COLLABORATOR: Ruth Cuadra, Business Applications Administrator at Getty Research Institute

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1 : Most Impactful Trends for California Museums Presented at the California Association of Museum Conference March 2-4, 2016 Riverside, California COLLABORATOR: Ruth Cuadra, Business Applications Administrator at Getty Research Institute AUTHOR: Erika Hirugami, MAAB, CAM Fellow Selfie by Ziyan Zhang, Cyanotype 2016 Zhang is incorporating the use of data and technology to inform his aesthetic practice. With the use of a QR code scanner this artwork directs to Zhang s own digital fingerprint made of data. #Selfie The California Association of Museum conference which took place at Riverside this past March, raised various concerns across museum fields; the future of best practices was discussed in terms of marketing, education, collections, curatorial, admissions, etc. An enormous topic was examined (however briefly) by Ruth Cuadra, Business Applications Administrator at the Getty Research Institute. Ruth introduced the concept of Big Data to a room full of people as part of a Pecha Kucha style presentation in which 20 slides are shown for 20 seconds each, to keep the focus concise and fast-paced. However, such an intricate matter requires deeper understanding and further analysis.

2 What is Big Data exactly? How can Museums use Big Data? Why should Big Data matter to Museums? How does Big Data fit into the Future of Museums? The truth of the matter is that every museum professional can benefit from understanding Big Data, and by default can stand to lose from not understanding its complexities in this day and age. Missed Connections by Luke Dubois Employing data mining from popular online dating sites, Dubois creates aesthetic installations that visually present Big Data in real time. #BigDataArt What is Big Data exactly? Big data is a buzzword; it s the term used to refer to large sets of information. As per the Getty Research Institute, Big Data is data sets that are so large and complex that traditional data 2

3 processing applications are inadequate to handle them. Twitter, for instance, has reported that an average of 6,000 users tweet per second, producing roughly 200 billion tweets per year, thereby creating enormous amounts of information that can be tracked, analyzed and categorized. Today, large amounts of digital data can be better understood if analyzed with the tools of Big Data. Big Data however, lives on various realms other than social media and can serve multiple purposes. For example, museum admissions and museum store sales generate a lot of data. But today climate changes are tracked, the geographical locations of individuals can be pinpointed, and even people s moods and feelings can be followed, all of which may serve to better understand a museum experience. Also companies like BDEX (Big Data Exchange) or Gnip have emerged around the globe to satisfy Big Data needs where data can be purchased or sold, as well as harvested or mined. Corporations, large and small alike, track a variety of interactions every minute, everything from how being in any given space affects one s mood, to what quantifies someone s favorite beverage, or specific preferences while shopping. Using Big Data is a part of how organizations track, measure and scrutinize information in order to develop products and services. If museums were to develop ways of using Big Data, they stand to gain tremendously, not just financially but also in terms of audience engagement. Big Data may be the key to revolutionizing visitor experiences at museums and changing the relevance of museums in the future. Witness by Chaoyi (Stormy) Wu Wu deconstructs the idea of surveillance and human interaction within his work. #BigDataInteractions 3

4 Why should Big Data matter to Museums? All museums are not created equal. However, museums large and small can gain a lot of insight into their operations by learning to analyze what Big Data tells them about their existing practices, and by learning to draw comparisons or contrast their own information with external data sets such as those of sister institutions or their city s census. For instance, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, the Minneapolis Institute of Art analyzes data from thousands of visitor surveys to make curatorial decisions; thus upcoming shows may be restructured, moved to smaller spaces or postponed according to survey findings. As per Artnet both the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Guggenheim Museum have started to gather and analyze their own data to better inform themselves about visitor experience. By studying the available data and learning to analyze this information, museum professionals across every department stand to benefit vastly from the potential of patterns and relationships that Big Data can reveal. Big Data is an ever-expanding resource that can help museums better achieve their missions, and resolve various concerns by looking for patterns and relationships between and among data sets. For example, with the use of beacons (small pieces of hardware that can transmit messages directly to smartphones) the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has begun to provide customized interactions with the use of data driven technology to their guests who use the LACMA app. How can Museums use Big Data? Companies like Macy s and Netflix actively boost sales by tracking customer behavior and using data to inform their decisions. Museums are also applying these strategies to exhibition design, donor outreach, and gift shop marketing (Wall Street Journal). For instance, in 2014 the Dallas Museum of Art launched an innovative effort to exchange membership benefits with visitors who share data about themselves. The free membership program works on a point system, where members gain benefits such as free parking by engaging with the museum. In the first year of implementation of this effort the museum reported over 50,000 guests joining the program (Museums and the Web). Aside from such multi-million dollar institutional efforts, smaller museums can benefit from simple ways of exploring the complexities of their own audience with Big Data resources that may already be available to them. Inspecting Instagram hashtags can be a key to understanding visitor experience; analyzing tweets can provide an overview of visitors conversations and points of view. On a larger scale, museums can use information about members together with their local census data to learn about the demographics of their visitors and sectors that might be underserved. 4

