Museums at an Odd Angle
Museums and fans across the globe challenged each other to show off the creepiest items that they have in their collection with the hashtag “museum101.”
The organization that started the trend was Culture Themes. These group of people have a passion for promoting and preserving museums, libraries, galleries and heritage properties worldwide.
In honor of museum week, the organization posted a tweet that stated that the event would occur on Wednesday, February 15, 2017 and asked the question, “What will you add to #Muesum101?” to its followers.
The upbringing of the hashtag was inspired by Room 101, place where it is mentioned in George Orwell’s book, 1984.
In the book, Room 101 is described as a place where people can store objects that they fear, do not like. Although, the Room was mainly aimed towards torture, the organizers of the event wanted to take it away from that perspective and gave it their own twist.
However, the hashtag did not exclude death or body parts. These posts on Twitter also contained dolls, photographs, shrunken heads and other disturbing oddities that may be difficult to glance at.
Some museums who participated where Museum of London, Natural History Museum and English Heritage.
This event is a fantastic idea to not only engage with the general public but to also attract them to actually to go the museums and admire the posted content in the flesh. This is an example of how social media can be used as a tool to attract their target audience and build a relationship.
I believe that Culture Theme did fulfill its mission statement. The hashtag was a trending topic and it even gained recognition on news sites such as BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post.
For more information about the organization and other hashtags that you can participate in, visit www.culturethemes.com.
