Hi, Fidji here. In the context of my thesis on the democratization of art via the Internet, I had the chance to interview Alain Romang, in charge of the online communication of Les Abattoirs, a modern and contemporary art museum based in Toulouse (France), which has developed a real Internet strategy to reach a new audience. I find really interesting to understand how the Internet, based on open access, has been used by museums, which have tried for a long time to cultivate their sacred atmosphere, whereas their mission is to make their collections as accessible as possible. Here are the most interesting pieces of the interview.

What is the purpose of the online communication of the museum? Attract different people on the website, or in the museum, or is it essentially a loyalty tool?

The first objective was to give some elements of information on opening hours, driving directions… to an audience that starts all its searches on the Internet. Our stats prove that most of the site visits are related to the planning of a visit to the museum. But what we appreciate is that the Internet is also a way of preparing people to the visit of the museum by giving some background on the artist, so that they really can make the most of the exhibition. We can also follow-up after the visit by providing tools to go deeper into the understanding of a particular piece. In terms of finding a new audience thanks to our online initiatives, it is clearly one of our objectives but we haven’t done any survey to prove that it is working yet. Let’s say that we strongly suppose the correlation between the increase in number of visits on our site and the increase in number of visits of our museum.

You offer the possibility of accessing 2000 pieces of art virtually: do you think that it is possible to feel a real artistic emotion on the screen of a computer?

It is almost a philosophical question, but yes, I sincerely believe it, at least if we believe that there are several types of artistic emotions. In the physical museum, there is a relation to the architecture, to a particular atmosphere, and also the intervention of simpler things such as the reaction of other visitors, that you obviously don’t have online. Which is why you really need to use the most appropriate tools online to compensate this, and some virtual exhibitions have clearly manage to achieve this goal.

Do you think that there is a risk of cannibalization of the offline by the online, if most of the collections are accessible online?

I think that the contrary is more likely. I feel that a certain audience, who is not used to visiting museums (for geographical, cultural or sociological reasons) will be more likely to plan a visit to a museum if it had the opportunity of discovering some pieces online. I believe that both experiences are interesting: the Internet is for example much more appropriate for educative purposes since we can put more information online. The two experiences feed each other but there is no cannibalization.*

What are the different objectives of the tools that you use: video, blog of the museum, Facebook page?

The blog allows a better reactivity. We have created it to talk about news of the museum, events or marginal subjects with a more original view that don’t fit within the website. The possibility of commenting is also interesting, since it is, at least for most museums, a new kind of interaction with the audience. And obviously it improves our referencing on search engines thanks to more content and key words.

Concerning pictures and videos on Flickr/Youtube, it is part of the mission of archiving of the museum, but also allows new interactions: Flickr announced the creation of « pools », which will allow visitors to post their own pictures of the museum directly in Les Abattoirs’ Flickr space.

Facebook is more of an experiment so far. Of course the idea of federating a community around the museum is really interesting, but so far we’ve been there only because it is a tool with an amazing growth and I didn’t want to be “late” on such a tool. And thanks to all the new apps, we find new useful modules to add every day, so it forces us to keep being innovative.

What are the next steps to be sure that your museum will remain on top of the new Internet initiatives?

So far we are focused on improving the current tools: redesigning the blog, feeding Flickr and Youtube, expanding our Facebook network. We also want to develop podcasting, targeted to specific exhibitions. Finally, there is the debate on the presence on Second Life: we have done a simple ROI calculation and it seems that at this stage, the time spent to create Les Abattoirs in Second Life is not justified by the frequentation. Of course it creates some media exposure, but we don’t want to do that only to appear in blogs and newspapers. We want to launch this initiative only when we will have more visibility on our return on that, especially since the hype around Second Life is already declining. But we are watching it closely.

* A survey realized by the Institute of Museum and Library Services proves Alain’s point: it shows that people connected to the Internet go to museums 2.6 times more than people without any access. Among the respondents, 45% have visited both a virtual and offline museum, 50% a real museum only and 5% a virtual museum only.

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