5 Potential Big Data Benefits by Museum Department Museum Department Curatorial Collections Education Membership Development Visitor Services Marketing Big Data Usage Data on use of leisure time along with visitorship and audience engagement surveys can influence the development of the curatorial calendar. Upcoming exhibitions can be postponed, removed, or relegated to a smaller space if the data does not show audience interest in the curatorial query being explored. Patters about collecting will emerge once institutions begin to share their collections information with one another. If for instance all museums of the country shared collections data, new knowledge would emerge about our national collecting efforts. The IBM PETALS project (Personalized Education through Analytics on Learning Systems) is already using advanced data analytics to personalize learning pathways. Accessing this information can revolutionize the way education programs at museums create programming. Analyzing demographic and financial data about members against large-scale census data about the city, county, and state can provide insight into targeting new audiences, as well as provide information about catering to existing visitors. By quantifying the financial climate of gifting, development departments would learn how to best use their resources to target specific donors at a given time and maximize their efforts. By analyzing and comparing larger scales of visitor interaction logs; seasonal staffing can be restructured, and facilities can be prepared accordingly. By analyzing the social media usage of hashtags, a marketing campaign can be catered specifically to attract new audiences such as millennials. How does Big Data fit into the Future of Museums? A huge concern in the mind of nearly every museum professional is the future of museums. Should museums stay true to the way they have conducted business in the past? Should museums cater to the ever-growing selfie culture of visitors? What is Snapchat? How can museums stay current instead of constantly having to catch up to the rest of the world? 5

6 Possible answers to these and other queries may lie in the patterns that emerge from Big Data. By harvesting, retrieving and analyzing Big Data a museum can begin to answer all of these concerns. By drawing comparison to other institutions, museums can understand what has worked or may potentially work for their own entity. IBTimes informs that an average millennial takes over 25,000 selfies in his or her lifetime. Omnicore reports that the number of daily active Snapchat users is well over 100,000,000. Twitter has recorded over thirteen million tweets alone. Instagram has a little over thirteen million images hashtagged #selfie. If a visitor is coming into the museum, taking a selfie, posting it on social media, and generating data, would it not be fantastic for the museum to use this very information to better understand the experiences it can create for its visitors? Every museum professional from a director to a docent can gain valuable information about almost any aspect of his or her institution by analyzing Big Data. Because of its immense scope, Big Data generates patterns that museum professionals can learn to analyze toward informing policy-making at their institutions Analysis and examination of Big Data inspires art such as Selfie by Ziyan Zhang and mining Big Data specific to online dating platforms allows Luke Dubois to create Missed Connections (both images above). Generating Big Data has become an intricate part of the museum experience, as exemplified by the interaction of three individuals with Mine Pipeline at the Hammer Museum. One of these photographs was posted on Instagram, one was privately shared, and the other had not seen the light of day before this publication; three individuals, three interactions, three ways of generating visual data. For more on Big Data and mauseums visit the accompanying Blog Post. 6

7 Mine Pipeline Site Specific Hammer Project by Oscar Tuazon Tuazon is creating a source of contact for different information to interact in a particular the space. #Museum Images courtesy of Erika Hirugami, Alex Kay and Ziyan Zhang (order left to right). About Author/CAM Fellow #MuseumSelfie Erika Hirugami is the Founder and CEO at CuratorLove. Hirugami received her MA in Art Business from the Sotheby s Institute of Art and holds multiple BAs from UCLA. She has worked at museums such as CMA, MOLAA, MAZ, MUAC, and Bellas Artes CdMx. Her written work has been published internationally. Her fields of interest include Big Data, museum development, market value in Latin American art, technology and engagement, and the rift between galleries and museums which was the focus of her master thesis. 7