The “first worldwide cultural event on Twitter,” #MuseumWeek is a weeklong event that actually takes place on Twitter, Vine, and Periscope (although it doesn’t really matter, since they’ll all be linked to Facebook anyway). It’s a social media celebration of all things artistic and institutional, aiming to get museums around the world in touch with their visitors, and with each other, through 140-word sentences, photos, videos, and livestreams.
Each day of #MuseumWeek has a different theme, and, of course, a different hashtag. Monday saw accounts tweeting #secretsMW, accompanied by media like scandalous backstage videos of assistants unboxing Roman lamps and cleaning display pedestals, but also some little-known facts about artworks. Other hashtags include #architectureMW, a chance for museums to compete over whose Starchitect did the best job, #futureMW, #zoomMW, and #loveMW.
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The beauty of #MuseumWeek is its intention to connect museum workers and museum lovers with each other through the ubiquitous medium of tweets, changing the image of the stuffy museum towards something more like the way we naturally use social media. This baffling Vine from Twitter user @erik_thomas kind of sums up the inclusivity of the event, which has yet to attract any real trolls.
If you’re interested in social media stats, you can browse a page full of fancy widgets and interactive data maps on MuseumWeek’s website. Or, explore the #MuseumWeek hashtag in the embedded search below. New tweets are constantly coming through, so you can choose: spend three hours perusing the brick-and-mortar halls of one actual museum, or sit in front of your computer and be inundated with live tours, interesting factoids, and pictures of paintings from over 3,200 participating museums from 69 countries around the world.
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Related:
A Brief Guide to Twitter’s #MuseumWeek
