Ask a Curator was a worldwide question and answer session with curators from some of the world’s leading museums and galleries, it took place on Twitter on September 1st.

The project followed the ‘Follow a Museum‘ day which I developed earlier this year and which also took place on Twitter, with that event we simply encouraged individuals to look at the cultural venues which tweet and to follow a museum or gallery.

With Ask a Curator I wanted to do something which asked more of both the public and the museums, something that could create dialogue and real engagement. I hoped that this project could give the public unprecedented access to the passionate and enthusiastic individuals who work in museums and galleries and also break down barriers within these institutions, where all to often social media is still the remit of the marketing department.

The project was only promoted through Twitter, and over a few weeks those signed up to participate mushroomed from a handful to over 300. Many institutions told me that this was the first time that their curators had used Twitter and some museums even set up accounts in order to take part in the event.

As well as the many institutions who signed up for the event, I also received enquiries from several individuals, but I took the decision to limit participation to museums and galleries as my aim was to promote these organisations.

As the event approached I struggled to keep up with the requests to take part, and if I was to do a similar event, I would certainly want to have a website which allowed each venue to sign up and upload their own information.

Another element fo the project which I think could have been improved was the press releases. In keeping with the decentralised approach to the event, I asked each museum to see what press they could attract, but I provided no press release template and we may have had better results if I had done this.

The event started very well, with a surprising number of tweets from the launch in New Zealand. As daylight reached Europe the tweets increased and it started to become hard to follow the questions by looking at the hashtag. At around 10.30am the hashtag suddenly started to trend as the top topic in the world.

The range of questions and the speed of the answers was impressive, and the tweets kept on increasing. At midday UK time, the spam started. This seemed to be automated and started to drown out the real #askacurator tweets. Collectively those taking part reported the accounts responsible for spam and after an hour the spam seemed to dwindle.

Throughout the day I was constantly surprised by the press that we were getting. A radio interview in Australia, a television program in the Netherlands and a huge amount of coverage online. Wired Magazine, BBC, Culture24 and Fast Company were personal highlights.

A few hours after the spam had slowed down, it suddenly started again and it was impossible to ignore. I suggested that we move the hashtag to escape the spam and this seemed to solve the problem (this was reported by AOL). Though I appreciate that Twitter is a free service, it was a great frustration that they seem to have so little control over this kind of spam and I think I’d be unlikely to use Twitter again for this kind of event.

The feedback that I have received has been very positive, with many people asking me when the next event will take place. The public also seemed to have a good experience, with many messages of thanks appearing in the twitterstream. I am also very proud that by working together the sector managed to dominate twitter throughout the day.

We’ll now do some research with all involved to gain more feedback and think about what we can do next. Curatorolette anyone?

Jim Richardson is the Managing Director of Sumo, a design agency specialising in the arts and cultural sector.

Ask a Curator is a worldwide question and answer session which is taking place on Twitter on September 1st. Any museum or gallery can sign up to take part.

Details can be found on the Ask a Curator website.

At the Arts Marketing Association conference last month, Shelley Bernstein from Brooklyn Museum gave a presentation about how they are using technology to reach out to the communities who visit their venue.

One of the things which really seemed to grab people’s attention was her experience with FourSquare the social media tool which turns the real world in to a game in which you check-in to places that you go to and earn points for doing so.

Many people attending the conference seemed to join FourSquare following Shelley’s presentation and it made me look at the application again, which had sat unloved on my iPhone for the past six months. I started to actively use FourSquare and before long I was able to declare myself Mayor of a few museums and galleries, this is the prize that you receive if you are the person to check-in to a venue more then anyone else in a set space of time.

While many venues offer the person who becomes Mayor special offers (free coffee, cheap pizza, etc) none of the museums or galleries which check in to offered any incentive or recognition for my achievement (and it takes a lot of work). Recognition is really the name of the game with FourSquare and a note of congratulations would have made me feel more engaged with a venue.

My guess is that not many museums and galleries are aware of FourSquare, it’s popularity or the way that they can use it to engage with visitors. I’d really recommend that museums and galleries look at FourSquare and think about how they could use the application to connect with their communities.

Museum budgets are coming under increasing pressure, and this are likely to get worse before they get better. In the UK the government is talking up the concept of ‘American style philanthropic funding’ replacing public money.

This kind of philanthropy can take decades to develop, and for smaller and regional venues large scale corporate sponsorship is unlikely. This is a huge challenge for those leading cultural institutions and a move towards a more entrepreneurial way of doing things is vital.

The concept of what a museum is has constantly evolved since the first privately owned collections, and perhaps this funding crunch will accelerate this change.

