, identifying ourselves and making our proposal rather than simply removing content or including a lot of links to our website: doing this without due notification exposes the entry to immediate removal.

· To use Wikipedia as a camp for working on the museum’s educational activities, encouraging students to write entries which will then be subject to review.

In general, the articles dedicated to our museums are very limited. It is to the benefit of all of us — museums, encyclopaedists and users — to help rectify that! The interest of the museums that attended was so great that we have decided to organize a second meeting in the autumn, open to all of the museums of Barcelona and Catalonia and to the Catalan Wikipedia community, where we can all discuss all of these questions in depth. The get-together will be held in the Museu Picasso and will have a mixed museums/Wikipedists programme committee. You are all invited: more details after the summer… Meanwhile, would you like to propose a topic for discussion? Do you have any experience of editing Wikipedia you’d like to share? Have you monitored the entry relating to your institution?

Conxa Rodà
Project Management

That last fact alone is enough to make it clear that this was no ordinary concert: having assembled all of the works for piano, some of which were very difficult to get hold of, the recital lasted almost six hours!

The concert programme | Erik Satie Playing the Harmonium. Santiago Rusiñol, Paris, 1891 - Pencil on paper - 29.1 × 19.7 cm

At the same time, in order to reflect Satie’s unique musical vision, we wanted to revive his concept of musique d’ameublement (‘background’ music whose function is to ‘furnish’ a space, not to be listened to for itself), so the concert was held not in an auditorium but in the middle of the exhibition, as an accompaniment to the visit. In addition to the piano in the gallery there was a second piano on the ground floor, and throughout the six hours of the concert this played a selection of pieces which provided a real musical ameublement of the courtyards and the column room. The Museum was filled with Satiean sounds, and for that special evening the experience of strolling through its rooms was quite different, with the space seeming to take on new life.

Visitors listening to the music | Detail of the pianist

Walking around the exhibition accompanied by Satie’s hypnotic, all-enveloping melodies I simply had to pay my own tribute to the composer in front of the works by Rusiñol in which he is portrayed: a very personal moment of celebration of the work of both artists, and also of gratitude for the pleasure they have given to so many people over the years.

Some of the performers of Satie’s piano pieces

Of course, a very special acknowledgement is due to the invaluable contribution from our friends at the Conservatori del Liceu, in particular to Benet Casablancas, interlocutor, inspirer and instigator of daring and musically impeccable proposals; to Tensy Krismant, who not only led the huge task of tracking down compositions and scores but also coordinated all of the musical work with the select group of performers and himself gave superb performances of several pieces; and, of course, to the pianists Alba Ventura, Albert Attenelle, Raimon Garriga, Albert Gallart, Anna Villaescusa, Lucie Croce, Verónica Martínez and Benjamí Santacana, whose dedication and sensibility filled the Museum so wonderfully with the music of this groundbreaking composer. To all of them, and to everyone at the Conservatori who helped make this recital such a success, a very big THANK YOU! and our warmest congratulations on a truly unforgettable evening of music.

Tensy Krismant

Anna Guarro
Public Programmes

As the present director and on behalf of the Museum’s former directors I want to say a big thanks for all the very, very good work, the dedication and the human warmth that Margarita has put into the Museum.As a symbol of our deep regard it is my pleasure to present her with membership card number one of the Museu Picasso Honor Circle. She has witnessed and been an active part of almost the whole of the centre’s life. Thank you, Margarita, and please come back whenever you like to this, your other home.

Pepe Serra
Director

Margarita’s words are reproduced below, together with some photographs of the occasion.

“The great day has arrived and the truth is that I feel very happy and excited! Of course this is a decisive moment in my life, but from now on I’m going to do a lot of things that please and interest me.

I’ve worked at the Museu Picasso for 40 years and although time seems to have flown past, when I go over these years in my mind I realize that a great deal has happened and that it has indeed been a long and intense eventful period.

All of the team gathered in the Las Meninas room, a few minutes before the start | Pepe and Margarita commenting on the dedications

I had the good fortune to experience at first hand the restoration of democracy, the first big demonstrations, the return of President Tarradellas, the first elections, the Barcelona Olympic Games and a host of other things… above all the development of the Museu Picasso, which under Maite Ocaña evolved step by step over more than 20 years to become a world-class museum.

