Frye Art Museum
Identity, Physical, Digital, Environmental
Summary
In 2014 we collaborated with Frye Art Museum on strategy and design for their #SocialMedium exhibition, which allowed Frye’s social media following to act as museum curators for their fall exhibit. The exhibit’s concept and execution took interactive design to a whole new level.
Background
Frye Art Museum is one of the few free museums in the nation. The museum was founded in 1953 as a center committed to artistic inquiry and a rich visitor experience. The museum’s permanent collection was born out of Charles and Emma Frye’s personal holdings of late–19th and early–20th century European paintings.
Organization Type
Art Museum, Non–Profit
Assignment
Shift the community’s perspective of Frye’s permanent collection by presenting individual works that users could like and comment on resulting in an exhibition of the 50 pieces that had the most online engagement.
Challenge
Charles Frye’s will required that the majority of his personal collection always be on view in “rooms of a certain size” within the museum. The collection has been on permanent display for the last 50 years so everyone in the community that has interest in the museum has already viewed the collection.
Client
Frye Art Museum
Years
2014 — 2015
Location
Seattle, WA USA
Collaborators
Jeffrey Hirsch
Chelsea Werner–Jatzke
Dylan Neuwirth
Approach
After deliberation we realized that we could reach a much broader audience by going to where the audience was already engaging. So rather than construct an entirely new platform we instead leveraged social media as the primary channel. Followers voted via Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr on which works they would like to see displayed at the exhibit. Each “heart” or “like” counted as one vote. We built a microsite to attract patrons and give them all relevant information on the exhibit. Once the show was on view anyone could go on a virtual tour of the exhibition through the site, this footage was then archived.
The identity was born out of digital symbology, such as emoticons. One of the exhibition’s hero images was a portrait of founder Charles Frye displayed beneath glass bearing the exhibit’s identity to illustrate the converging of the past and the future. In designing the web experience we used internet blue as a color pallet and set the site within its own graphic frame to mimic the frames found in the exhibition. Within the physical exhibition the walls are spot-colored yellow to give a vibrant pop throughout the show. The number of hashtags and comments are featured under each piece, and selected comments from citizen curators from around the world were applied to the walls. At the start of the exhibit you are faced with a list of over four thousand names of the social media handles of citizen curators from around the world. The concept of citizen curation and the channel by which curators were engaging was applied to every inch of the brand.
Research
Digital Symbology, Internet Memes, The Secessionist Art Movement, Social Media Culture, Cybernetics
Reach
- The platform attracted over 4k citizen curators worldwide.
- The winning piece, “Peacock”, had over 60k likes.
- The exhibit garnered international press for a local museum.
- #SocialMedium was widely considered The Frye’s most successful exhibition.
- The exhibition has been taught at a number of educational institutions, including Carnegie Mellon, as a way for art institutions to use new technologies to engage the public.
Quote
“The show is a hit.”
— The Wall Street Journal
“Not only a beautifully condensed cross section of the world’s taste in art, but also a compelling portrait of our present day modes of connection and communication.”
— The Huffington Post
Components
Identity Manual, Print Collateral System, Digital Collateral System, Environmental Graphic System, Promotional Print Materials, Exhibition Concept and Strategy, User Experience Design, User Interface Design and Development
Technical Specs
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Twitter API, Facebook Opengraph API
Team
Principal: Michael Ellsworth
Principal: Corey Gutch
Creative Direction: Gabriel Stromberg
Web Development: Shaun Kardinal
Account Management: Elise Carlson and Raya Leary
Frye Art Museum turned to their social media followers to allow them to curate which pieces from the museum’s permanent collection would be displayed in their main galleries. The result was a hyper-contemporary exhibition where citizen curators names and comments appeared alongside the 19th and 20th-century works.