The museum must looks to its assets both in terms of premises, collections, programme and skills to look for new ways to generate revenue.

For me the centre of any change should be engagement between people and the museum, breaking down the barriers between the institution and the community, embracing the idea of the museum as a third space and inviting the people that we serve to suggest new ways of using the museum.

One idea which Jon Pratty suggested in 2009 was based upon the model of the extended school:

The Extended Museum is a physical embodiment of the social media we now know and love. It’s just that it’s set in the museum or gallery we are all somewhat challenged in finding new modes of use and funding for.

In the extended school, people meet and greet after hours. All sort of activities happen in every part of the school, and it draws in many sorts of people, often those who didn’t like school and don’t like ‘education’. Senior citizens do evening classes. Yoga groups sweat and stretch. People bring new streams of income into the space by doing this. Not just private groups, but also local education and social services agencies use the space.

In the Extended Museum, we can work round traditional barriers to ’opening out’ that are obvious – collections and security can still be uppermost in our minds. Within traditional culture modes we could still actively solicit curation ideas and interactions.

Instead of art appreciation classes that serve the traditional, we could be Provoking people to re-curate, to spark off new interpretations of old collections. We could look at our collections and public art spaces and try to imagine what other social purposes they could serve: meditation classes in cast rooms; youth offenders doing community service surrounded by relics of the first world war; people new to the country learning English in the midst of collection objects from around the world.

We talk about museums containing evidence from the past to help us decode the present – but have we actually tried to explore this ‘relevance’ working with in a more consensual, participatory way?

So here we might have a museum that is merged more with local social meanings and needs – one that access funding streams from across the community, that is part of the social, educational and cultural landscape of a city.

This is the kind of radical thinking that the sector needs, and it isn’t hard to see how it could fit with the mission of most institutions.

In challenging times we need to innovative thinking and inspirational leadership, but both seem to be lacking in a sector which is used to having the time and money to move slowly. 

Question for the day, how do you measure the success of your museum website? I am really curious of whether any venues are looking beyond the kind of basic user stats provided by packages like Google Analytics and looking at how people are using their websites in other ways.

I read an interesting piece in The Guardian at the weekend about the rise of Apple, which the article linked with the companies move from being a manufacturer of computers, to focusing on mobile communications. The article questioned if the company will continue to make it’s range of desktop computers, when they now account for such a small part of their income.

This made me think about the future of the desktop computer and the way in which people will view and interact with websites in the future.

The desktop computer isn’t dead, but is the iPad the start of a shift which will see people using a different type of computer at home to those they use in the office. It seems that laptops had already started to be the computer of choice for personal use, after all, who wants to have to go and sit at a desk when they get home from work.

This shift towards having mobile devices as the primary way that the public view the web in their personal time could see a big change in the way that we design museum websites, which at present are focused on a format that best suits desktop computers.

As budget cuts and spending freezes hit cultural institutions around the world, I worry that their websites will be stuck in this desktop world as the rest of the net moves increasingly towards mobile.

This week my company launched a series of mobile friendly websites for York Museums Trust (view here), visitors to their website on mobile devices will be automatically forwarded to this website, which is easier to navigate on a smaller screen.

The future of the web is mobile and museums need to be careful not to be left behind.

YouTube Play is a collaboration between YouTube and the Guggenheim Museum which they hope will ‘unearth and showcase the very best creative video from around the world’.

To have your work considered, simply post it on YouTube, and then submit it at youtube.com/play. A jury of experts will decide which works presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York on October 21, 2010 with simultaneous presentations at the Guggenheim museums in Berlin, Bilbao, and Venice.

The videos will be on view to the public from October 22 through 24 in New York and on the YouTube Play channel.

Dealing with negative feedback
From time-to-time somebody will make a negative comment about your museum on social media websites. If this happens you shouldn’t take it personally.

The latest social media applications for mobile phones make it easy for people to make comments on the move, and these are often flippant, throw-away remarks.

In truth we all make this kind of comment, whether we aren’t happy with having to queue in a shop or whether we don’t like the food in a restaurant, we don’t think twice about these kind of remarks and they often are forgotten as soon as we have made them.

While in the past this kind of comment might have been made to a handful of friends, social media amplifies every complaint, broadcasting them to anyone searching on for a related subject on Google, sometimes for years to come.

While this idea may seem like a good reason not to venture on to social media platforms, it is worth remembering that these comments would appear on social media platforms whether your organisation is active on them or not.

By engaging with users on social media websites you can influence the way that your institution is seen by the communities which exist on these websites. One of the ways that you will do this is by being seen to take negative comments seriously and responding to complaints.

