Tracy Kennan, Curator of Education, New Orleans Museum of Art

In response to the museum closing its doors the week of March 16th due to COVID-19, my NOMA colleagues and I quickly developed a new digital content strategy to ensure audiences could still engage with the museum from home.

NOMA’S CONTENT STRATEGY

Each week, we are producing digital exhibitions, object lessons, artist talks, lesson plans, arts and crafts projects, and reading lists loosely based on a weekly theme, allowing NOMA to showcase all of the content we’re producing across our departments. Our Mobile Guides and ART tabs (in-gallery Digital Labels), both powered by CultureConnect, are being featured as part of our outreach.

We’re creating sample thematic tours that are typically offered as docent-guided experiences, but now being added to our CultureConnect Mobile Guide, and we plan to add new tours weekly.

STAYING CONNECTED TO TEACHERS & STUDENTS

  1. The first thing that we did to address canceled field trips was to provide teachers with a list of all of our digital tools:
    • The web app version of our mobile guide
    • The web app version of our in-gallery interactives
    • Google Art and Culture online
    • Art-making project directions and lesson plans
    • Links to our social media platforms
    • Reading lists
  2. Our next step, currently in progress, is creating sample thematic tours that are typically offered as docent-guided experiences. We are adding these to our CultureConnect Mobile Guide and plan to add new tours weekly. The first of these was Art and Ecology which is up and running now in the NOMA Mobile Guide.

DELIVERING TO TEACHERS & STUDENTS

Initially we contacted teachers with planned visits to NOMA to let them know that we would be closing. Schools were closing too, so this was not shocking!

We created a clickable PDF and emailed it to all teachers who had planned visits with all of the information mentioned above.

We have also been in contact with specific teachers to ask them what would be useful to them. Their response is helping determine which tours go live next and what platforms we will use.

WHAT NOMA’S DOING NEXT

While we have provided teachers with links to our in-gallery interactives (digital labels, which we call ART tabs), next we will reformulate a couple of our ART tabs as Mobile Guide tours to make them more easily accessible for everyone.

EXPLORE THE COVID-19 RESOURCE CENTER

CONNECT WITH NOMA

Want to connect with Tracy? Reach out to support@cultureconnectme.com and we will connect you. Please feel free to share your own experiences with the CultureConnect team to help your museum peers.

Learn more about the museum’s mobile guide, interpretation, and engagement strategy here in the New Orleans Museum of Art Case Study.

Not a CultureConnect customer, but want to spin up digital experiences quickly in response to COVID-19 cancellations and closures? Check out our special offer for museums & libraries here.