We are entering a new phase in the history of digital in museums. In the first phase, we learnt how to digitise our collections. In the second phase, we learnt how to tell stories in a world driven by mobile and social media. Now, we must learn a new skill: economics in a digital world. In this presentation, Chris Michaels will explore the ways the digital economy can bring new income, and new fiscal resilience to museums, and help them bring new value to their relationships with their audience.

As part of the SMK Open project we happily provide SMK data to everyone. In return we got a versatile image recognition app that knows all the art on display at the museum. The app is highly useful and gets “onsite digital” right in many ways but more importantly: The business model changes everything.

Gallica is twenty years old. The new step for it ? the collaborative perspectives with the users called Gallicanautes. Specific studies are not enough for knowing better and better users practices. Providing data and contents and letting the user play and create with them is the best way to understand deeper his needs and desires. Talking about Gallica studio is evoking this type of issues for the BnF.

In 2017, Pinacoteca partnered with IBM on the Voice of Arte, a pilot project wordwide. Watson is a cognitive tool developed by IBM. At the Pinacoteca, the Voice of Art project uses technology as an important tool to provide visitors with an interactive and personalized experience. During the first phase of the project, curators of the Museum picked seven artworks from the collection and fed the cognitive system of Watson with a large quantity of information regarding authors, historical context and curiosities of the art world. A cognitive tool that answers the questions of the visitors, seeking to stimulate curiosity about the most diverse details on the selected artworks.

A Museum and a Shared Workspace Find Common Ground in New Orleans Businesses want to be inspired, surrounded, and influenced by creative communities. Museums want to establish new members, programming, and revenue streams. At The Shop at the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans’ newest co-working space, a unique collaboration is offering the best of both worlds. The Shop’s members have access to an art-filled shared workspace with robust programming that includes arts and culturally-focused events. Developed by The Domain Companies, The Shop features a place-based design where creative individuals and businesses work and connect. The Shop provides the Contemporary Arts Center with a revenue stream, infrastructure improvements, and hundreds of new members to support their exhibitions and events year-round. Hear from The Shop’s community director, Pam Meyer, on how the development came to life and continues to support art and innovation in New Orleans.

In 2015 the Science Museum Group adopted a new three-year digital strategy. Within the Group’s digital ambitions is a tension between the need to establish sustainable, solid and high-quality public-facing digital content platforms and the exciting opportunity for the museums  to provide innovative and exciting digital experiences. The Digital Lab is a set of activities that explores the potential of digital within the museum through initiatives with a short lifetime that explore new technologies, new experiences and new forms of engagement with collections and audiences.

Lafayette Anticipations – The Galeries Lafayette corporate foundation – combines a digital architecture named “Re-Source”, a collaborative and open-source tool at the service of contemporary art, to its architectural project designed by Rem Koolhaas. Leaning back against a semantic database, this platform for documentation and production management allows the process, leading a project to become an artwork, to be visible. Re-Source will reveal to the public the backstage of the creation as well as its collective dimension, like theorized by Howard Becker in Art Worlds.

The French National Museum of Natural History and the Orange Foundation are partnering to propose a unique immersive virtual reality experience for the audience to explore the tree of the living, iconic species and how they are related to each other.

Circuit was a pioneering four-year programme led by Tate which investigated young people’s experiences of galleries and museums. Running across ten galleries in the UK, it set out to understand the organisational change that needs to happen so that a more diverse range of 15-25 year olds can become audience members, producers and members of staff in cultural organisations. Based on in-depth research, this presentation will share what Circuit galleries and youth partner organisations found they needed to do to support young people to build long-term relationships with museums. It will explore the internal barriers and external challenges that Circuit galleries faced, and how they tried to overcome them through shifting ways of working – to achieve their aim of committing to change that would benefit both the organisation and young people now and in the future.

On April 12, the world’s very first Mondrian escape room opened in Winterswijk. This escape room is a cooperation between the two young entrepreneurs Lisanne Halleriet (22) from Escape Room Winterswijk and Judith Kadee (24), Director of museum Villa Mondriaan in Winterswijk. This makes Museum Villa Mondriaan the first museum in the Netherlands with a permanent escape room.

After 6 years of work, the Monnaie de Paris (an EPIC), the last factory operating in Paris, offers since September 30th to French and international tourists an experience: 11 CONTI. New cultural address in Paris, the 11 CONTI makes the Monnaie de Paris the first site in the world to offer its visitors a cultural, commercial and gastronomic offer leading around its crafts. A place of discovery and walk, leisure and well-being, a center of excellence and attractiveness on the banks of the Seine. The 11 CONTI, financed and operated on the equity of the Monnaie de Paris had to design a viable economic model and manage to find a balanced budget for these cultural activities. An adventure, to follow closely.

At the Rijksmuseum we strive to open up our beautiful and extensive collection to a worldwide public. We aim at inspiring individuals to link with art and history by creating (unexpected) encounters between them and the Rijksmuseum.For instance at Rijksmuseum Schiphol, where travellers can have a sneak preview of the collection, or through our well known Rijksstudio platform or our merchandise sold around the world by ourselves or our partners. Philine will go further into detail on this strategy by working out some examples and explain how it all comes together

Through multiple examples of distribution spaces, particularly American and Asian, which are distinguished by their staging and selection of products, this workshop will identify trends that can be a source of inspiration for the design of museum shops.

Having the advantages of world class brand awareness, guaranteed traffic, guaranteed product differentiation, and vast content marketing opportunities, museum retail is poised to become a major revenue generator for the cultural institutions they serve. In order to realize this potential, museum retailers must become more customer centric in their approach to talent, process, and product ideation, including deeper collaboration with consumers and, yes….curators.

Launched by the MoMA shop then taken over by different museums around the world to finally reach their apogee with the shop of the museum Picasso or Lousiana Museum of Modern Art, destination shops attract shoppers and intrigue professionals. How do these shops fit into a shopping route while getting distinguishing from other museum shops and concept stores or boutiques design? As part of their experience feedback, stakeholders will specify the keys for setting up an attractive destination shop (location and space arrangement, selection and presentation of products, communication and partnerships ...).

In 2014-15 the two museum shops weren’t profitable. In 2015-16, Zak took over retail as part of his role as Head of Transformation, and the shops have returned to profitability. Phew. By the end of March 2018 revenue will have increased by 60%. In an honest and frank talk, find out about the highs and lows of changing a “museum shop” into a cultural business through team work and making a ruckus.