This was the message on palm cards that our ASK Ambassadors distributed to Museum visitors throughout June. As a special engagement activity for Pride Month, visitors could take an ASK-guided tour of our galleries and learn more about gender and queer identity in art. 

The card featured a detail of a work by Amaryllis DeJesus Moleski, on view in the exhibition “Nobody Promised You Tomorrow.”

This tour could be taken as a complementary activity to the special exhibition Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years After Stonewall or as a standalone activity. And, as with all our ASK engagement offerings, we kept things responsive and personalized —every visitor could set their own pace and tone.

Visitors could begin their experience in the Museum lobby at a painting by Kehinde Wiley.

As we envisioned it, this app-guided tour would include a few very popular works from our collections (like Kehinde Wiley’s Napoleon Crossing the Alps) as well as some lesser-known works. They could be works by artists who identified as LGBTQ+, portraits of LGBTQ+ individuals, or works that touched on broader themes of gender identity.

The ASK Team collaborated to select ten works of art with a range of dates and media, from Donald Moffett’s Lot 043017 (Multiflora, Radiant Blue) to a coffin in the Ancient Egyptian collection, from Aaron Ben-Shmuel’s stone bust of Walt Whitman to Deborah Kass’s neon wall-piece After Louise Bourgeois. They compiled information about these works into a reference document and they strategized about giving directions to help the visitor navigate from stop to stop.

Elizabeth of the ASK Team tracked these tours (which accounted for about 22% of our app traffic) throughout June , and she noticed an interesting split. Visitors who began engaging with us on the Museum’s first floor were more likely to invest in the total tour experience, following our cues to visit works on the third, fourth, and fifth floors of the Museum. They often spent more than a half-hour with us for this itinerary.

Special labels with Pride flag icons were placed beside the “tour stops.”

Meanwhile, other visitors encountered individual works with our ASK Pride Month labels in the galleries and sent questions about them. These visitors were usually satisfied with learning about that particular work and might move one more stop nearby when we invited them to continue chatting. However, they were less interested in experiencing the complete tour.

The ASK Team also received a few requests from visitors who were ready to go even further. For example, when one visitor asked whether they could see anything by LGBTQ+ artists in the new special exhibition Rembrandt to Picasso: Five Centuries of European Works on Paper, we added a drawing by Rosa Bonheur to our list.

It’s been two years since we first tailored an ASK activity to a specific show or event, during Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern, and we continue to learn from each iteration. Next up? An engagement option related to the special exhibition Pierre Cardin: Future Fashion. More about that soon!

1. Are ASK users first-time or returning museum visitors?
2. Are ASK users avid museum goers?
3. What kind of experience are users having?
4. Are the users participating in the Frida Kahlo ASK activities?
5. Are the ASK users using the app in Spanish?

The students determined a survey was best, which the ASK team sent via a link as part of the chat. This was more challenging than we thought because figuring out the timing for when to send the survey link proved difficult. You don’t want to share it first-thing, before anyone’s engaged, but finding the end of the conversation can be tough; some users just stop texting. The team had to play with timing a bit and I’m not sure we ever found the perfect moment. 

As with the Kahlo visitor study, we offered an incentive for completion: every 25th respondent got free tickets to Frida Kahlo. We ended up switching that incentive to free Kahlo Dance Party tickets since most users during this time had already seen the exhibition. In the end, we netted 115 responses over 6 weeks. As with the Kahlo evaluation, the results I’m sharing here include some of their interpretation of the data (reviewed by me) as well as some of my own analysis. 

Let’s break down the results. 

Are ASK users first-time or returning museum visitors?

Respondents were almost 50/50 split, with just slightly more repeat visitors. A caveat here though, is that we make this question time-bound, i.e. “within the last year,” so we don’t know if visitors meant life-time visits or something else.

Are ASK users avid art museum goers?

Yes! A majority (72%) visit art museums three plus times in a typical year (this question was timebound). Only 7% of respondents noted it was their first visit to any art museum, while almost 40% visit 6+ times a year.

What kind of experience are users having?

