"Sharing is Caring" in museums
Channel: Merete Sanderhoff
Date: 2012-03-30

Video presentation by Merete Sanderhoff, Statens Museum for Kunst, of her talk "Sharing is Daring. Openness as a Business Strategy" for the J. Boye conference in Philadelphia, May 2012

"I'm Merete Sanderhoff. I'm an art historian, and I work at Statens Museum for Kunst, the National Gallery of Denmark. I'm passionate about art, and I love how digital media enables me to share my passion with the world. 

In museums we are used to selling a product: High resolution images of artworks in our collections. But recent studies have shown that this business model is not viable anymore. In the networked society, people are used to finding free images in abundance across the internet. So why should they want to pay for ours? And more importantly, if our images are not among those that people find available for free, they simply don't exist.

As a national gallery, it is our responsibility to care for the art. I think we do that best by allowing users to find, share and build upon our images in the Public Domain.

The Public Domain belongs to us all. I think people will care more for the art if they have access to use the images freely. It should not be a locked away treasure that you can only appreciate from a distance, but a tool in the hand of users.

Sharing is caring. But sharing is also daring. We are running a risk by sharing - of losing potential income, and of losing control over how the cultural heritage is used. But I think it is a necessary risk to run if we want to be relevant to users today and tomorrow.

I care deeply about all of this, and I feel responsible for it. What do you care about? What makes people care about your stuff? Could you learn from museums that are developing new business models based on sharing stuff for free?

I look forward to discussing these issues with you at the J. Boye conference. See you in Philadelphia."