The Prado Museum closed its doors so that Dua Lipa could create content. That has generated a furious debate

Even the most venerable institutions are taking notes of the latest trends in communication, and that is why dean museums (but not necessarily anchored in the past and the analog) undertake promotion and communication strategies that come out of the normal. The latest: Pop influencers and stars visit Museums. Often, with the buildings closed for them alone.

Dua Lipa likes Bosco. This happened with Dua Lipa, who, taking advantage of the fact that he was going through Madrid with the Radical Optimism tour, published some of his leisure plans through the city. One of them was look at the one who affirms that it is his favorite picture‘The Garden of Delights’. Of course, he did it with the closed building, in a promotional maneuver that was conveniently redifested by The Prado Museum account. Dua Lipa is not the first or the only one.

What can be done. These types of actions are a content very desired by museums, since they give them a lot of visibility between an audience that is not the usual of their social networks. Among the activities that are usually carried out and that are analyzed in studies like this company Evespecialized in innovative museum projects, highlights private visits with the closed museum, advertising campaigns in which celebrities lend their image, special events and, as is the case, mutual creation of content for networks, disputed in struggle for every second of attention.

More cases. As we say, the case of Dua Lipa is not the only one. In 2020 the influencer Italian Chiara Ferragni visited the Uffizi gallery of Florence, in a session for the magazine ‘Vogue Hong Kong’ and with a guided tour of the director of the Pinacoteca. The museum knew how to make good use of the influence of the influencer when comparing its physique with the Renaissance muse Simonetta Vespucci. The photos of other celebrities of high turns, Jay Z and Beyoncé are also controversial, when they are photographed by eclipsing works of art Like Nefertiti’s headimage for which they needed a special permit of the Berlin Museum Neues.

Museums are modernized. Actions such as these obey a task of modernization of museums, which of course affect their contents in social networks. El Prado, in fact, has been Very praised for its studied mixture of entertainment and dissemination with a relaxed tone. They started with house experts that explained the intrígulis of the Great works and his restorationbut they currently have a very varied content, with all kinds of disseminators expanding the meaning of the works. It is one New form of art criticism.

International tendency. It is a modernization of networks that other museums, such as Carnegie Museum of Art wave Tate GalleryThey have also put into practice. Pioneer was the New York Metone of the first artistic institutions with a Tiktok account and that reached a remarkable impact before the pandemic with initiatives such as #Metgalastyle, where they asked users to create their own content inspired by the famous annual gala.

The complaints. Of course, sometimes so isolated proposals from your consumer-type as some of these can collide with the usual ones. For example, Dua Lipa’s videos have been Very criticized In networks because they see how he takes photos in the museum, something that is prohibited for normal users. But there is more: there is talk of a Banalization of artif the Influencers And your concern for Figure in the foreground and ahead of the works (as Beyoncé does) is the correct form to disseminate this type of contentand if This type of digital strategies They end up damaging institutions rather than spreading their catalogs.

In any case, it is another symptom of the popularization of culture and how after a while, Art molar again. Much of the fault is the trends that dictate Influencers And superstar, but also, let’s not take me out of merit, that the Instagram account of El Museo del Prado is frankly well.

Header | The day we understood a Goya picture thanks to an old photograph