This week, the Museum joins nine other London-based museums for #MuseumInstaSwap, a project to celebrate our spaces and collections through the medium of Instagram.
The idea for #MuseumInstaSwap began after Londonist listed their 10 best London museums on Instagram. On seeing such a variety of museums, each with fascinating Instagram feeds, we all knew there had to be an exciting way to collaborate and share our content.
The 10 museums taking part – representing a diverse range of subjects and sizes – have paired up to take part in a week-long cultural exchange to reveal our collections in a new light.
Who’s taking part?
Via the random pulling of names from a hat, the 10 museums have been sorted into pairs. The aim of #MuseumInstaSwap is for us to share our own perspective of our partner museum’s content.
- Horniman Museum and Gardens and Royal Museums Greenwich
- Science Museum and Design Museum
- London Transport Museum and Wellcome Collection
- Imperial War Museum and British Museum
- Victoria and Albert Museum and Natural History Museum
How does it work?
Each museum pair has visited the other, exploring and photographing things in the spaces and collections that resonated with their own museum’s collection and focus. Over the next week, we will each tell the story of our explorations through the photographs and captions we post via Instagram.
Where do I find it?
Follow #MuseumInstaSwap on Instagram each day to discover what each of us have shared about the other.
To see what we think of our own #MuseumInstaSwap partner, the Victoria and Albert Museum, from a natural history perspective follow our feed on Instagram. We’ll also be talking about the project on Twitter.
Want to take part?
On Saturday and Sunday (29-30 August), you can join in with #MuseumInstaSwap with CultureThemes.
Whether you’re a museum or a visitor, use the hashtag on Instagram and Twitter and share photos of your own items that you think would sit well in a particular museum. For a little bit of inspiration, think how you would answer the following question: “If I started a museum, which of my objects would take pride of place?”
We’re also inviting other museums to pair up and virtually swap objects from their collections on Instagram, allowing new audiences to see their material, as well as presenting those objects through a different lens. Head over to the CultureThemes blog to find out more.