Articoli taggati con ‘museums’
Museum’s self-financing capacity: axes of development to increase Italy’s 1.737 billion euros worth cultural heritage self-generated income.
In Italy, performance measures linked to museums’ self-financing capacity have been systematically disregarded, as cultural heritage has been traditionally considered as a sector incapable of being a State’s profit generating asset. This article aims at outlining innovative revenue streams that museums could develop in order to increase their self-generated income. France’s public cultural institutions’ management is analyzed and considered as an example proving it is possible to have the cultural heritage sector financing its own growth.
Museums’ visitors in Italy
In a country where cultural participation generates alarming negative numbers (in 2015, 68.3% of the Italian population has never entered a museum [1] ), it becomes crucial to understand the new public and study suitable strategies for a cultural proposal able to better reflect their interests. Indeed, although this percentage is on the rise compared to the trend of recent years, there is a kind of cultural impoverishment, which concerns not only the museum, but also publishing, theater, music and dance. The 88.3% of the total population of our country in 2015 has never attended a classical music concert, 78.8% have never seen a play, 51.9% have never read a newspaper, 56.5% has never opened a single book [2]. It has often been attempted to reduce analysis of public museum culture to a series of data, more or less accurate, more or less exemplary, rather than to a basic theory that you intend to demonstrate and posit as a significant idea and a related cultural marketing strategy. It will be to demonstrate, id est, with the data, the validity of an idea, sometimes deforming the correct reading and interpretation. What is sometimes forgotten is the exact opposite: the need to gather facts on a phenomenon under investigation, and then let the data talk, so that a sense can be drawn from their links and their possible interrelationships. In his “L’analyse des données”, Jean- Paul Benzecri, founder of a scientific discipline related to data analysis, wrote: «The model must follow the data, not vice versa [3] ». It is then the daunting task for the researcher to find a connection, if any, between numbers which may be sometimes discordant or present apparently low affinity.
Big Exhibitions 2010-2014: Institutions, Themes, Circulation. A Global Overview and the Case of Italy
Exhibitions are a central component of the contemporary art system, as one of the favourite tools for cultural distribution, attraction of public and visibility of cultural organisations. Important instruments for the communication of scientific results and new cultural views, they have become an irreplaceable element for institutions like museums, which have strengthened the practice of exhibitions to promote and enhance their cultural offer. At the same time, in the continuous quantitative and commercial development of the art system, museums have begun to resort to exhibitions in order to attract a larger public, and exhibitions have been affected by marketing techniques. The growth of “blockbuster” exhibitions – popular and often low-quality events – is consistent with the measurement of cultural success in terms of “figures”. The most visited exhibitions, as well as the most visited museums, represent cases of brilliant success that involve in a challenge old and developing cultural contexts, giving the possibility, to institutions and entire cities, of national and international prominence. Since exhibitions have become an increasingly important element of the cultural industry, in several cases a growth in the number of these events has been observed. If the escalation of the art festivals and Biennials is a worldwide phenomenon, in Italy the amount of the exhibitions has exponentially increased in the last ten years, producing a trend –observed in France and Germany as well – that has been defined as a real “mania of exhibitions” .
“Open by vocation”: The Museum Salinas 2.0 and the sicilian anomaly in a social key
The archaeolgical museum Antonio Salinas in Palermo, closed for repairs, from a year up to the present has revamped his image thanks to social media and the adhesion to some campaigns as #invasionidigitali – #digitalinvasion, TN – and #museumweek, finding a way to renew the museum’s reputation. Through the analysis of the Museum’s communication strategies, this paper seeks to identify some solutions with the aim to inspire other institutions to adopt cultural web marketing strategies. The Museum Salinas: a 2.0 anomaly in the Sicilian panorama Introductory considerations are essential to understand the meaning of the revolution that we are going to introduce here. The Archaeological Museum Antonio Salinas in Palermo, one of the most important archaeological museum for vastness and prestige of the collection (with masterpieces of the Punic – Phoenician era, Classical Greek era, Etruscan, from ancient Rome and from Sicilian history from prehistory to the Middle Ages [10]) is, for all intents and purposes, a case of study of social museum and the intent of who writes is to present it as a virtuous example of cultural communication strategies.