As indicated in the past through positive app store reviews, I’m happy to say we continue to provide a good experience for users. Over 98% of respondents would recommend the app to a friend. The most popular reasons given for this answer included descriptions that could be coded as “fun,” “informative,” and “helpful.” 

Are the users participating in the Frida Kahlo ASK activities?

Yes. Roughly a third (34%) of respondents checked the scavenger hunt as a way they used ASK, while 19% used the Kahlo themed cards.  Interestingly, although this question was a “check all,” a slight majority (57%) only checked on option. It’s possible this could be attributed to users have one main reason for using the app, though it could also be people simply filling out the survey quickly without stopping to think critically about all the ways they used it. Users tend to rely heavily on photos in chats, so the fact that only 22% check that use suggests it’s wise to take these responses with a grain of salt. 

Are the ASK users using the app in Spanish?

Unfortunately, the dashboard doesn’t track this for us automatically, so the way the students chose to get at this was to determine users’ preferred language. It doesn’t quite answer the question, but helps unpack user preferences. Over 80% of respondents (93) listed English and only 2 people listed Spanish. We do know, however, from the Kahlo visitor study that a little over a third of visitors interviewed used the Spanish language materials. Perhaps the lack of synergy between studies means Spanish-speakers aren’t using the app, despite invitations in Spanish to do so. More data would have been required to be really sure.

So, what does it all mean?

We learned a few things from the study. First, our assumption that more first-time visitors would use the app for the Kahlo activities—mostly because we felt like it was an easy way into exploring a new place—was correct. Those least likely to use the scavenger hunt in particular were the users who had visited us the most. 

Second, it’s nice to know most people have a good experience with us, no matter how they use ASK. A few comments include: 

The ask app totally enhanced my museum going experience. Typically I can find usage of phones in the galleries to be pretty distracting, but this app advances the experience. It’s great to have my questions answered in a friendly way- and by a person!

Due to ASK at the Brooklyn Museum, I rate this museum the top museum out of all I visited before!

Keep it up please! This is the best form of digital technology yet!

And third, as can be the case with visitor studies, this one leaves me wanting a bit more. Not through any fault of the students who worked on it, but due to the fact that it’s whetted my appetite for more info about our users. This study paints a small picture of what some of our users experienced, but what would happen if we ran this for longer? Switched out some questions? Got more responses? Something we may have to explore…

A visitor study of “Frida Kahlo” was a perfect project for some of my Pratt grad students.

In my last post, I posited that although we don’t have a CRM, we are gathering data in the ways we can to help inform our decisions. One recent example are the two evaluation projects completed by Pratt graduate students in the Museums and Digital Culture program last semester. I had eight students in the Audience Research & Evaluation course, so I split them into two groups of four for final projects. One team was responsible for completing a visitor study about ASK users and the other about visitors to Frida Kahlo. For this post, I’ll focus on the latter. The student project team for the Kahlo evaluation was Sydney Stewart, Megan Paqua, Grace Poole, and Caroline Baer. The results I’m sharing here are their interpretation of the data (reviewed by me) and their work (including the visuals).

The objective of the study, as defined by our institutional needs and finalized by project team, was to determine: who is coming to Frida Kahlo and will they return to the Museum? In addition, we wanted to know if the Spanish language materials were useful. The first part was really to help us check our assumption that Frida Kahlo might bring in a lot of first-time visitors. The second was to give us some insight on the ROI of the translation work we did for this exhibition, which was the most extensive we’ve ever done—ticketing pages, signs in the building, floor plan, and labels were all provided in both English and Spanish. While we’ve provided label copy in other languages in the past, we had yet to translate logistical information beyond the floor plan. We have a small team and none of our editors are native Spanish speakers. Best practice requires someone for translation as well as proofreading and layout review. Thankfully we have several fluent Spanish speakers (some of whom are native speakers) who helped in the review process and even translated our last minute signs. (Thank you Stephanie, Rachel, Jaime, and Allison!) Working with Eriksen Translations and our in-house powerhouse, we were able to get the translation completed, but it took a lot of extra time and resources.

We determined that the best approach to getting answers to our research objectives were interviews with Kahlo visitors. While we had visitor time and attention, we also asked about how they heard about the exhibition and how their experiences was. All eight students, myself, and Rachel Lewis (who conducted interviews in Spanish for us, thank you!) conducted interviews in the exhibition shop, which was exit point of the exhibition. We offered 10% shop coupons as an incentive to take the survey.

