Podcast: Road Trip – The Giant Artichoke
Chris Alexander and Lucy Larson of the San Jose Museum of Art join Jonathan Finkelstein of LearningTimes for a discussion of the MUSE award-winning public relations project, Road Trip: The Giant Artichoke. Alexander is Manager of Interactive technology and Larson is Director of Education at the San Jose Museum of Art.
The Giant Artichoke video features a wild shoe-wearing traveler on a road trip to Castroville, CA who visits a quirky landmark and sends a postcard to SJMA. Created for the exhibition Road Trip and capitalizing on the common experience of a summer road trip, the goals of this hybrid marketing and interpretation project were threefold: to create buzz around the exhibition, sow the seeds for a participatory experience both outside and inside the Museum, and build connections between the Museum’s online audience and onsite visitors.
Articles promoting the exhibition and video were featured on websites such as Road Trip America, uploaded to the museum’s server, SJMA’s YouTube Channel, and iTunes. Utilizing these online portals for audience development, the video reached new audiences previously unfamiliar with SJMA. The video was selected by You Tube as one of their featured videos, which in turn resulted in over 82,000 views and hundreds of postcards arriving from around the world—ranging from the SPAM Museum to the Eiffel Tower. During the exhibition, the video was shown in the gallery alongside the received postcards. An art-making station where visitors could make a postcard, which was stamped and mailed, furthered the viral reach outside the Museum.
This podcast is brought to you in partnership by:
