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Yesterday the Tropenmuseum launched it’s Youtube channel. At last we do something web 2.0. We are alive on the web!!!! But as you can see at this moment their is only one movie on it. At the Tropenmuseum we had a lot of discussion lately about using movies to spice up our website and/or to place it on Youtube. We looked into several youtube museum channels. What we discovered is that almost all the museum channels are barely watched. On a first glance the MoMA YouTube channel has an average of 10.000 viewers per movie, the Rijksmuseum channel has an average of 2.000 viewers per movie and the indianapolis museum of art channel has an average of 1.000 viewers per movie. While seeing this movie viewers we wondered if it is worth the effort to produce movies for the web only.

A very low budget, mediocre quality movie clip of about 30 seconds costs about 1.000-1.500 euro’s to produce. This includes scriptwriting, shooting the movie and editing. When we want to make a short documentary style clip of about 5 minutes the cost easily double or triple. I think there are more effective ways to spend your (marketing) Euro’s in communicating your museum.

What our NoTube strategy is at this moment is not to produce clips solely for the web. What we will do is make agreements with media who want to shoot at our premises that we can use their movies for our purposes. Within a few weeks for example the local Dutch multi cultural broadcasting company MTNL wil broadcast a documentary series about the Tropenmuseum. Those documentaries will also be placed on our youtube channel. Another example is our new commercial that is being made for our upcomming exhibition about Vodou.

This doesn’t mean that we won’t produce movies or movie clips in the future. But we will always try to use the clips with traditional media to stretch out the reach of the movies made.

The famous artwork ‘for the love of God’, made by Damien Hirst, starts it world tour in Amsterdam at the Rijksmuseum at the 1st of November. This artwork is a skull which is cast from platinum, encrusted with 8,601 diamonds and has its original teeth. An investment group bought the skull a few years ago for an estimated $100 million dollars. The whole Dutch press is all over it. So great PR for the Rijksmuseum. The new director in chief of the Rijksmuseum Wim Pijbes is showing off his new talents. But this skull is actually accompanying the exhibition Hirst has made for the Rijksmuseum. Hirst has chosen a personal selection from the Rijksmuseum’s collection of 17th-century art. So that PR message is a bit lost.

But a little secret is that the ‘real’ thing can be found at the Tropenmuseum. But the PR value of this magnificent piece is actually not the same.

Note on the Tropenmuseum skull: This skull is from New Guinea. It is probably an ancestor because there is no hole in the skull to remove the brains. The line between life and death was not strongly drawn in most Papuan cultures.For example, the dead could still be present as spirits among the living. They had a great influence on a person’s daily existence and it was essential to ensure that the spirits remained well disposed.

I have found this lecture on marketing blog in the Netherlands. I was rather curious because I work for an ethnographic museum which employs a lot of anthropologists.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPAO-lZ4_hU&hl=en&fs=1]

This lecture watches as a documentary because of the many movie clips it contains. Because I am not an anthropologists I don’t know what so special on this research in comparison to any other social sciences. But I really liked this lecture. Why? and what is the use for the museum marketing professional?

First of all I think the main message of this lecture is:

‘You tube is a way of expressing yourself to a (un)defined community’

Or to put it another way social websites like Youtube are a part of your identity. And it is very interesting to see how some home made videos are being picked up by large communities. But there are also small communities discussing certain topics ranging from God to Gardening. And that’s where the museum comes in. People are expressing themselves in all kinds of websites like Youtube, Flickr, Facebook etc and they are talking about your museum. And the interesting thing is that I think there are a lot of visitors who really would like to talk about the museum but also with the museum. Social websites are tools of knowing what you customer want but also a way to give them influence or even better let them be a part of your museum community. There are many ways to facilitate these kind of customer/visitor participation. There is so much to say about you could even write a blog about it. A very good blog about this subject is Museum 2.0 by Nina Simon.

Here are the Youtube results of my museum: Tropenmuseum youtube
Here are the Flickr results of my museum: Tropenmuseum flickr

In the museum I work every week or so we discuss the relevance of our existence as a museum. This discussion takes mostly place at the lunch table, a the coffee dispenser, staff meetings or sometimes in a more broader academic setting like a conference. In my personal opinion it is always good to discuss why we do what we do. We often conclude that our core business is exhibition making, next to conserving objects and academical research. But lately I have my doubts about the conclusion that exhibition making should be our core business. Why choose to make an exhibition and not make a book, or a documentary, or a website ore use any other relevant medium to cover about the same topic as the exhibit? Or even better use all those media or a combination of media to cover a subject?

Actually it comes down on your mission (statement) as a museum. If these leaves any room for interpretation (in my experience it always does) it is only a matter of choice if you want to go cross medium or just stick to one medium (the exhibit).

What could be the arguments to use several media? Every medium has a certain advantage in telling a story. They engage different senses and are bound in place and time in different ways. For example the sensory experience of an exhibit is quit different then a book. While visiting an exhibit your body is in motion, there are lot of showcases to choose from and to experience the exhibit your are bound to premises of the museum. The sensory experience of book is mainly visual, it is more or less logical organized and is bound to how much weight you can carry.

All the different media can enhance each other. Not everyone can visit an exhibition physically, but they can see it on in the internet or read about in a book. On a website you can show extra things where there is no room for in the exhibit. You can let visitors interact with each other and share their thoughts about a topic. There are more examples then I can think off.

At the Tropenmuseum we have used different media for the same topic. Our famous children’s museum (Tropenmuseum Junior/Kindermuseum) has at the moment an exhibition called ‘Bombay Star’. In this exhibition children experience the city of Bombay India and the people who live there. But next to the exhibition there is also a book to read in the class or at home, a website where you can get extra information but also see a movie of yourself after your visit, a traveling theatrical performance for children who are not able to come to Amsterdam and a documentary series.

But wait a minute I hear all the concerned curators say: ‘How about that great collection?’ Most of the art collection has the intention to be experienced physically. I have to say I agree with the curators a bit. The choice of an exhibition as medium depends on the collection on display and money. But I do think that the main theme of most the exhibitions can be told in many ways and with a lot of other media. So when considering to build an exhibition, consider first all other possible media and use those media in way that they enhance the overall story you would like to tell as a museum.