Results

We interviewed visitors during class time on four Thursday afternoons from about 3:30pm-5:30pm in March-April 2019. In total we completed 259 interviews. Below are the results, as written in the students’ final report (in quotes):

Who came to Frida Kahlo?

“Visitors came from a wide geographic area. Visitors to Frida Kahlo were almost evenly split between tourists and New York City residents. The majority of New York City residents were from Brooklyn, but the show also attracted visitors across the city. Overall, domestic visitors came from 26 states plus Puerto Rico, and international visitors came from 8 different countries.” Side note: the data is skewed since it only accounts for responses during a certain time window: Thursday afternoons. Responses would likely be different on different days. Weekends, for example, likely bring in more locals on their day off.

Visitorship was almost evenly split between locals and tourists, which may be accounted for by the fact that interviews took place Thursday afternoons only.

Did they use the Spanish language materials?

“Visitors responded positively to the inclusion of Spanish language materials, particularly the exhibition labels, whether or not they used them personally, and indicated that continued inclusion of bilingual materials would make them more likely to make a return visit to the museum.

Visitors frequently remarked on the relevance of the Spanish language materials for an exhibition about Frida Kahlo. Many visitors expressed an interest in expanding foreign language offerings in future exhibitions when appropriate, especially for exhibitions featuring artist from non-English speaking communities.”

The majority of visitors interviewed did not use the Spanish language materials.

How did they hear about the exhibition?

“35% of visitors reported learning about Frida Kahlo through word of mouth, although social media posts as well as reviews in major news publications were the next most effective at reaching visitors. On-site signage was also useful for attracting visitors who had not heard about the exhibition prior to their arrival at the museum.”

Word-of-mouth ranked highest among ways people learned about the exhibition.

How was their experience? Will they come back to the Museum?

“No matter where visitors are coming from, Frida Kahlo was the primary motivation for visitors to come to the Brooklyn Museum, whether it was out of personal interest, to visit with a friend or family member, or based on a recommendation or advertisement. The majority of visitors expressed having positive opinions about the exhibition and their visit overall, even when they had complaints about other aspects of their experience.

Visitors had a clear interest in returning to the museum for special exhibitions, especially if the focus is on diverse communities or artists of color. Many visitors stated that they associated the Brooklyn Museum with this type of programming and were more positively disposed towards the institution as a result.”

For 71% of repeat visitors, “Frida Kahlo” specifically and special exhibitions in general are the reason to return to the Museum.

What would visitors like to see more of at the Museum?

“When asked what they would like to see more of at the museum, 10.71% of visitors responded with requests for more activities designed for children. These visitors were overwhelmingly returning visitors, indicating that this is a current gap in the Museum’s programming within the exhibition space.”

Learnings

This evaluation confirmed some of what we already knew:

• Special exhibitions are a big draw for first time and repeat visitors alike.
• Word-of-mouth is important, though it’s sometimes tough to parse out the nuances of this answer. While some people genuinely couldn’t remember exactly where they heard about it, for others there might be more to the story. For example, their friend told them about it either through social media or because that friend saw it on social media. So does that count as word-of-mouth or social media? Or both? More to play with here to get better data to help our marketing team.

And gave us some new insights:

• The majority of visitors felt that the Spanish materials contributed positively to their experience whether they used them or not.
• There’s a desire for more activities for children specifically in the exhibition galleries. As reported: “Of the individuals who responded to what they would like to see more of at the museum, 10.71% indicated a desire for more kid-friendly activities. The kid-friendly advocating visitors are also primarily returning visitors (88.9% who desire kid friendly activities).”

Those interviewed felt that the Spanish materials were positive and useful whether they speak Spanish or not.

The results of this evaluation have been really useful as we think about planning our upcoming exhibitions. In particular the usefulness of languages has come up a few times as we plan for our Pierre Cardin: Future Fashion exhibition opening next month. Do we translate to French, the designer’s native tongue? Ultimately we decided not to go that route, but mostly because we don’t think we’ll have high attendance of Francophiles (since Cardin has his own museum in Paris).

