25th July 2011

Communicating the Museum: you are what you share

It seems that the little romance between Wikipedia and the museums in recent months is now official. So much so that a Wikipedia Lounge was set up at Communicating the Museum, one of the most important conferences dealing with communication in the sector, held a few days in Düsseldorf, to which I had the good fortune to be invited.

The Wikipedia team at Wikimedia Community Lounge. By Buzzeum (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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20th July 2011

“Feasting on Paris. Picasso 1900-1907″. An exhibition readily accessible to all

Here at the Museu Picasso we have at last got round to tackling a very important pending aspect of accessibility: accessibility of communication. We have long been aware of the need to make accessible to everyone not just the physical space of the museum but also our content, and had marked it out as a priority, as we noted in a previous post.

Preparation of the exhibition “Feasting on Paris. Picasso 1900-1907” gave us the perfect opportunity to incorporate communication accessibility measures and implement these in the exhibition process. In this task we have benefitted from the invaluable input of Barcelona’s Institut de Cultura (ICUB), guiding us through the process and providing support at each step. For some time now the ICUB has been providing the city’s museums with the tools they need to improve in this facet of communication in general, and especially in the production of temporary exhibitions. Read more »

10th May 2011

Museums and the Web in 10 Flashes / 1

In the process of sedimenting the contents of the conference a fair number of summaries and reflections, most of them in English, have been appearing in blogs. There is so much to Museums and the Web that each of us can only highlight some of the aspects and links that we find particularly relevant. Allow me to present my selection. At the end you will find links to others. As every year, all of the papers and presentations are accessible online.

1. Alignment of the intervention in networks and on mobiles with the mission and goals of the institution
2. Integrated digital strategy
3. 25 concepts and actions
4. Planning of multiplatforms and multichannels from the outset
5. Social networks and organizational change: cause or effect?
6. Mobile in the centre of user-oriented museums
7. Selected statements
8. ‘Best of the Web’ awards
9. Statistics
10. Networking / socializing

Today we will discuss the top 5 and in another post the rest. Read more »

5th April 2011

Art Museums and Social Networks Fill the MUSAC

The auditorium full, the adjacentbig-screen viewing room full as well, a total of 600 connections to the live streaming broadcast, and a really massive participation on Twitter demonstratedthe high level of interest in the topic and the willingness to learn and share among practising and trainee members ofthe museological professions.

The façade of the MUSAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in León, which hosted the one-day Workshop on Social Networks and Contemporary Art Centres and Museums, 1 April 2011. Photo: Conxa Rodà

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18th 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 »

12th 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 »

15th February 2010

Love at First Sight: how we select the catalogue’s cover

Imagine you’re browsing among the art catalogues in a bookshop, without looking for anything in particular. The first thing that strikes you about all of the books there — from a distance, even before you can read the titles — is the colourful covers. Reproductions of famous paintings, intriguing details, familiar styles, indecipherable typefaces… you stroll over to a table next to the shelves and pick up a catalogue. Could you say just what it was that attracted you to it? What made you go for this one rather than some other? If the cover had been different, would have you have looked inside it anyway? And when you did open it, was the interest that the cover aroused in you confirmed by the contents, or were you disappointed?

We tend to think that in the case of an art catalogue, like any other book, the cover is the bait dangled in front of the reader, the siren song we hope will entrance you. Choosing one design over another is not simply a matter of taste. The decision is made according to what we want to say to you, what part of the content we want to focus on, what we believe will attract your attention. Read more »

16th 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.

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29th July 2009

A very well-spent morning in Provence: a visit to the exhibition and to Picasso’s Château

Yes, it was a wonderful double visit. First, the exhibition Picasso Cézanne at the Musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence, and then on to the Château de Vauvenargues where Picasso lived from 1959 to 1961 and installed his personal collection and his studio.

Picasso Cézanne brings together a superb collection of works from museums around the world. It seems to me that the show opens up a very interesting debate, because I think it is an excellent example of an exhibition intended to attract what is called ‘the general public’ and perhaps less likely to appeal to the experts. Let me make it quite clear here that I am no expert on Picasso’s work. My field of “expertise” is communication and the Internet. But after two and a half years working at the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, we can perhaps assume that my knowledge of Picasso is a little more extensive than that of the average member of the public, and I think this is explains the two sets of impressions I brought away from my visit to the exhibition Picasso Cézanne.

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15th July 2009

‘Wild’ (fauve) is probably the word that best defines the picture the Museum is currently using to publicize its Kees Van Dongen exhibition, but how was the image that is the leitmotif of the campaign chosen?

The choice of image for a communication campaign is a process based on a relationship of complicity involving the Museum’s Director, the Exhibitions Department, the curators, the Publications Department and the Photography Archive, all of whom take part in a process that begins at the moment that the decision is made to put on the show.

The communication campaigns of the Museu Picasso de Barcelona are not off-the-peg but tailor-made haute couture. In saying this I am not being elitist but simply descriptive, because there are a great many factors to be fine-tuned and the best options must be chosen in each case. Communicating exactly the right message is not easy, and the responsibility to show to its best advantage what others have created is the main priority: we are the medium, and we have to bring out the most interesting aspects of each project.

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