On Wednesday, art lovers around the world turned their smartphone cameras on themselves to celebrate #MuseumSelfie day, an annual happening started last year by a group of clever museum professionals. And though it’s not as if they needed an excuse to hold up their phones and pose, Bostonians did their part to contribute — even Museum of Fine Arts director Malcolm Rogers chimed in.
But the presence of tech within such hallowed halls belies a broader question that museums across the country are grappling with. For these keepers of history, what’s the best way to integrate cutting-edge technology with their exhibits?
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“People don’t necessarily come to the museum to come for the content,” said Mark Check, vice president of information and interactive technology at the Museum of Science in Boston. “Our studies are showing us that people are coming for a social experience.”
Cue selfie.
Check describes the Museum of Science as a “very hands-on, very engaged, very kinetic type of institution,” with a vibe that is somewhat at odds with advanced smartphone addiction.
So the museum is leaning in, using the technology already in their visitors’ hands to enhance their experiences. A collaboration is underway with ByteLight, a Boston company, to design location-aware exhibits that activate a phone or tablet when a visitor approaches.
Check envisions visitors using their devices as a digital treasure map to track down exhibits that match the themes they are most interested in. The Boston startup Spotzer raised a round of funding early this year to sell exactly that kind of experience, powered by bluetooth technology to connect smartphones with exhibits.
Spotzer has run tests at the Boston Athenaeum, MIT’s List Visual Arts Center, and New York’s Neue Galerie.
At the Boston Children’s Museum, project director Tim Porter has been lobbying for a smartphone app since 2008, barely a year after the first iPhone was launched. This year, the museum will deploy an app visitors can use to experience a new exhibit on Asian cultures.
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“There’s this tension between wanting to connect with visitors and wanting to give them experiences to connect outside of the digital realm, [and] provide connections to the real world,” Porter said.
Museums have social media teams for expert outreach, promoting new exhibits and openings on Twitter and Facebook. But recently, the MFA decided to use Instagram, inviting a group of high-profile Instagrammers to shoot smartphone pictures two hours before its 10 a.m. opening.
(It borrowed from photographer Dave Krugman’s project #EmptyMet, in which Instagrammers posted photos of one another in an empty New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.)
Such efforts are all in keeping with MFA director Rogers’s vision for the museum. In a lecture last year celebrating his 20 years with the institution, he told the audience that Tim Burners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, was among his many influences.
The reason? Lee has provided us with limitless possibilities to share art with the world.
All of which means that selfies are welcome at the MFA. The museum encourages them, in fact, a spokesman said.
After all, it means people will spend a bit more time with a piece of art.