In addition to providing some good information about visitors to Frida Kahlo, the evaluation also gave us good practice as crafting questions and things to think about in terms of how to tease out nuances of how people hear about the exhibitions. As always, it’s a work-in-progress.

The original cards for the ASK activity (right) had beautiful large images on the front that people wanted as souvenirs. We redesigned them (left) to be a little less appealing, with smaller images and more text.

The Kahlo exhibition opened on February 8 and ran for thirteen weeks. In mid-April, we made an adjustment to one of our engagement activities: we changed the palm cards that were being distributed to promote our Kahlo-related tours of the Museum’s collections. The new ones had smaller images with instructions on the front, and we hoped that visitors would use them to take the tours rather than see them just as free postcards.

Did it make a difference?

Yes and no. Visitors did realize more quickly that we were offering a gallery activity through these cards. And they did pause longer to read the explanatory wall text in connection with the cards. However, their awareness of the themed app tours didn’t necessarily translate into increased participation. We were busiest during the first three weeks of the show (with 20 to 30 tour-takers per week), but for the rest of its run, we averaged about 10 tour-takers per week. Many visitors still seemed more interested in collecting multiple cards as souvenirs than in taking an app-guided tour beyond the exhibition.

The “no photography” policy within the exhibition meant that visitors were looking for another way to remember their favorite works in the show. (Photo: Jonathan Dorado)

This particular problem is hard to analyze. Based on comments visitors made to our Ambassadors at the card rack, we have a sense that visitors sometimes saw the cards as compensation for the photography ban within the show and often came back to claim them when the exhibition shop was sold out of Kahlo postcards and greeting cards, due to high demand. Visitors wanted a takeaway image, any image, and our ASK palm cards’ potential as souvenirs far outweighed the potential appeal of their engagement content.

In the meantime, we were offering a second Kahlo engagement option! This was a hunt for Kahlo quotations posted throughout the Museum. To plan this game, the ASK team consulted our curators’ list of verified Kahlo quotes and chose fifteen, some of them humorous and some more introspective. They also gathered interesting, relevant facts about Kahlo to share for each quote.

Kahlo said, “The marvelous Nefertiti, wife of Akhenaten, I imagine that besides having been extraordinarily beautiful, she must have been ‘a wild one’ and a most intelligent collaborator with her husband.”

These quotes were strategically placed on all five floors of the Museum, in public areas like elevators and in collection galleries where we juxtaposed them with works of art that had some kind of connection. For example, a quotation about painting flowers was placed near a panel of Ottoman tiles with a floral motif, and a short reflection on Nefertiti was placed near two depictions of the ancient Egyptian queen in our Amarna Period gallery.

Visitors learned about the quote hunt from our ASK Ambassadors or by encountering a quote with its instructions: “Text us snapshots of Kahlo quotes from around the Museum to win a special prize.” We asked visitors to locate 12 quotes, with the exception of Mondays and Tuesdays, when only the first floor of the Museum was open for the Kahlo exhibition. On those days, we asked visitors to find eight quotes on the first floor.

Some quotes were posted in public areas: in our cafe, in elevators, on glass exit doors.

Over the course of the exhibition, nearly 900 visitors started the quote tour and approximately 100 completed it. Many of them entered into the game with full enthusiasm, including selfies in front of the quotes they found and taking the opportunity to show off their own Kahlo t-shirts or tattoos. Every winner received a prize from our Shop, including mugs or colorful totes emblazoned with Kahlo’s likeness. Since the quotes were placed around the Museum rather than within the Kahlo exhibition itself, even visitors who didn’t have tickets to see Kahlo were able to participate.

Kahlo once said, “I have not regretted the things I have done.” While we might rethink our staging of the themed tour option for future exhibitions, we still think it’s a concept we should revisit, and we know that artist quotes (and games with prizes!) will continue to receive a positive response visitors.

We have more exhibitions to come soon, so I’ll be back in a couple of weeks to share some of our ASK engagement ideas for the summer!

