Some Insights about the Reopening of French Museums
While Asian museums are closing their doors under the recurring waves of cluster-COVID, while North and South American museums, still without visitors, are resigning themselves to massive furloughs, hope seems to be arising in the reopening of European museums. The last months have nevertheless reconfigured the museum in terms of its short-term daily life, its necessary medium-term economic sustainability, and according to some, even its longer-term mission. Here is the first article of three trying to draw lessons from the reopenings of French museums.
Consider the symmetry of commitments in your ‘Back to IRL’ communication
By common agreement, the lockdown has highlighted the capacity for mutual aid and solidarity within museums, but also towards their audiences, playing an essential role in terms of access to knowledge, creativity, and the fight against isolation. All of which are real generators of well-being, and part of the new society of “care” called for by the philosopher Cynthia Fleury. The visitors’ Bureau of Paris itself has initiated a tourism commitment charter based on this idea: “Caring attitude”. Some museums as the Musée de l’Homme (Paris) among many have already endorsed the charter.
On the basis of this experience, the French museums have reopened, wishing to preserve the empathy, proximity, and care that have distinguished them in recent weeks. Aware of the emotional fragility of the teams, as well as of the first visitors, who must be reassured at all costs to initiate a virtuous circle of visits, some museums have bet on the symmetry of commitments in their ‘back to museum’ communications.
Here is what we can learn from their best practices.
1/ Think about your health and safety guidelines’ charter as a mean for a common transition for your visitors AND staff
Your charter should be:
. Efficient, with pictograms ideally related to your collections. Avoid the indigestible text blocks that are still too often present.
. Accessible from the first page of the website ( see Culture Espaces Museums examples such as Musée Jacquemart-André header and pop-up).
. Empathetic: without falling into an excess of optimism (which would be inappropriate), a bit of humor can bring a smile back on the lips (not visible!) of your visitors.
As a good example, here is, with the Centre Pompidou, the kind of charter designed to facilitate the pedagogical dialogue of your reception staff, who are anxious about visitors’ failure to comply with the instructions, thus relieving their own apprehensions when they return to work.
2/ Encourage the involvement of your staff in the transmission of the new standards
The Nantes Museum of Fine Arts had a very good idea of putting on stage its host teams to explain the instructions in a tone worthy of Jacques Tati’s ‘Mon Oncle’ (My Uncle)!
The involvement of the supervisory staff, not only encourages identification with the good practices to be adopted in the museum but by associating them with the works of art, is in perfect coherence with the practices of caring, a museum function par excellence.
3/ Don’t forget to thank your virtual visitors gained during lockdown to turn them into ambassadors
The museums’ engagement with social networks rocketed during the containment allowing many museums to significantly increase their numbers of followers. The National Cowboy Museum went from 10K followers to 306K overnight on its Twitter account while the Louvre museum claims 10.5 million virtual visits during the lockdown.
Yet very few museums at their reopening are rewarding these new fans in a visible and engaging way, even though many of them have offered at least a weekend of general free admission as a welcome gift.
However, as Colleen Dilenschneider’s follow-up for the United States, or the Oeil du Public study for France, the intentions of visits as soon as museums reopen remain low.
Reflecting on the three- to four-week after reopening, French museums, unfortunately, confirms this trend with a slow recovery to around 10% of normal attendance.
Only mimicry (seeing others visit) can commit to taking the first step. It is therefore important to put in place seduction strategies, such as the initiative of the Centre Pompidou in Malaga, to counter this psychological reticence. Not only the Spanish museum has been able to convert virtual visitors from the period of confinement into real visitors, but it has also turned them into ambassadors able to lift the fears of other potential visitors.
For his part, Paris Musées has launched a contest on Instagram, with the hashtag #retouraumusée (back to the museum), a nod to the communication of the time of confinement #tousenquarantaine (museum at home). In exchange for a post on social media, and following a selection of the best photos taken in museums, Paris Musées will award 3 entrance-cards to exhibitions available for one year.
Conclusion: It’s time to embrace a more joyful, eye-catching, and entertaining communication; something that would get people coming!
While the examples of communications mentioned above are essential for the first two weeks of reopening, in order to quickly introduce practices that unfortunately seem likely to persist for many months to come, I truly think it is important to quickly plan more engaging communications in order to reawaken interest. It is important not to remain stuck in an anxiety-provoking atmosphere conveyed by the obligatory sanitary conditions.
The museum’s mission is to help us regain social commitment in a participative way, in a spirit of exchange and resilience. Moreover, the visitors to be conquered are now largely locals with specific needs that the museum will have to quickly identify, especially for those who had a pre-COVID attendance mostly touristic.
Until then, I still haven’t spotted a truly engaging campaign, which is starting to be lacking to boost attendance, all the more as the summer period is coming, and that we prefer to be outside more than shut up again within four walls, even if they are those of museums! So here are some of my creations (forgive my setting I’m not a designer) based on Paris Musées Collections available recently under CC0. I would love to share yours very soon.
