For the past year we’ve hosted a small series of Instagram events at the National Gallery of Denmark. The result is a diversity of perspectives and quite a few masterpieces.
Given enough eyes, if you’ll pardon the paraphrase, all corners of the museum can be made photogenic. A year ago this August we had our first Instagram event at SMK, giving a group an exclusive tour an hour before opening to the public (a tour where I elegantly managed to get myself locked all alone into the permanent exhibition in ways still somewhat unexplained).
And just to be clear: It is a truly great thing. Inviting visual creativity inside is a real pleasure and a great way to engage with the art in new ways (not to mention the staircases and each and every reflective surface). In this post, I’ll sketch our experience so far.
For our very first attempt at the genre, Instagram staff members – in town for Copenhagen Fashion Week – actually handled logistics. A group of 12 specially invited IG’ers were taken for a “empty museum” walk under the #emptysmk hashtag. Yes, we bent our hashtag model which is always SMK-something to associate ourselves just a bit with the fabulous #emptymet series of events.
Going on instinct we’d asked a guide to lead the way, speaking knowledgeably about the collection. This effort turned out to be wasted, however, as the photography mission left very little mental room for taking in art history.
Some of the photos from this first tour are shown here:
#artwatchers | @laurenlila #Igdk_smkwalk_260814 #emptysmk #smkmuseum #instamuseum #visitcopenhagen #ibyen #tilbyen #tv_silhouettes #urbanromantix #igersdenmark #igworldclub #vscocam A photo posted by Katrine Hansen (@kattensspind) on
Soon after the walk we were contacted by Instagramers Denmark, and with that fine association we made a similar setup (only after hours, not before). About 15 people went for an #emptysmk walk, once again with great images to show for it:
tak @igersdenmark @smkmuseum for en hyggelig fototur i #emptysmk. A photo posted by laurenlila (@laurenlila) on
One more from the event today // #emptysmk @smkmuseum A photo posted by Judith Stohn (@jstohn) on
Wanting to try our hands at something slightly more focused we held our next event at the Royal Cast Collection, which is in a separate location from the rest of the museum. As it was now winter and we had to plan for late in the day, we arranged for some simple extra lighting in the form of two strong photographer’s lamps that we could move around to try different setups. Again we worked with Instagramers Denmark to invite 15 people for an atmospheric tour of the collection. Incidentally, 15 is our preferred number as larger groups become too difficult to move around and as we like to keep the atmosphere relatively casual and be able to answer everybody’s questions. This photo shows a bit of context:
A couple of shots from the talented IG’ers:
Went on a cosy walk on SMK Cast Museum today – thanks for inviting us :) // A photo posted by Bobby Anwar (@bobbyanwar) on
Night at the museum… Thank You @igersdenmark for a fun night at The Royal Cast Collection. A photo posted by Abdellah Ihadian (@mr_babdellahn) on
For our next event we went anti-empty and invited photo folks for our grand opening of the “What’s Happening?” exhibition. The idea was to show the museum full of life and activity, which is a nice idea, but not necessarily one the IG’ers went for as you can see here:
But okay, you can’t always have (or plan) them all.
It’s been great seeing the museum through so many talented people’s lenses. We look forward to new adventures in square format in the time to come.
If you have any questions about our initiatives, don’t hesitate to ask.
Feel free to join our SMK photo events Facebook group.
For details, metrics and other wonderful things, see my Museums and the Web paper on The Me/Us/Them Model.