We knew at the outset that we’d be working around one major restriction: photography is not permitted within this exhibition. We devised a pre-exhibition ASK activity (a trivia quiz) for David Bowie is last year, and this time we came up with a post-exhibition experience to prolong visitors’ post-Kahlo excitement.

With their usual flair and extensive knowledge of our collections, the ASK team collaborated on shaping four ASK-guided tours of the Museum. Each tour would direct the visitor to works that related to the main themes of Frida Kahlo, sharing interesting context and information at every “stop. The four tour themes would be Mexican identity, modernism, feminisms (works by women or works addressing themes of female identity), and “the art of the personal” (artist that draw upon autobiography in similar ways to Kahlo), and the visitor would pick their favorite card to get started. (We also assembled a tour limited to the Museum’s first floor, to offer on Mondays and Tuesdays when the rest of the building is closed.)

The four palm cards for our post-exhibition ASK experience offered a choice of four Kahlo images.

To create special materials for this exhibition activity, we selected four images of Kahlo from the exhibition checklist, and our Design colleagues crafted four palm cards to share with visitors. Each card featured a different image on the front, and the backs all included the same basic information (including our ASK texting number), in both English and Spanish.

Cards are prominently racked beside the exhibition exit, with instructional wall signage above.

Starting on the first day of the exhibition, the cards were displayed in a rack in the show’s exit space, near our “Frida selfie spot” and just below some ASK wall signage. An ASK Ambassador was stationed nearby to explain the activity, to assist with any technical issues, and to restock the cards when needed. We all agreed that the cards looked fantastic.

As it turned out, however, we’d created something a little too appealing. As visitors moved from the last gallery of the exhibition into the exit space, they spotted the cards from a distance and made a beeline for them. They were so focused on the cards, and on the goal of taking them as souvenirs, that they weren’t paying much attention to the accompanying wall signage or to the Ambassadors’ pitches. When the Ambassadors gently encouraged them to “choose your favorite card” (rather than multiples or all four designs), visitors wanted to know whether they could also buy the cards in our museum shop.

Redesigned palm cards feature smaller images and give more weight to promotional copy and instructions.

Back to the proverbial drawing board! I discussed a few options with our Design colleagues, and they came up with an alternative card design that presents a different overall appearance and foregrounds our engagement angle. The front of each card has a significantly smaller image with introductory text below it. The reverse of the card continues the instructions and offers the texting number.

Our Ambassadors found that visitors were more likely to read signage and listen to pitches after the cards were updated.

About a week ago, the Ambassadors began pitching with the new cards. Based on early feedback, there are still some pros and cons, but the cards’ purpose is now clearer. Visitors are quickly identifying them as “educational material” of some kind rather than apparent souvenirs. Gina, one of our Ambassadors, has noted, “Visitors aren’t approaching as aggressively with these new cards, which is great! They are instead reading a lot more as they approach—both the cards and the wall text. It seems like they are getting the idea that this is something to do rather than something to take.” She added, “The number of ‘Do you sell these in the gift shop’ inquiries have decreased a lot!”

Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving runs through May 12, so we we’ll be tracking our engagement rates for the final month of the show. We’ll report back on the results of the card switch as well as overall success of the two ASK-related activities associated with the exhibition.

The waiting area for the exhibition was never this empty.

From March through July 2018, the Brooklyn Museum was the home of the multimedia exhibition David Bowie is. It was the twelfth and final stop for this show, which originated at the Victoria & Albert in London five years earlier, and our curator Matthew Yokobosky expanded and reshaped it for its grand finale here.

Two specific things made this exhibition different for ASK. First, all visitors had to turn off their phones when they entered in order to eliminate signal interference with the immersive audio they’d be experiencing through headphones. (Furthermore, photography was not allowed.) Second, this exhibition had ticketed and timed entry.

Working around that first limitation—no app chats within the show itself —we figured that we’d make the most of the “captive audience” in the entry waiting area. We’d turn things around and ask visitors the questions by offering a Bowie trivia quiz.

The wall in in the waiting area featured this friendly challenge. How many Bowie fans would take us up on it?

This offering would be promoted through stanchion signs near the show entrance and by a prompt on the wall of the waiting space, where people would queue until their entry times. We limited it to our SMS/texting option to keep things simple.

