January 20, 2016 marked the second annual celebration of Museum Selfie Day, a special day to share selfies in or around museums.
The purpose of Museum Selfie Day is to encourage people to visit museums, interact with the art, and leave them with a photo memory of their visit.
How it all began
The creator of Museum Selfie Day is Mar Dixon, a museum and cake-loving mom from London, who runs a popular blog about art and culture. Dixon is a self-described “champion for the next generation of cultural visitors” and started Museum Selfie Day after making several museum visits with her young daughter, she told CNN in 2015.
This day and the hashtag are not just about the museum, there is an additional focus on the people who are at the museum. Dixon thought that a one-day, crowd-sourced phenomenon would promote awareness of great collections of work being housed in national and regional museums.
We had the chance to talk to Dixon about #MuseumSelfie day:
How did you feel the day went this past year?
“I felt it went very well. It’s always a very exciting and buzzing day.”
What’s the biggest thing you want people to take away from this day overall?
“FUN!!! Just to have fun in museums!”
Do you have any upcoming projects related to these same concepts?
“CultureThemes runs once a month so there’s always something going on. MuseumSelfie and AskACurator are pretty set.”
Yes, more exciting events! CultureThemes is a multinational group of museum professionals. They run monthly hashtag events that allow venues and their visitors to use social media to interact with a fun and positive activity.
#AskACurator Day is an all day event that Dixon created. The event takes place on twitter using the hashtag #AskACurator. This day is a way for people to talk to curators and experts who work in cultural venues whom they normally wouldn’t have access to. It is open to everyone and they can ask anything.
Thank you Mar for talking to us more and for all you do for the museum community!
More fun with selfies in museums
Selfies in museums have become a popular practice. Lines form in popular museums so that visitors can snap the perfect selfie with a specific piece, and even celebrities have taken part in the trend.
Digital Producer and self-proclaimed museum storyteller Alli Burness created a specific Tumblr site MuseumSelfie to showcase this phenomenon.
Some of the best submissions were from the museums themselves.
Here are a few of our favorite interpretations:
With all of this buzz around selfies in museums it’s no surprise that #MuseumSelfie day 2016 was such a hit.
This year, Dixon needed help to keep track of all the participation. Ciaran Blumfield, founder of Hashtracking, a company that runs analytics for hashtag campaigns and events. They ran reports for #MuseumSelfie on both Twitter and Instagram.
In 2015 Dixon’s stats came back with 5,591 photos, 23,778 tweets and 11,143 contributors.
Looking at this past year, it is clear that Museum Selfie Day 2016 was an even bigger success!
Dixon was overwhelmed by the positive response that the day received.
“Even if one person goes to a museum today who never goes, just to be a part of this hashtag experience, isn’t that great?” she concluded.
People visited museums, engaged with the art, and left with a positive memory, and that was all that anyone could hope for. Start snapping museum selfies and save the date for January 18th 2017, the next #MuseumSelfie day!
How did you participate in #MuseumSelfie? Share your photos and stories with us on Twitter at @Cuseum