Time for applause | Reyes in action

When I started, in March 1970, Picasso had just made his great donation to the city of Barcelona, thus effectively binding my destiny to the Museu Picasso. There I met Helena Martorell and together we set out to get to know Picasso, initially in the Modern Art Museum in the Ciutadella park. We went to his sister Lola’s house on Passeig de Gràcia to collect the donated Picassos and move them to the Museu d’Art de Catalunya, where in ‘La Nassa’ we worked away surrounded by Picassos, restoring, framing, cataloguing, photographing and preparing them for their transfer to the extended Museu Picasso. I have many wonderful memories of that time: of Joan Ainaud de Lasarte, María Julia, Cecília Vidal, Montserrat Rogent, María Luisa Sainz de la Maza, Pradell, Charrié and Porta, to name only a few.

During all these years we worked hard — very hard… but we also had a great time! We have all played our part in making the Museu Picasso what it is, and although there were very few of us we were full of enthusiasm and formed a great team in which all of us had the same objective and the same hopes.

Opening the gifts with Malén and Marta. Reporter, Núria | Leafing through the photo album

Little by little our numbers grew. Antonio came, then Annabelle, Malén, Núria, Conchi, Lluís, Ángel, Anna … Sonia. A little later, Margarida, Manel, Isa, Reyes, Montse, the Martas…

I see my museum colleagues: Cristina, Tote, MariEli, Mercè and Rosa Maria. Pilar Vélez, who started out in the Museu Picasso. And my colleagues from the world of photography, whom I was always asking for favours, always in a rush, and who never let me down: Rosa, Jordi, Ramon, Martí and the Gasull boys. My warmest thanks to you all.

With Maite Ocaña | It wouldn’t be a party without Conchi’s empanada!

The years went by, and one day Maite decided to ‘go to the mountain’, and along came the new management with new projects and new dreams. The offices have become too small with all the young people in them now, so I think that the change-over has arrived at the right time for me. As Pepe put it, affectionately, I belong to the historical memory of the Museum, and now your time has come. Allow me to thank you most sincerely for your warm reception and your friendship… and never forget how privileged you are in being able to work in the Museu Picasso.

Thank you all for being with me on this day that is so important to me. A big kiss to each of you, with all my heart!”

Margarita Ferrer

I bought the catalogue and immediately scanned the image to include it in my Picasso archive, among those works that deserve a special follow-up. For days I was haunted by that image, which from the very first moment had seemed familiar. As soon as I saw it I was convinced that there was another part, in that everything about it gave the impression it was incomplete. Picasso would never have signed a piece of work such as this — and it was clearly signed in his hand.

Vertical strip. Photo: Gasull Fotografia

The strip of paper featured an iconographic reading evocative of Steinlen and Munch, and technical characteristics that dated it almost certainly to 1900 or 1901: in other words, to Picasso’s first two visits to Paris, and most likely to the first, when he used pastels after the manner of Toulouse-Lautrec and above all Degas. I looked over all of the pastels from that period and I soon found the key to the puzzle, on a visit to the Museu Picasso, where I spent some time looking at the superb pastels from the Paris years.

As I contemplated one of the best, The Embrace, I realized that in both its chromatic range and its structure, it matched the strip. At that moment I didn’t have the two images together so as to compare them, but I was already almost totally convinced. I hurriedly concluded my visit, eager as I was to try the comparison, and sure enough, it was a perfect match: the strip was indisputably the left side of The Embrace, from which it had been separated for so many years. At that time, however, I didn’t know who owned the pastel, so I merely added it to my file as a small discovery, without pursuing the matter any further.

The Embrace. MPB 4263. Photo: Gasull Fotografia

In the spring of 2010, in connection with the preparation of the exhibition “Picasso vs. Rusiñol”, I had an informal conversation with Ignasi Domènech, the curator of Cau Ferrat in Sitges, who told me of the existence of a picasso in a private collection in which he thought I might be interested. I hear a lot of this kind of thing, but in a very high percentage of cases the attribution of the work is more than doubtful. When I asked him about the piece the first thing he said put me on the alert. ‘It’s a vertical strip,’ he said. Usually, the first information people give about a work of art is the subject (‘it’s a landscape’) or the medium (‘it’s an oil’), but rarely the format. But this time the format was the first piece of information precisely because it was the most specific, the one that most clearly differentiated it from others. I immediately guessed that it might be the work I had seen in 2004 and at once I asked for a chance to see the work.

And so it was: about a month later we went to visit the owner, who showed us the work, and the hypothesis was confirmed definitively. We asked for a loan of the piece for the exhibition, the owner very kindly agreed, and now the two sides are framed together, just a few millimeters apart, very nearly as the work was originally conceived.

This new presentation invites a very different reading; compositionally there is a lateral shift of the central scene, in that the couple who are the subject have lost their centrality. The road adds depth and gives movement and dynamism to a space hitherto dominated by the immobility of the two figures, who are fused in almost sculptural fashion.

