To say that social media is a growing field would be quite the understatement. Whether you’re an avid tweeter blowing up my Twitter feed (cough cough, John Mayer!) or a soccer mom that uploads the latest school pictures onto Flickr, almost everyone I know actively participates in at least one social networking site – even my grandma is on Facebook.

But it’s not only individuals using these sites. Here at the IMA, as most of you know, we embrace social media as a useful tool in reaching our audiences and fulfilling our mission. And we’re not the only ones – LACMA, SFMoMa, and Walker Art Center are just a couple of our peers actively engaging online audiences. Even the Art Institution of Chicago recently announced here, that they’ll soon be launching a Twitter account.

But as museums and museum employees continue to grow their online activity – both personal and institutional – we’re faced with the challenge of exploring policies and guidelines online activity. Should there be employee policies in place for personal use of such sites? Should museums implement a clearly detailed policy for institutional use of such sites? And if so, what would either one of these policies look like and what purposes would they serve? Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Art, Marketing, Musings, New Media, Technology

Who is April?

At this stage in my Internet life, I’m wise to April Fools’ Day on the web and haven’t truly been had in years. However, that’s not to say I don’t look forward to the one day every year when cornball webmasters and bloggers try to pull one over on unsuspecting visitors. Honestly, I love the cheap humor April 1st brings and thought it would be fun to share a few fool sightings from around the web.

My first foolish sighting of the day was Wikipedia’s homepage. Most mornings I’m greeted with a rather bland but necessary infusion of random trivia from the web’s main tome of knowledge. However, my eyes perked open and a smile came to my face when I saw that the main article today is for a museum called MOBA (Museum of Bad Art). Cool. The best thing about Wikipedia’s “prank” page is that all of the content is seemingly true. For example, Britain’s oldest man, Henry Allington, really does credit his longevity to “cigarettes, whisky and wild, wild women—and a good sense of humour.” Latecomers can see the April 1st site here.

An overwhelming amount of unbelievable news is usually a good tip that the calendar reads April one. For example, Warner Bros. Acquires the Pirate Bay for the price of a whopping $13 billion is unbelievable. BMW releasing cars that have a magnetic tow feature is totally unbelievable. And although there are some times I wish Google would really create this feature, Gmail’s Autopilot is unfortunately just unbelievable April news. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Current Events, Marketing, New Media

The IMA loves art. And now comes Wikipedia Loves Art, a month long contest, scavenger hunt, photo-marathon focused on art. Like most of the good online museum ideas, its being driven by the Brooklyn Museum and features (15) museums in total. It puts the Indianapolis Museum of Art in the company of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Victoria and Albert Museum and the Honolulu Academy of Arts , to name a few.

Wikipedia Loves Art

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Filed under: Current Events, New Media

When I first heard about the iPhone, I was pretty excited about the possibilities of combining a camera, GPS, and internet connection. The idea of snapping a shot and uploading it to Flickr with a geotag, sharing it instantly with the rest of humanity, is a very powerful concept. Now that I have an iPhone, I’m exploring the apps and technologies available and refining my workflow. I thought I’d share my thoughts so far, since I think this is a great intersection of art and technology.

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Filed under: Musings, Technology

For those that don’t know, in one of my posts last spring I offered lunch with the IMA’s director, Max Anderson, in exchange for making a Wikipedia article about one of the IMA’s outdoor sculptures.  To make a long story short, 5 people made articles and just last week Max fulfilled his end of the bargain by having lunch with the Wikipedians at Pucks.  I joined them and so did Daniel and Despi.  The conversation was wide ranging and engaging and the lunch was good, too …. Mmm, Puck’s beet salad and flat bread.

The Wikipedians, Max, and I.

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Filed under: Conservation, Local, Technology