Following “ASK a CURATOR” : notes for evaluating a good idea

Dear colleagues,

after #askcurators day, where many of you have probably taken part, I'd like to share some thoughts / conclusions from the Museu Picasso:

 -there exists an authentic interest by the public to know more about museums

-it is worth highlighting the interest to know processes more than results: how an idea for an exhibition emerges, how the works for the permanent exhibition are selected, how technologies affect the work of the museum etc.

-maybe  museums don’t explain well or effectively enough the work we do. This seems to be the conclusion when so many users ask what a curator does. 

-as nowadays we have so many social channels, with Facebook at the forefront, it’s surprising the success of the event in terms of participation: on any day of the year, at any moment, users can ask any questions they want, and museums need to be able to respond in an agile way.

-maybe the most positive thing of the day was the encounter, sort of a meeting point where  the public have discovered open and dialoguing museums, and curators have come into direct contact with the public (and with Twitter). 

A suggestion / wish: to prepare an edition (digital, downloadable) of a selection of questions and answers, not excluding languages other than English:) Organizers, that's Jim Richardson as you will know, could ask for volunteers to help with multilingual tweets.
The edition could come with a classification of matters, together with some figures of the reach of the event, the results (and excerpts) of both questionnaires, links to blogs analyzing it, etc. I think this material would be extremely useful for us museums and also for Museum Studies as discussion material.

To read more about how we experienced this Twitter event, please go to our blog.

How did you experience that day? What's your opinion about it? Best regards

Conxa

@innova2