Meanwhile, the ASK team compiled a trivia quiz with two levels, one for beginners and one for super-fans. (The initial two questions were the same, and acted as a “filter” to help us steer the user into one of those categories.) The questions ranged from mainstream (“Bowie acted throughout his career. Can you name a movie he appeared in?”) through more obscure (“Bowie performed in several bands before striking out on his own as a solo act. Can you name one?”). For each question, the team also prepared an extra fun fact or bit of “edutainment” to share after the correct answer.

As the exhibition began to sell out day after day, the waits to enter the galleries increased, and lines lengthened, we found that the number of chats was becoming too large for our team to handle. They received anywhere from 50 to 150 chats per day, and usually only two people were running the dashboard. Moreover, we’d guessed that most visitors would drop out after a few questions, but that wasn’t the case. Many of them were following the quiz to the end, through all nineteen questions. (Some of them would stop and then attempt to finish the quiz later, from home! However, we didn’t reply to those after-hours chats.)

Lines of visitors extended into the galleries for Arts of the Americas.

Now that we were victims of our own success, we tried to scale back somehow. We created a stanchion sign without any mention of the trivia quiz to use during peak hours, in order to minimize promotion, but visitors still noticed the wall prompt. Since the use rate showed no sign of dropping, we decided that the quiz process needed to be retooled behind the scenes. Our developer Jacki sat down with the ASK team and took a close look at our situation. She came up with a new feature to streamline the process of asking and answering questions (the same ones, over and over!) and, we hoped, make the process smoother and quicker.

Our developer created a dashboard that allowed the team to ask and answer questions by clicking “tiles.”

Although ASK normally avoids cutting-and-pasting text into our chats, in order to keep things feeling personal and fresh, we’d been making an exception for Bowie trivia—after all, it it was a straightforward quiz. The team members had been cutting-and-pasting questions, answers, and extra facts from their trivia spreadsheet. Now, instead of working from a separate document, they were able to stay within the ASK dashboard and conduct the quiz from an in-dashboard panel of buttons or “tiles.” These tiles could be clicked to populate the chat automatically with their text. Jacki even created an extra set of tiles with phrases like “Great answer!” and “That’s not quite right, would you like to try again?” to use as transitions.

With this feature, the pressure of handling such a large volume of quiz chats at such a high speed was eased a bit. Visitors expressed their enjoyment of the quiz and were often witty as well as knowledgeable in their answers. It was still a very busy time, but we’re glad we made those changes when we did, and we’ll be able to utilize the tiles feature for any future games or contests we might plan. And since an estimated 4,700 people participated in the Bowie trivia quiz (not counting the ones who attempted to play from home!), there’s a good chance we’ll do something similar in the future if a good opportunity presents itself!

One of the metrics we can pull from the dashboard is the average number of “beacon groups” from which a conversation takes place and is an indication of how much a user is exploring the Museum. Here you can see the conversation from the top “explorer” during this particular time period used 21 beacon groups over 2 hours.

To be clear, we can’t track anyone’s path through the Museum—that functionality does not exist in our system—so we don’t know in what order they visit the galleries (without combing each and every conversation) or where they are when they’re not actively chatting with us (and therefore what galleries they visit, but do not use ASK). But we do know the number of beacon groups a user visits, which roughly equates to number of gallery areas they traverse. We use this number to extrapolate how much and where ASK users are exploring. Since most users averaged 2 beacon areas, we designated users who visit 3 or more beacon areas as “power users.” Below are some metrics about beacons that tell an interesting story:

Two things stand out to me when I look at these numbers. The first is that exploration almost doubled for some reason starting in June of last year. Initially I thought this might be due to the availability of ASK on Android devices, but that happened in April and there was no discernable change in April or May. The major summer shows (The Rise of Sneaker Culture and Faile) didn’t open until July, so I can’t turn to a particular audience shift due to exhibitions. One can, of course, offer credit to the ASK team for continuously improving their engagement practices and encouraging people to explore, but I can’t say if that would account for a such a discernable shift between May and June—a trend that continued until recently. (However, the sustained nature of the trend could be explained by a shift in engagement practices.) Unfortunately, the reason(s) for this shift remain a mystery to me and I am unable to go back and enumerate all the potential variables that might explain this behavior.

