Barnes Collection Online: Andrei Taraschuk and @the_barnes_bot

Earlier in the week I posted about a drawing challenge that happened on Twitter as a result of our open access collection launch. Today, I’m interviewing Andrei Taraschuk who has created a Barnes collection bot on multiple channels — Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr — that anyone can follow.

Seeing this kind of activity is such a big part of what we were trying to do by becoming more open. This is the kind of strategy that SMK Open has always cited — that “open” helps you become a platform and it’s about enabling others as collaborators. Andrei’s bots really demonstrate this concept and it was heartwarming to see this happen so quickly on the heels of our release.

Shelley: We can see from your feed how much you love art — there’s just so many great things you’re celebrating. It looks like you’ve started bots for specific collections, but also singular artists. Can you tell us a bit about the bots you’ve created and why you selected some of these subjects?

Andrei: A few years ago I wanted to see more art in my Twitter feed but could not find good accounts to follow. And so, I started building twitter bots for my favorite artists: Wassily Kandinsky and Egon Schiele. To my surprise, the bots started developing a following of their own. It was almost like Kandinsky and Schiele were sharing their own art. I was fascinated by this and decided to develop the idea further by organizing bot accounts into thematic networks. If Kandinsky was alive today then he’d probably follow Paul Klee, Franz Marc, Kazimir Malevich etc. The more artists I added to the “network” the richer their feeds became. For example, If you follow Kandinsky today, you will notice that the bot interacts with other similar artists exposing a wide range of art.

Shelley: I totally loved seeing this in action with @the_barnes_bot when the @artistmemling was tweeting his art and the Barnes bot was RT and then adding a work from our collection. Pretty cool.

You’ve published some stats about your work including a 10% growth rate on Twitter with 158,289 total followers, 8% on Tumblr with 1,577,954 total followers, and 37% on Facebook during the month of October alone. That’s pretty impressive and, for us, it demonstrates why #openaccess to works of art is so important. What are your thoughts about all this?

Andrei: There is so much amazing art out there but most of it is buried in museum archives and is never seen by most people. Luckily, Open Access and the latest tech developments allow us to “push” art into people’s social media feeds, and it is absolutely fantastic! The Barnes Collection contains thousands of artworks, and now anyone can follow the Barnes Collection on Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr and receive a daily dose of beautiful art directly in their feed.

I am completely blown away by how many people follow my artist accounts and interact with the art I share. So far, the art I’ve shared has received 5,6M likes and was shared 3M times! Clearly, the art is still very important and people enjoy having it be a part of their daily lives. Perhaps the next generation of art lovers will be introduced to classical art through social media.

Shelley: I have to ask this — any favorites?

Andrei: Yes! I love…Cuno Amiet, Remedios Varo, Marc Chagall, Guggenheim Museum Bot, Arms and Armor Collection for The Met, and my latest favorite, The Barnes Collection. My goal is to expose as many people as possible to the beauty of art through social media, so drop me a line if you’d like to have your collection shared out by an army of tireless art bots!

Shelley: If we want to follow all of your bots, do you have a list?

Andrei: I post about the latest art bots on my Tumblr blog. Please follow me on Twitter to see what I am currently working on ;)

Shelley: Any unexpected surprises that you’ve encountered along the way?

Andrei: The biggest surprise came from Facebook when their curating algorithms started blocking classical artworks containing nudity. I am disappointed by Facebook’s censorship and hope that we can find a way to get more art (even if it is risque) onto their platform.

Shelley: That’s going to spell trouble for the Barnes Collection Bot because there are so many nudes in our collection!!

The Barnes Foundation collection online project is funded by the Knight Foundation and our code is open source. Follow the Barnes Foundation on Medium.