I was inspired to write this reflection on museums and community after reading a recent AAM blog post by Deborah Ziska, former Chief of Press and Public Information at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, about her experience engaging the Black community, leveraging a Romare Bearden retrospective exhibition held there in 2003.
Tronvig visits National Museum of Women in the Arts for the reopening! Hear about Emilia and Anne's experience in DC.
Featured blog posts
by
James Heaton
/ Sep 18, 2018
by
James Heaton
/ Mar 02, 2016
by
Tronvig
/ Feb 03, 2017
by
James Heaton
/ Dec 20, 2011
It's a fitting time to reflect on how museums have failed at inclusion, leaving behind the voices that matter most: those of the communities they claim to represent.
Working with ICOM México and ICOM-MPR, we are happy to officially launch the Glosario de mercadotecnia para museos, comunicación y enlace con las audiencias, an independent Spanish-language version of the Museum Marketing, Communications and Audience Engagement Glossary.
The National Museum of Women in the Arts' reopening advertising campaign celebrates the art and the newly renovated building. The key word is celebrate, which the campaign does as it highlights both the collection and the historic triangular building.
Rarely does one have the opportunity to rebrand a New York City icon. Tronvig is very proud of the work created in close collaboration with our longtime visual branding partner Greybox Creative and made possible by the immensely supportive team at the Museum. The Museum opted for the boldest and most flexible visual direction, and we know it will serve them well in the coming years.
The following is written from indelible memories rather than notes. It is a small fraction of my experience from four emotion-filled days in Denver attending AAM 2023.
What if we pulled together some great minds in museum marketing, communications and audience engagement from across the country and created a museum-specific glossary of terms so our whole professional community could collaborate better?
NMWA continues with their mission of championing women through the arts while the building is temporarily closed for a major renovation. Check out Lookout: MISS CHELOVE, the first of a series featuring monumental artworks across the museum scaffolding.
With a bird’s-eye view, you start to notice patterns and similarities beyond the differences in language or jargon—like in the fields of creative placemaking and music. Is it tomato vs. tomahto? How might we work together if we recognize that we are saying the same things in different words?
Is quiet part of the essential value proposition of museums? Is an art museum, for example, meant to provide a kind of dampening field for the other senses so that sight can have free rein? Museums are indeed a very special kind of public space. Their likeness in the public sphere is rare and I agree that this should be cherished. But it should also be examined.
What is your organization? Most clients struggle to answer the first question from the Brand Pyramid. You'd expect that any company would have a good answer, but they almost never do. Why is this?
There are three main reasons.
There’s a tension that arises so frequently in museums that it seems natural and almost unavoidable: the curatorial team and the marketing (communications) team struggle to get along. Both groups are intimately involved with the customer but what they do with the customer and the nature of that interaction, however, are very different. This can lead to conflict between the two teams that are theoretically working toward the same goal.
In a recent workshop, the following discussion with a curator, in response to my setup that highly functional teams actively work to achieve shared goals, exposed a work dynamic with substantial consequences for organizational effectiveness.
The promotional campaign for Black Abstract, a recent exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, shows our work philosophy in action. Whether we are refreshing a visual identity, launching a brand awareness campaign, or promoting an art exhibition, strategy comes before design, placing a premium on including the voice of the customer.