Day 9 — The Met
We met with the social media manager and digital team from the Met today and had some interesting, spontaneous, and honest and straightforward talks. I was astounded still, yet not surprised at the number of people on the digital team — 65! And a total of up to 2,500 total Met employees. In this unwieldy type of behemoth museum, of which only a few exist, the differences between working at smaller institutions in comparison was revisited.
The takeaway I received was that while a larger institution pays more, you have a greater chance of being more creative in a smaller organization. So make what we will of that reality and strike a balance.
We have had a lot of conversations with digital teams, and the mantra seems to be that digital won’t necessarily replace the direct object experience, but it can reach a wider audience and strike to the very heart of a museum’s mission.
Another striking idea was the thought that as technology progresses, prized objects in the collection need to be continually updated — for a museum with a collection of 1.5 million objects, this sounds like a Sisyphean effort. Although, perhaps technology will advance in such a way that it will keep up with itself.