Both parts are signed, but in my view signature on the narrow strip is chronologically the first. The work was almost certainly mutilated by the artist himself, or with his consent, and then signed again, this time with a dedication to ‘Doctor Bilaró’ (sic). Whatever the circumstances, it seems clear that it was mutilated very shortly after completion because the signatures are almost contemporary: the first (P. R. Picasso) is from the autumn of 1900 and the second (P. Ruiz Picasso) is from a little later in the same year or at latest 1901, the year the artist definitively began signing himself Picasso.

Exhibition “Picasso vs. Rusiñol. Photo: Xavier Torres-Bacchetta

Sadly, The Embrace will remain in its original state or only a few months more. On 5 September 2010, when the exhibition “Picasso vs. Rusiñol” closes, the strip will return to the private collection from whence it came. But it will never be the same again: we will never look at The Embrace as we did before, when we had it as a complete work. Now it has a whole story behind it, a story which, combined with its technical quality, will make it all the more exciting in our eyes.

Eduard Vallès
Museum conservator and curator of the exhibition “Picasso vs. Rusiñol”

The Escola Deià, which specializes in interior design and ephemeral architecture, centred the project on the exhibition concept, with a particular focus on the series Las Meninas, one of the most important works in the Museum’s collection.

The pedagogical approach to the exhibition theme was based on providing the students with tools for analyzing and understanding the four main axes of the programme of work:

• The 58 paintings by Picasso which make up the series
• The sequence of mediaeval buildings in which the Museum is housed
• The Museu Picasso as one of the city’s cultural institutions
• The role of the public as active protagonists and receivers of cultural contents

Students works

The results of all of this work done during the past academic year are now been brought together in the publication LAS MENINAS # SÈRIE OBERTA, the true protagonists of which are the students, who outline the projects that have emerged from this fruitful experience, which set out to stimulate reflection on possible new lines of development for the exhibition phenomenon in a museum and an art and design school of the 21st century.

During the presentation of the publication

Cover LAS MENINAS # SÈRIE OBERTA

The presentation of the publication in the courtyard of the Palau Finestres, with the presence of students, teachers and directors of the Escola Deià, the staff of the Education Service and the management team of the Museu Picasso, provided an emotive and festive conclusion to this exceptional experience.

Museum’s Newsroom

The Clark Institute is a highly prestigious museum and centre for research in the history of art in Williamstown (Massachusetts), in the heart of New England. Just a couple of hours north of New York City, the town hosts a wealth of cultural activities during the summer, and the opening, part of the annual Summer Gala, brought together over 300 people in the Clark’s lovely gardens.

Arriving at the Clark: the banner and the gardens | During the opening: Richard Kendall, Lluís Bagunyà and Elisabeth Cowling

The opening was originally planned to take place in the garden, but had to be moved into a marquee and the lobby on account of rain. The exhibition was presented by the Clark’s Director, Michael Comfort, and the show’s two scientific curators, Elizabeth Cowling and Richard Kendall. I had the pleasure of attending on behalf of the Museu Picasso.

Graphic material from the exhibition

The same evening also saw the opening in another part of the Clark complex of an exhibition of sculptures by Juan Muñoz, curated by Carmen Giménez. Among those in attendance was the sculptor’s widow, the artist Cristina Iglesias.

Lluís Bagunyà
Recruitment and Institutional Relations

Rusiñol was also a hyperactive participant in the gatherings at the tavern Els Quatre Gats, which regularly put on puppet shows. His El titella pròdig (The Prodigal Puppet), which he billed as ‘a comedy for marionettes in one act and four scenes’, was premiered with live actors on 29 January 1911 at the Teatre Romea, and was performed for the first time with puppets at the Sala Reig in Barcelona in the early nineteen twenties.

On the occasion of the exhibition “Picasso vs. Rusiñol“, the Museu Picasso has commissioned a revival of The Prodigal Puppet. The highly acclaimed puppeteer Sebastià Vergés will present a ‘cast’ of traditional Catalan marionettes in period costume, with traditional sets and the music that Rusiñol composed especially for the piece. The lively and ironic dialogue in the Barcelona dialect of Rusiñol’s day is all the more charming for its period flavour.

There will be an unabridged version for adults this coming Sunday, 20 June will.

