MoMA Creates @Art140 To Stir Up Conversation

The Museum of Modern Art wants to get more people to talk about art — and is turning to Twitter to make that happen.  The @Art140 account, unveiled yesterday at SXSW, is MoMA’s vehicle to “better understand how the public feels about art.”

How will it work?  MoMA will post 6 pieces of art, representing “a wide range of work,” and then add information about each piece designed to get conversation rolling.  @Art140 (note: if you’re searching for it, it’s actually @artoneforty) is meant to be highly interactive; Victor Samra, the digital media marketing manager at MoMA, told Adweek that “We’ll do our best to respond to people’s opinions on Twitter and try to get more conversation going that way.”

Conversations will be grouped by hashtags that appear underneath each piece of art; the first round includes #Art140 with #Popova, #VanGogh, #Boccioni, #Klimt, #Gauguin and #Rousseau.

MoMA's @Art140

The museum tapped digital agency Possible to create @Art140, and their goals are big: David Stocks, a senior planner at Possible, told Adweek that “We want it to become the most engaged art community in the world.” In a few months, Possible will use data from these Twitter conversations to create a report for MoMA, looking at people’s sentiments about art with additional filters of gender, geography and more.

MoMA is already successful in social media, with 1.6 million Twitter followers and 1.5 million likes on Facebook.