For me, the most positive implication of social media making everyday complaints more visible is that it gives us feedback that we would not have previously had access to, and makes it possible for us to learn from our audiences.

A museum which welcomes constructive criticism and responds by constantly striving to improve is only going to become better, and for an organisation with this mindset, social media can be invaluable.

So, while you don’t need to take negative feedback to heart, you do need to take all comments serious and be seen to act.

How to reply to complaints
How you deal with feedback will depend on your organisation, and how comfortable the management are with social media. Some museums believe that to be truly transparent, they need to answer any complaint made through social media on the platform that the remark has been made, so that other users can see that you are taking feedback seriously, and to invite further debate on the subject.

This level of transparency will not suit every museum, and I believe that it is important not to overstretch your organisation.

The more conservative approach to negative feedback would be to acknowledge the complaint in the public arena of the social media space that it has been made, and to invite the individual who has made the comment to discuss their concern via email, telephone or in person.

To me this is a safer starting point for a museum looking at social media, it makes the venue seem responsive, but lets the organisation deal with the complaint in private, just as the museum would with a complaint made in a venue.

It is worth remembering that it is easier for a museum to start with a more conservative approach and then move towards a more transparent model, rather than the other way around. The most important thing is that the organisation takes onboard feedback and develops a culture of continual improvement to benefit from the knowledge that it’s audiences have chosen to share with it.

Who should deal with complaints will depend on your organisation and the seriousness of what has been said, as most social media spaces are person to person networks, you may choose to address a complaint as an individual working within your organisation, or you may prefer to respond as the museum.

Both routes have there advantages and disadvantages, while it may seem more official to respond as the organisation, this can also jar with the informal nature of these platforms and that in turn, can make the museum seem distant and out of touch.

Personally I feel that it is better to approach a complaint as an individual working for the museum, rather then the museum itself, I feel this makes it easier to build relationships and to build the perception of your organisation being a collection of passionate individuals rather then a faceless institution.

If someone does make a negative comment you may decide that it isn’t appropriate to respond. Much of what takes place in a museum can be interpreted differently by different people and you may choose to ignore a negative response to an exhibition and leave that conversation to be debated by other members of the community.

One thing which you must be careful to avoid is a member of museum staff joining the conversation without identifying their link to the organisation. One example of this backfiring badly was when staff from the Southbank Centre in London added positive reviews of the stage production of The Wizard of Oz to www.whatsonstage.com.

The Guardian newspaper reported in August 2008, that ‘Three posts expressed surprise at the criticism and lavished praise on the show. There was only one snag – the gushing paeans were written by staff at the Southbank Centre; just 75 minutes later, they were caught red-handed. A beady-eyed moderator noticed that the three rave reviews had all come from computers that shared the same IP address, the code that identifies an internet connection.’

The Southbank Centre later admitted that the three reviews had been written by their staff.

When to ignore comments
While most people will be pleased or even bemused to find that their complaint has been recognized by your museum, occasionally you might encounter someone who wishes to make a lot of noise for no real reason. The internet slang for this kind of activity is a ‘Troll’.

A Troll is less likely to make a complaint about your organisation, and more likely to try and be disruptive to your online communities, they may post off topic messages or inflammatory comments to try and deliberately provoke response.

Your starting point in dealing with a Troll, is to decide if they have a genuine point to make, or whether they are just trying to cause trouble. It is important to give them the chance to make a legitimate complaint and I would suggest that you invite them to do this via email, so that it can be dealt with officially. This is important to protect yourself from any claim that you have not given the individual a route to have their complaint heard.

If you do believe that the individual is being disruptive rather than trying to make a constructive criticism or comment then you have various ways in which you can deal with the problem depending on the social media platform.

If the trolling is taking place within a social network, then it is possible to ban a user from posting to your group, while moderation of blogs will allow you to delete any inappropriate comments before they are public.

Sometimes having a guide to acceptable behavior for community members can solve the problem, make it clear that your museum has a wide audience including children and that you can therefore not allow offensive language or vulgar comments to take place on your network.

Having these kind of guidelines also gives the community using these social networks a framework for policing itself, and you will often find that those breaking the rules will be told that they are out of line by other group members.

What to avoid
Ironically, one of the things which can cause the most negative response, is the way in which a museum is seen to deal with a complaint in the first place.

In 2009 New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz made a comment on Facebook about what he believed to be a very low representation of women artists on the 4th and 5th floors of MoMA. Kim Mitchell of MoMA sent Jerry Saltz a reply, which he posted on Facebook at her request.

