Social media use improves museum access

Since its opening six months ago, contemporary art museum The Broad has taken the art world by storm. Located downtown, The Broad is across from the Museum of Contemporary Art and next to the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Its most noticeable feature is the long line, which wraps around the building and primarily consists of millennials. As the Los Angeles Times recently reported, the average visitor to The Broad is 32 years old. Meanwhile, according to the National Endowment for the Arts, the average national museum attendance age is 46. The Broad is redefining museum demographics and drawing in an audience for the arts that has not been tapped into before by primarily appealing to potential visitors via social media, a move that other museums should follow.

The Broad’s extraordinary success with a younger demographic can be tied to its unique utilization of social media. According to a survey conducted at The Broad, one in four visitors heard about the museum through someone else’s social media feed. The popular hashtag, #JEFFKOONSEXHIBIT, featuring Jeff Koons’ beloved Balloon Dog sculpture, for example, prompted millennials to quickly reserve their tickets months in advance or wait in a standby line for up to three hours.

Moreover, The Broad currently has 133,000 followers on Instagram and features various must-see art pieces. Each Instagram post includes a caption introducing a visitors service associate and each associate highlights a different artwork in the gallery and the significance behind it. By posting photos of artwork currently on display, The Broad can expand its accessibility to a diverse audience — users that consist largely of young adults, many of whom are students on a budget. Eli Broad, an American entrepreneur and co-founder of the museum, has always intended for The Broad to appeal to a wide array of people.

“It has always been our mission to introduce contemporary art to the broadest possible audience,” he told the Los Angeles Times. And social media has allowed him to accomplish this goal.

Other museums, like the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and The Getty Center, are beginning to utilize social media and advertising events on Facebook that are open and free to students, and they should continue to do so to ensure accessibility to the arts for everyone.

Similar to The Broad, LACMA’s average visitor age is 40, which is also below the national average. LACMA’s Snapchat account drew attention by pairing photos of artworks with witty, culturally-relevant captions.

“Snapchat has, in a lot of ways, embodied one of the goals of LACMA to be relatable and approachable, to be a community space that’s owned by everybody,” Lucy Redoglia, the social media manager of LACMA told the museum’s blog Unframed. “You don’t have to be an art historian to follow us on Snapchat.”

A strong presence on social media equates to a larger number of potential visitors. As museums break down the walls of inaccessibility and unrelatability, a dialogue is being created between these institutions and diverse audiences. Social media has become a bridge for these two distinct groups.

It is essential for museums to draw in younger audiences and redefine what it means to visit a museum. The arts should serve everyone, and anyone should be able to visit a local museum and immerse themselves in the history and experiences of cultures past.