It was close Christmastime when I received an e -mail from The museum of Navarra, the one I’ve put here at the beginning of the post offering us the opportunity to visit The Annunciation to the Shepherds a Gothic painting transported from a Church in Olite, a village close to Pamplona, Navarra.
The proposal was interesting but in my opinion the mail itself was boring, without giving any hope of young people having fun. So I took account of the mail itself during our visit. Before talking about Gothic art we had a chat about communication with Museums.
Do you have any idea about this kind of information, these e-mails from the Museum of Navarra? Nobody knows….
How would you like the museum to keep in touch with you?
No idea… They would love some attention, but they don’t know how to go about getting it….
Have any of you visited any museums’ websites within the last month?
Probably not very likely.
Have you seen, for example the new website of the Prado Museum?
I doubt it.
Do any of you have an idea about any museum in the social networks? One girl might know a little something of the Jaca Museum perhaps… she won a prize some years ago and can remember something….
So, everybody has the feeling of lack of communication with museums and their collections, but no one can think about a proposal to the institutions… Take notice….
After this little chat, we talked about the medieval mural paintings, the way in which they are brought from their original homes to museums… so at this point, we remembered our visit to Jaca and the Romanesque paintings of Bagues, to see the video, click here.
Compare, remember, explore, associate content and paintings, make a connection with the tour we did in past years…
Then we talked about the painting we went to the museum to visit. Theme, technique, colors, drawings, characters, conservation and so on. Our group was very surprised thinking about how churches looked centuries ago with all these colours and paintings on their walls.
The whole team had the delightful experience of enjoying a museum without speeding through it, without visiting everything or almost, resulting in hating art and body aches.
It is urgent that we find a way to engage the youth when talking about museums. This is especially important here in Spain, where the whole country is an example of history and art. I’ve written about it here more than once, check it the website Spain is culture
Perhaps in not very big museums and not big cities such as Madrid or Barcelona, we need some kind of fresh air, changes in the way we talk about the exhibitions and collections at the museums.
What about some idea from projects such as Museum Hack ? It is much more than a matter of money for exploring new ways; In my opinion, it has to do with attitude, imagination, and the concern and will to reach new audiences.
So we had a great day, discovering Gothic mural painting and chatting about communication with and from Museums.