In a recent visit to Rochester, the head of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's digital team talked about the changing role of museums online.
Sree Sreenivasan is the Chief Digital Officer for the MET, so he is constantly looking to engage people through social media. How does he reach more people on the internet? The same way everyone else does.
Cats.
"They can install this free extension and every time they open a new tab in their google chrome they get a new cat from the met."
It's called Meow MET. Sreenivasan says this fun little project gets the person using it thinking about the MET in a new way.
There are about 6 million people that walk into the MET every year, but Sreenivasan says that doesn't even touch the billions of people out there online. He says over time, they've learned to value those people just as much as their in-person visitors.
"Our job is to educate, to teach people about our common architectural, art, and design heritage, and we're excited to do that in new and different ways."
The MET is an long-standing public institution with an established reputation. The internet is immediate, transient, flippant, but Sreenivasan says as long as the content they put out is positive, he thinks they can remain loyal to the authenticity of the history they preserve.