Museums and Storytelling: From the last trends to the future
In 2010, Kelly found that museums’ adult visitors were deeply aware of their learning preferences and that they wanted experiences both educational and entertaining. On a more general scale, LaPlaca Cohen “Culture Track Report 2014” reveals how the meaning itself of what a cultural experience is like, expanded to activities more related to nature and entertainment. According to this report, audience values a TED talk or a visit to a Botanic Garden just as culturally engaging as going to the museum or attending a theater performance. The public is more demanding and wants to satisfy more than one need at the same time, pursuing activities that are educational, entertaining, interactive and customizable. This expanded notion of culture is on top of the priorities of professionals, as it challenges them to find continuously newer and more unique attractions, able to deal with a much wider range of competitors to the public attention. In order to address the increased uncertainty, museums reshaped their programs to include more and more extra-ordinary events, such as family days, curators’ talks, nocturnal exhibitions, and so on. On the one hand, special events are successfully flourishing and tend to be more participated, to have a wider impact on social media and to be more easily sponsored than ordinary programs. On the other hand, it seems that museums would be struggling at actually improving the ordinary visitors’ experience, which is a much more radical transformation affecting deeply each department, from the Curatorial to the Visitors’ Services and it is often extremely costly. In this gap among special programming and ordinary visit, the organization Museum Hack has found a fertile environment for its growth.
Made in Italy museums. Some reflections on company heritage networking and communication
Corporate museums arise today as a powerful identity medium for companies and brands representing Made in Italy worldwide. At the beginning of the new millennium, such cultural centers, preserving and communicating the Italian economic history, are extending their presence in most of the country and market sectors. They define a very fragmentary universe (indeed, a still largely underground “dorsal” of Made in Italy culture), but also an investment which could support the cultivation of innovative quality relationships among companies, territory, and society. From this scenario, the paper aims to offer a synthetic overview of the phenomenon concerning company museums and its contemporary evolution within the Italian context, where it appears to be unique for both dimensions and its qualitative features if compared with the international scenario. Indeed, this means also to reflect about the special affinity which seems to exist between museum format and the essence of Made in Italy culture, rising nowadays internationally as a strategic communication discourse.
Paint before the police come!
Street art is challenging the world of art, its set of rules and its commercial system as few art movements in the past.
American Museums versus Italian Museums online: are they so dissimilar?
Not unlike Italy, the cultural institutions of the United States are part of a prism returning different shades of quality in managing new digital tools. Let us take social media as an example for all: when asked to specify the issues they most frequently encountered in managing online communication, the American professionals gave answers amazingly similar to those of their Italian counterparts. What they pointed out were lack of time – often deriving from chronicle budget deficits to hire new staff, and low to non-existent digital awareness in their colleagues, making it difficult to manage the workflow efficiently in order to achieve better quality content.
Price management. Working on the supply could be our chance
It is not easy to establish the admission price to museums and monuments. Different cultures suggest singular methods at this matter. Although the global scenario tends to allocate to goods a specific price which is directly commensurate to its value, both dimensional and qualitative, this concept is inapplicable in the economy of culture. This subject takes care of assets of immeasurable value, which represent a heritage of humanity. However, people do not think that this patrimony could in some way generate a profit. Cultural institutions stand as the richest and poorest at the same time. In fact is clearly evident the deep gap they have between the value of their heritage and their disposal money. The majority of the countries charges visitors with a fixed entrance fee, but the price of the ticket is just a lump sum.
An overview of the art sector
The art sector has a network structure, where actors operate in relationship with each other. But one must points out the fact that one individual can act in different roles or perform the tasks of various actor types.
How web presence strategy can help museums to be a digital breeding ground for innovative communication
This article aims to understand if an efficient museums’ online presence can strategically impact on and improve their promotion and the way they are perceived by potential visitors. Visitors can engage and support a museum more if they feel like they had a part in providing feedback or have ownership in something because the feedback they gave was implemented. Through digital strategies, used as a bridge to get in touch with people from all over the world, cultural institutions can engage the audience in a deeper emotional way.