“Hi all, I am (Kim Mitchell) Chief Communications Officer here at MoMA. We have been following your lively discussion with great interest, as this has also been a topic of ongoing dialogue at MoMA. We welcome the participation and ideas of others in this important conversation. And yes, as Jerry knows, we do consider all the departmental galleries to represent the collection. When those spaces are factored in, there are more than 250 works by female artists on view now. Some new initiatives already under way will delve into this topic next year with the Modern Women’s Project, which will involve installations in all the collection galleries, a major publication, and a number of public programs. MoMA has a great willingness to think deeply about these issues and address them over time and to the extent that we can through our collection and the curatorial process. We hope you’ll follow these events as they develop and keep the conversation going.”

MoMA are very active across the social media space, and it isn’t surprising to see them answering criticism and trying to take part in the conversation, but rather than this comment being seen in a positive way, it drew a lot of criticism not only from those participating in the Facebook conversation, but also on Twitter and in blog posts where people commented that the reply seemed impersonal, PR-like and that the institution was not interested in being part of the conversation. Others have defended the tone of Kim’s email saying that dealing with a ’serious and contentious complaint in a less formal way would have been incredibly bold’.

The response that MoMA have recieved to Kim Mitchell’s email could be enough to put any museum off the idea of proactively responding to criticism in the social media space, if an organisation perceived to be ahead of the curb can fall fowl of the conversation, then is it safe for any institution to respond to criticism on the web.

I personally feel that responding to comments about your museum, whether they are positive or not is essential. This will show that you’re listening, that you want people’s opinions and that this will build trust and social capital in your brand with your audiences.

The majority of feedback that you find written about your organisation on social media platforms is likely to be very positive, but positive action can come out of even the most negative comment, giving a museum the knowledge it needs to keep getting better.

One of the things about social media which worries people is the lack of control, and it is true that within websites like Twitter and Facebook people can be tempted to raise problems or write about disappointing experiences, especially when new mobile phones like the iPhone make it easy to do this on the move.

However it is worth remembering that negative comments and complaints are not new. Social Media just makes these more visible and this has positive and negative connotations.

While in the past a bad experience would be shared with a handful of people, today Social Media magnifies this, reaching countless people.

The positive result of this movement towards sharing our experiences on social media is that we are more aware of how we need to improve as an organisation, allowing us to fix problems which we were never aware of in the past.

This sharing of experiences also benefits us in the many positive reviews, blog posts and comments found written about our organisation in these social spaces.

When it comes to complaints, the experience of organisations similar to our own shows that these are rare and in the vast majority of cases simply acknowledging the problem and reassuring someone that they have been listened to is enough to keep most people happy.

By being responsive when someone has had a negative experience, we can hopefully leave them feeling positive about our organisation. Remember that on most social media platforms your response will also be seen by other users and this generates a perception of us as an organisation which cares about it’s audience.

This knowledge of what is being said about us, and our ability to respond is not control led in the sense that you can control traditional marketing communications, but it does give us an influence with the audiences in the social media space.

If we didn’t participate on these websites, these comments good and bad would still take place, but we would have no voice.

Dealing with negative feedback
From time to time somebody will make a negative comment about our venues on social media websites, in all cases this should needs to be taken seriously and the person should be asked to get in touch via email to discuss their problem further.

In all cases we want to be seen to respond, but then take this conversation on to email or telephone so that we can deal with any complaint in a professional manner.

Occasionally we might encounter someone who wishes to make a lot of noise about their complaint in the publicly visible social media space. On these occasions you need to be careful not to be drawn into conversations online and having given them the opportunity to voice their concerns through email or telephone, they should be left to get bored of complaining.

If someone is being unreasonable, you will normally find that the other members of the community will tell them.

Jesse spoke about how TATE tries to communicate with it’s audiences on Facebook in a friendly and conversational style, providing a place on the social network where the public can find out about what is happening at their venues. Many of these people might not go to the galleries actual website, but are very comfortable browsing information on Facebook, which they see as their own online space.

One of the initiatives which I really liked was the use of a money off voucher which Facebook fans could print off and take to TATE Modern for a discounted ticket for the Chris Ofili exhibition. This has been presented by roughly 4000 people to date, and shows a real connection between those who interact with the museum online and those visiting an exhibition (not to mention £20,000 of ticket revenue).

TATE have a very active Facebook fan page, with most things that they post attracting large numbers (even hundreds) of comments. This kind of engagement just isn’t possible on the organisations own website.

It was great to hear about the work that goes on behind the scenes to keep the TATE Facebook fan page looking fresh, and I’d recommend that you go and check this out for inspiration if you are thinking about using Facebook for your own organisation.