Giving Art Fans a Voice

By Paul Hankel
Contributing Writer

As warm weather approaches, the Plains Art Museum (PAM) in downtown Fargo is set to kick off their summer showcase. Keep up with recent trends, management at the PAM has chosen to employ the use of crowdsourcing in an effort to involve the community and local art fans.

Crowdsourcing is a relatively new marketing and outsourcing tactic. The term crowdsourcing was first coined in 2006 by Jeff Howe, a contributing editor at Wired Magazine. Howe wrote an article entitled, “The Rise of Crowdsourcing,” and the new marketing phenomenon exploded among businesses and organizations. Today’s companies, businesses and organizations are actively looking for new input from their customers. Traditional mail-in surveys and online surveys are becoming harder to employ. Customers are becoming more and more wary about giving out their personal information in cyberspace, a frequent requirement for filling out any online survey. Also, customers are often too rushed while shopping to stop and fill out written product and service surveys and are even less inclined to do them over the phone when contacted by these companies and businesses. The solutions: focused groups of randomly selected customers who are polled and surveyed regarding their personal tastes and preferences. Crowdsourcing was born.

Crowdsourcing offers these businesses a unique chance to get very specific input from their patrons in order to serve them better. A company starts by polling a random group of customers and asking for their input. These customers are asked for their opinions on current products and services, how those products and services work for them and what new products and services they would like to see offered. This information is then carefully dissected and mined for vital stats regarding customer likes, dislikes, tendencies and consumer habits. This valuable data is, in turn, passed on to the marketers and decision-makers within the company.

Museums and art institutions use crowdsourcing in much the same way. Art fans are polled and surveyed so that a Museum can cater to the variety of different customer preferences. Crowdsourcing also allows fans the chance to interact and be a part of the decision-making process while setting up an art exhibit.

Coming off of an immensely successful Spring Gala fundraiser, the Plains Art Museum has chosen to employ the use of crowdsourcing in its next art exhibit entitled, You Like This: A Democratic Approach to the Museum Collection. The Museum has used voter-driven art campaigns before. The outdoor sculptures that can be seen outside the building are often chosen based on fan voting surveys and polls. The You Like This exhibit will run from Oct. 6 to Jan. 15 and will exclusively feature art pieces chosen by the general public. Kris Kerzman, the Creative Director at the PAM, is one of the leads on the project. “Crowdsourcing is something that isn’t new in the museum world. It’s something that, in the last five years, has been a very common way for museums and companies to get people engaged and active. It’s an intriguing idea.” Kerzman stated that the Museum will use a three-step process to choose the art pieces for its You Like This campaign. The first step will be a general poll of the public from April to June. Art fans can hop online or come in to the PAM to fill out a survey and vote on their favorite art pieces including drawings, paintings, sculptures and other art forms. According to Kerzman, there will be roughly 3,500 pieces to choose from. “This is an excellent opportunity to get firsthand opinions from a broad range of art fans,” says Kerzman. “We want to use broad strokes in the first step to accurately gauge our patrons.” He hopes that the survey will encourage everyone, from avid art enthusiasts to novice are fans, to take part in the selection process. Fans are also able to contribute their input through the PAMs Facebook site and on their blog.

The second step in the PAM’s crowdsourcing exhibit will feature an advisory panel picked by the Museum staff that will review the results from the survey in several meetings during June. The panel will shorten the list of possible exhibits pieces to around 100 pieces which, in the third step, the public will then have the opportunity to vote on. Kerzman hopes the final exhibit will feature upwards of 50 pieces from the Museum’s collection, including several fan favorites such as pieces from artist Luis Jiminez. The exhibit is set to be open to the public from October 6th through January 15th. The selected pieces will be on display in the Stern Gallery on the first floor of the Museum.

Kerzman and the PAM hope that the use of crowdsourcing in the, You Like This exhibit will give fans an intimate connection with the exhibit itself. “That’s been a big goal of ours (the PAM), and of our Director, Colleen Sheehy: the audience interacting with the art. She refers to it as our version of ‘American Idol’” … a version in which the intended winner is the art fan.

For more information on the You Like This, art exhibit at the Plains Art Museum, visit their website at plainsart.org. Or, stop in at 704 1st Avenue North in Fargo.

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