Jordi Jané

The exhibition narrative

The idea of this exhibition is to establish a discourse on the relationship between Picasso and the leading exponent of Catalan art when Picasso was living in Barcelona, Santiago Rusiñol. Although Picasso’s links to Catalan art are well known, very little has been written specifically about the relations between the two men, a circumstance which made a considerable amount of original research necessary. The innovative aspect of the discourse, which is in line with the Museum’s new commitment to ‘Rethinking Picasso’, is to make the case that Picasso was interested in Rusiñol not solely or primarily as a craftsman but for his image, for what he represented more than anyone else at that time, which was the artist par excellence. Our aim was to show how Picasso took up Rusiñol as a model for a time and then proceeded to analyse him, copy him, the portrait and finally forget him. This explains why Picasso made the 21 portraits that we know of, some of which contain a recognition of Rusiñol as a pioneer in several areas, as detailed in the exhibition.

Managing the works on loan

One of the toughest tasks in putting on any exhibition is tracking down and, above all, managing the works on loan. This tends to be a mixture of joys and disappointments: works you feel to be important for the discourse are not available, and others you had given up hoping for finally come through. This was the case with Couple in a Garden, a key piece because it shows Picasso doing a version of one of Rusiñol garden scenes, which he saw in Madrid in his youth. We eventually found this picture in an auction catalogue, and the auction house helpfully put us in contact with the owner, who agreed to loan us the work.

Couple in a Garden. Pablo Picasso. Madrid, 1901. Charcoal and wash on paper. Private collection.

As I will explain in a moment, it was particularly important for this exhibition to get hold of as many of Picasso’s portraits of Rusiñol as possible. This meant that all of us who worked on the show — basically with the coordinator of the exhibition, Isabel Cendoya, and the Museum’s director, Pepe Serra — had to devote a lot of time and effort to obtaining the pieces.

Exhibition criteria and itinerary

After four years of research, the very considerable body of findings posed complex problems for the physical implementation of what is essentially an intellectual discourse in a space that has its peculiarities and limitations. It was a question of showing not only the influences but also the points of confluence between the two artists, establishing explicit iconographic and thematic comparisons and also tracing conceptual links, by definition more difficult to show in an exhibition. All of these factors conditioned the adoption of exhibition criteria.

The first challenges had to do with the format of the works. Some of the comparisons which demonstrate Picasso’s interest in Rusiñol (versions of some of his pictures, portraits of him, etc…) meant we had to put large-format oils (Rusiñol) next to small-format drawings and in some cases sketches (Picasso) in the same space. The solution was to place the small works on lecterns next to the large-format works and give them a softer lighting.

Another challenge was the exhibition itinerary, the design of which was entrusted to Lluís Pera. The sequence could not be strictly chronological because of the twenty year difference in age between the two men. For this reason we opted for a chronological itinerary in the first and last rooms, and a thematic layout in the rest of the itinerary.

In almost every area there is a portrait of Rusiñol by Picasso, linked to some part of the exhibition discourse. The exhibition begins with the adolescent Picasso who arrives in Barcelona as a student of Fine Art (1895) and ends with a Picasso on the verge of leaving Barcelona for Paris (1903-04): in other words, the exhibition itinerary is articulated around Picasso, not Rusiñol. Having obtained the greatest possible number of portraits, we had to decide how to position them: one option was to put them all in the same room and order them chronologically. This idea was rejected because we felt that certain portraits were of key significance in certain areas because there was a direct reference. But this posed another problem: it made it impossible to show one of the main theses of the exhibition: the complete sequence of the 21 portraits which clearly reveals the process of Picasso’s curiosity-admiration-indifference toward Rusiñol. In the end we decided to have an open display case in the central corridor containing 21 back-lit methacrylate sheets with silk-screened reproductions of each of the portraits.

Guided tour by the curator of the exhibition Eduard Vallès.

This final montage based on reproductions, deliberately situated away from the original works, presents an autonomous account, a narrative that for all its modesty embodies the essence of the exhibition. In short, it puts forward a very explicit iconological reading which parallels Picasso’s time in Barcelona and his interest/lack of interest in Rusiñol. This process, focused on this one artist — and, by extension, on Catalan art — is in fact a paradigm of the processes by which Picasso absorbed and phagocytized his artistic — and personal — milieu. Ultimately, the aim of this exhibition is to explain Picasso, and this discourse is directed at the very heart of his artistic modus operandi: that of a man always on the qui vive and always ready to take a bite of whatever comes his way. With a bit of luck we’ve managed to show that.

Eduard Vallès
Museum conservator and curator of the exhibition

If you have visited the exhibition or seen images of it, what do you think of the design and montage? Are there any changes you would make?

Related links:

Exhibition
Catalogue

Open doors to the online community.

How did it all start?