The second is that I see a similarly discernable shift happening right now between February and March of this year. Now, I’m usually the first to say that a single month does not make a trend, but last time we had such a shift I missed the opportunity to try to explain it. I’d prefer not to miss it a second time. I’m deep in metrics lately due to the recent launch of our ASK Ambassador program (more on that in a later post) and I’m tracking how this team of “guerrilla marketers” is effecting app traffic on a daily and weekly basis, which is how I caught the shift this time around. Interestingly, this most recent shift coincides with the opening of our stellar Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern exhibition.

Last week, Jessica wrote about the surprising kinds of questions we’re getting via ASK within the O’Keeffe exhibition, but that’s not our only surprise. For the month of March, we’ve seen a complete shift in traffic patterns via the app. Not only are users not exploring quite as much, but we are averaging the same number of chats per week with a completely different beacon group makeup. Special exhibitions are starting to make up almost half of the incoming chats, with the O’Keeffe show comprising almost a full third of chats and occasionally more than that.

Since O’Keeffe visitors comprise such a large percentage of app traffic right now, if they aren’t exploring, this would account for the drop in power users. This potential lack of exploration on the part of O’Keeffe visitors can be explained, I think, due to the fact that the show requires a special ticket. I think visitors spend all their mental energy and time in that show and once done, might visit the cafe, restaurant or shop, but otherwise leave the Museum instead of exploring. I don’t have metrics to determine if this is a ticketed show phenomenon or peculiar to this show because the last two ticketed exhibitions took place before ASK existed.

What we are also seeing is that only a small percentage of visitors to O’Keeffe are using the app. While this is in line with previous trends, increasing use by this audience is something we’ll be focusing on in the coming weeks. Well over half of visitors are coming for O’Keeffe and we need a bigger piece of that action. Needless to say, I’ll be keeping a sharp eye on the metrics in the coming weeks to see if I can determine other causes for this traffic pattern shift. If it’s peculiar to O’Keeffe, I would expect the traffic pattern to return to “normal” after this exhibition closes in the summer. Hopefully I won’t have to wait that long for some answers!

The ASK team spent several weeks preparing for this show using our regular methods. We got our hands on an advance copy of the catalogue; we watched a documentary about the artist; we built a wiki around the exhibition checklist, adding further information about many objects so that we could go “beyond the label” in our chats. Within a week or so, we’d already noticed certain patterns in app use in this exhibition. 

Patterns in the ways visitors are using the app in the exhibition emerged pretty quickly including using the prompt questions (left), sending photos only (center), and savvy questions relating to the themes of the show (right).

We’d written several ASK “prompt questions” to be placed on labels throughout the show (about one per gallery), to serve as starting points for broader discussion about major themes of the exhibition. Some visitors immediately notice those questions and type them out for us, ready for answers. (Sara discussed this phenomenon in her last post.)

Conversely, some visitors have been shaping their own experience of the show by using ASK as a self-guided tour. They send photos of works that interest them, usually without questions, and an ASK Team member provides relevant information.

Some visitors are ready to jump into sophisticated discussion of the exhibition’s key themes, as conveyed by the didactics and object groupings: the unified modernist aesthetic of O’Keeffe’s art and life (and attire!), her deliberate self-presentation as a rejection of gendered readings that were imposed on her work, and her careful control of her public identity through the many portraits that she posed for.

We were surprised by the number of basic questions about O’Keeffe we receive. We were expecting more O’Keeffe aficionados.

We had expected O’Keeffe fans to show up and dig deeper into this material, but we were more surprised by the number of visitors who showed up without any specific knowledge of the artist—for a show that requires a special ticket, no less.

Within a day or two of the show’s opening, the ASK Team was fielding questions like “What is she known for?” or “Why is she famous?” These very basic inquiries encouraged us all to step back and use our own preparation to introduce them to the artist and her work.

Biographical questions have continued to roll in:

• “Where exactly was she born?”
• “What was her childhood like?”
• “How tall was she?”
• “Did she have kids?”
• “Was she a spiritual person?”
• “Did she have a lot of dogs?” (Yes, incidentally!)

