A Simple Way to Make Museum Websites More Attractive to an Important Audience
Some museums put the PR department in charge of developing content for the Web. Our staff thinks this may be one reason many museum Web sites don’t inspire them to visit.
Most museum sites are good at presenting basic information about hours, current exhibits, lectures, and programs. But my employees, who are about two decades younger than I am, want more. They want context, enough information to entice them to make the effort to come to the show. To them, press-release level PR isn’t adequate.
One designer here said that he wanted on-line access to what he might read in the orientation gallery with some shots of the installation. That way he would feel better informed when he walked into the show.
Good idea, and not that hard to include on an exhibit Web site. Who takes on that responsibility? Curatorial? Publications? Education? Each institution needs to figure that out.
This is the audience museums will need to connect with to be relevant to them in the years ahead.
By Ed Marquand
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