Instagram is changing the way we experience and perceive art, as well as how we share our visits to exhibitions. In fact, art is very popular on the app considering that in 2018 #art was the fifth most popular hashtag.
For artists, Instagram is a key to everything from establishing a career to finding collectors to making work. For museums and galleries, it’s a cost-effective way to build audiences and market shows. Let’s now focus on the advantages that the platform gives both to Galleries and Artists.
For Galleries
As JiaJia Fei - director of digital at the Jewish Museum of New York – said, we are facing the ascendance of “Instagrammable” exhibitions since the social media platform launched in 2010.
Many of the masterminds behind these exhibits admit that creating social-media-worthy art is a key goal. For example, the Museum of Ice Cream in the US praises over 125,000 hashtagged posts and includes Insta-friendly displays such as giant cherries, suspended bananas and a rainbow sprinkle pool, inviting the visitor into a colorful space of neatly guided photo opportunities.
For artists
Instagram is being used as an essential marketing tool for artists since it helped them in balancing the artist-gallery relationship and in reducing the need for a physical space to show their works. In this way, they no longer work outside the society but reacting directly within it.
However, Instagram isn’t problem free: artists have no control over how their work is utilized once it is uploaded, prompting speculation over whether imitation is now becoming a creative norm.