And, of course, everyone loves a little gossip.

Visitors really connect with O’Keeffe as a independent woman and artist.

One of the most satisfying aspects of chatting about “Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern” has been the personal responses to O’Keeffe’s self-created image as an independent woman and artist. Newcomers and O’Keeffe aficionados alike seem to identify with this issue. For example, when one ASK team member sent a quote from O’Keeffe—““The men liked to put me down as the best woman painter. I think I’m one of the best painters”—the visitor replied with her own experience:

Another visitor closed a chat by texting, “I feel like I’m getting such a clear sense of what kind of person she was.” For the ASK Team, this kind of remark is particularly rewarding. It means that they’re successfully conveying the curator’s thesis for this exhibition in a way that is specific and meaningful for the visitors. O’Keeffe herself would likely approve!

Exterior view of Trinity Church, 371 Delaware Avenue, Buffalo, New York.

At this stage, I’m researching individual objects in preparation for writing the exhibition catalogue. Summer is a great time to conduct research—libraries, historical societies, and other archival institutions are usually air-conditioned! It’s also when many of us get away for a break. This year, I was able to combine work and vacation in Buffalo, New York. Trinity Church, one of this city’s many churches, has a direct connection to a drawing featured in Fine Lines: I had to make a research visit!

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This stunning drawing by John La Farge is a preparatory study for a stained-glass window he designed for the church in 1889. The image depicts a scene from the Bible’s Book of Revelation in which an angel (at lower left) places a seal on the forehead of a woman to identify her as one of God’s chosen people, while two other faithful ascend into heaven above. Comparing the two works, you can see that the finished window follows the drawing very closely in composition. Note how, in the drawing, La Farge marked out the window’s architectural borders, including its arched shape and the triangular peak of the altar below. Given how close these works are, it’s interesting to compare how La Farge realized the same design in different media. In the monochromatic drawing, he models the figures and their drapery tonally—varying the shading of the silvery-colored graphite in order to create the illusion of three-dimensional forms. He achieves these same effects in the window through individual pieces of colored glass (with the exception of the hands and faces which are painted).

Detail of Preparatory Study for “The Sealing of the Twelve Tribes”

As these works demonstrate, La Farge was highly talented in many different art forms. Trained as a painter, he turned to decorative work—particularly stained glass and mural painting—in the 1870s. His first major project, Trinity Church in Boston (1876), brought him widespread acclaim. La Farge revolutionized the centuries-old practice of stained glass with several important innovations, including the use of opalescent glass (milky glass with variegations of colors) and the layering of sheets of glass to achieve greater depth and subtleties of color—both evident in the Buffalo window. He developed these techniques in the late 1870s-early 1880s around the same time as Louis Comfort Tiffany, another modern master of stained glass, was making similar experiments. (La Farge received a patent for opalescent glass shortly before Tiffany did.) These two artists set new standards of artistry for the medium, although competition between them turned the former friends into rivals. The Sealing of the Twelve Tribes window helped to bring such advances to international audiences. Before it was installed in Buffalo, La Farge exhibited it at the 1889 Exposition Universale in Paris. The French government awarded him a Cross of the Legion of Honor for the window’s technical originality.

View of interior of Trinity Church; main altar at right, La Farge’s “The Sealing of the Twelve Tribes” window is left of center.

When Trinity Church completed construction on its current building in 1886, its wealthy congregants sought out the best designers to decorate its windows. As a result, it has some of the finest stained glass in America. Of the over twenty windows that bathe the interior with richly colored, luminous light, La Farge made ten and Tiffany five. Charlotte Sherman Watson, a member of a prominent Buffalo banking family, commissioned The Sealing of the Twelve Tribes in memory of her mother and aunt. You can learn more about Trinity Church and its windows at http://buffaloah.com/a/del/389/hp/hp.html.

Seeing the window in situ was a real treat—if you travel to Buffalo, I highly recommend putting this church on your itinerary! My visit also helped me to better understand our beautiful La Farge drawing through learning about its historical context. Keep an eye on the Museum’s website for more information on the Fine Lines exhibition of American drawings.