When we first started — rather shyly — we were one of only a few museums in this country with a 2.0 presence, and for those few, initially there were no references or links on the museums ‘official’ websites to the social platforms. But in the digital world everything moves incredibly fast, and in just 12 months the outlook has changed almost beyond recognition. With Twitter, for instance, there has been a real take-off in museums in the last six months, and it no longer seems strange to see the Prado, the Louvre or the British Museum on Twitter, to name three great museums with a long career.

Getting the Picasso 2.0 project up and running was relatively simple. Having identified the potential and drawn up the overall project, the support of the Museum’s director was not only instantaneous but nothing short of enthusiastic. The presentation to the museum team was another milestone which we reached far more quickly than might have been expected, considering the initial difficulties many other museums had to overcome. Here at the Picasso, although the 2.0 realm was still uncharted territory for most of staff, seeing the good example set by some of the world’s leading museums in pioneering the social networks was a decisive factor, opening up perspectives and future implications for the project. The writing of the blog is now shared by 17 staff members here, and we have also had a number of guest bloggers.

View more presentations from Museu Picasso.

The first fruits

Our warmest thanks go to the Museum’s online community. Our work and our progress on the networks owe a great deal to the acceptance and support you have given us from the start. The figures for the beginning of June 2010 are:

Blog: an average of 2,000 readers per post
Facebook: 7,280 fans
Flickr: 350 photos
Slideshare: 5,181 views
Twitter: 1,615 followers
YouTube: 3,250 views

But of course it is not only the figures that matter: the most important thing is the quality of the relationship. In a previous post we mentioned the blog comments, so let me now cite some of those on Twitter:

@Puig_VA: @museupicasso Congratulations on yesterday’s initiative and the Museums & Web Award. You really deserve it! And the micro-stories, great quality!

@evaa: Listening to the micro-stories in the @museupicasso competition with @lletra with @losilux. Good level.

@daviddeleu: social media for museums? @museupicasso great strategy! http://www.museumsetc.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/MuseuPicasso.pdf

@jsdemontfort: very intelligent gesture from @museupicasso to give its fans and followers an exclusive invitation to the museum on Monday, the day it’s officially closed.

@MACBA_Webmaster: @museupicasso well-deserved prize! Congratulations.

@museumsetc: @museupicasso we’ve just posted your whole case study chapter to celebrate your #mw2010 win! http://pea.to/eK

@MuseumMarketing @cshockstories: a good museum blog? -> This is a good one! http://trunc.it/8jw84 from @museupicasso

In the local press there have been articles about the Museum’s 2.0 presence and also on digital media and blogs. Within the professional community, during April and May there were three fairly high-impact interventions:

· The downloadable chapter on the Picasso’s Twitter, from the book Twitter for Museums

· The article published in the magazine of the Andalusian Heritage Directorate, Mus-A, ‘From 1.0 to 2.0: the museums’ journey to social communication’

· The Best of the Web prize awarded by Museums & the Web to the Museu Picasso in the social media category at the Denver, Colorado, conference.

Which have been the most successful projects?

We have had successes and one or two failed projects. Of note among the former, the Become a Fauvist photo competition, which as well as attracting a lot of submissions, many of them very good, led to our being invited to explain it in the Louvre! Another was the collective writing on Facebook based on works in the collection.

Failures? Of course we’ve had a few, because when you’re learning and experimenting that’s part of the process. I’ll mention two here: our attempt to mobilize people on Facebook to create a two-minute video with a soundtrack inspired by Picasso’s work. It seemed easy with a webcam, but either it wasn’t or the proposal wasn’t appealing enough and just didn’t catch on. The other was the attempt to do video interviews near the Museum to ask people what they knew and thought about the Museum and 2.0. That didn’t work because most of the people who were approached didn’t want to be video-interviewed.

The lesson we learned was that even in the more informal 2.0 context, initiatives have to be planned and prepared well if they are going to attract and engage a participatory audience.

What are we still missing?

Well, I think that we need to achieve greater interaction with our users, higher levels of participation in our proposals, especially on Facebook and here on the blog. We need to be more imaginative in our channels of participation. We are still doing most of the emitting, keen though we are to open up to dialogue, to conversation: our communication is still very linear, or at best a dialogue between museum and user, when it should be a conversation between users and museum or among users themselves. Next step: going mobile, like users websurfing and sharing already is.

Internally, it would be good to see a greater degree of involvement by the whole team: this is difficult not only because we are a small team with a lot of projects and a heavy workload, but also because it takes time to acquire the habits of social sharing and of co-creation with users and visitors. We’re moving in the right direction, however: the social wave is expansive and 2.0 attitudes and skills are becoming more prevalent every day!

Conxa Rodà
Project Manager

How would you rate the presence of the Museum on the social web? What would you like the Museum to offer? Do you have any ideas or suggestions?